LANGUAGES

UNITE

EUROPEAN DAY OF LANGUAGES 2022
eTwinning project

ALL LANGUAGES ARE EQUALLY IMPORTANT.
ALL LANGUAGES ARE UNIQUE.
BUT THEY ALSO UNITE PEOPLE AROUND THE GLOBE.

Have a look at some European languages and learn about their unique specificities and their writing system.

Listen to some common phrases and learn how to say it in Greek, English, German, Ukranian, Croatian and Latin.

Enjoy listening to their famous legend.

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GREEK

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Alphabet: The Greek alphabet has 24 letters. It is the first writing system using a separate symbol for each vowel and consonant and the oldest alphabetic system that is still in use.

Root of Language: Greek belongs to the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European language family. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC . The earliest written evidence is a Linear Mecenean clay tablet  that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language. Its history can be divided into four phases: Ancient Greek, Koine (It was the original language of the New Testament, and the Old Testament),Byzantine Greek, and Modern Greek.

Language Specifications The modern Greek shows a rich inflectional system. Articles, nouns, pronouns, and adjectives show distinction in number (singular, plural), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and decline for four cases (nominative,genitive, accusative, and vocative). Verbs have active, and passive voices; indicative, subjunctive, optative, and imperative moods;singular, dual, and plural numbers; and many tenses.
In Greek a period starts always with capital letter. Capital letters are used also for names and important ideas. The Greek numbers are presented by letters.
Writing system: Greek/Hellenic alphabet.

Native speakers: 13.5 million people speak Greek language worldwide. It is the official language of Greece, and Cyprus, officially recognized as a minority language in parts of Italy, and in Albania, Armenia, Romania and Ukraine.

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(Good afternoon!)

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GREEK LEGEND

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Aesop's fable
The Ants & the Grasshopper

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COMMON PHRASES:

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Καλό απόγευμα!

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( Thank you!)

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Ευχαριστώ!

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(Good afternoon!)

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Σε αγαπώ.

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Συγγνώμη.

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(I love you)

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Παρακαλώ.

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(Sorry)

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(Please)

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(Good afternoon!)

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Αντίο.

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(How are you?)

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Τί κάνεις;

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Eδώ είσαι. - Να 'σαι.

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(Here you are.)

ENGLISH

Alphabet: 26 letters

Language specificities: the English language
has the letters q,w,y,x. The pronoun for the 1.person singular is always capitalized. Names of the days, months and subjects in schools are also capitalized.

Root of the language: originates from the West
Germanic languages brought to Britain by Anglo-Saxon migrants somewhere between
the 5th and the 7th century

Writing system: Latin alphabet

Cases: the English language has mostly lost
its case system, however, it still has subjective case, possessive case and objective case, which are simplified forms of the nominative, accusative and
genitive cases.

Native speakers: 360-400 million; L2 speakers 750 million.

One of 24 official EU languages.

ENGLISH LEGEND

Robin Hood

COMMON PHRASES:

GOOD AFTERNOON!
(Dobar dan!)

THANK YOU!
(Hvala!)

SORRY.
(Oprosti.)

PLEASE.
(Molim.)

HERE YOU ARE.
(Izvoli.)

I LOVE YOU.
(Volim te.)

GOODBYE!
(Doviđenja)

HOW ARE YOU?
(Kako si?)

UKRAINIAN

·       
Alphabet – called Abetka or alfavit. Abetka is usually illustrated so it is easier to learn it whereas alfavit are just pure letters.

Root of the language: It belongs to an old Ruten group of Eastern Slavic languages, characteristic of the central part of medieval Kyievan Rus'.

Добрий день!
(Good afternoon!)

Language specificities:  
Usage of old Indo-European -r at the end of the
syllabus (матір (matir) - mother).
Suffixes :-yin, -oshch, -enk (далечинь (dalechyin), солодощі (solodoshchi), поштаренко (poshtarenko))
Prefixes: yaknai-, schonai- (якнайкращ (yaknaikrashche), щонайгірше (shchonaihirshe)
Pronouns with prefixes budʹ-, kazna-, khtozna (будь-хто (bud’ hto), казна-що (kazna shcho),хтозна-куди
Prepositions with particles -ne- (де-не-де (de-ne-de,) хто-не-хто (hto-ne-hto),коли-не-коли (koly-ne-koly)
Soft forms of adjectives (povolenki, tepenki,tepečki, tutečki, tamečki, nedalečko).

Writing system: Cyrillic alphabet

Native speakers: 40 million

UKRAINIAN LEGEND

Kyiv's founding

Common phrases:

Добрий день!
(Good afternoon!)

Дякую !
(Thank you!)

Пробач.
(Sorry.)

Перепрошую.
(Please.)

Допобачення!
(Goodbye!)

Прошу.
(Here you are.)

Як справи?
(How are you?)

Я тебе люблю!
(I love you!)

GERMAN

Alphabet: The German alphabet has 26 letters, a ligature (ß) and 3 umlauts Ä, Ö, Ü.

Root of the language: German belongs to the West Germanic group of the Indo-European language family, along with English, Frisian, and Dutch (Netherlandic, Flemish). The recorded history of Germanic languages begins with their speakers' first contact with the Romans, in the 1st century bce.

Language specificities:
German is an inflected language with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), and strong and weak verbs.
All German nouns are capitalized. The Germans have the same pronoun for the 3.person singular and plural (sie- she and sie -they).

Writing system: Latin alphabet

Native speakers: 95 million; L2 speakers 80-85 million.

One of 24 official EU languages.