Living Language Studies

©: Ruth Marshall, 2006

Last year we bought a calendar. It wasn't a glossy calendar; nor did it have pretty pictures on it. It didn't even cost very much. What it did have was a Scripture text for every day of the year... in French.

Very soon, this became one of our most treasured learning resources.

Each week-day morning, we write the text for the day up on the big whiteboard in our family room. One of us reads the verse aloud; then I ask each of the children in turn, beginning with the youngest, if they know any of the words in the text.

Sometimes our 3-year-old guesses wildly; other times he likes to identify some of the letters on the board. (But he would be most offended if we left him out!) Our 5-year-old began by guessing equally wildly. Now, more than a year later, he happily picks out the words for "God" and "Lord", as well as frequently-appearing words like "the" or "and". The 8-year-old recognises more words, and can sometimes suggest meanings based on the similarities between French and English words. Older children used to have to resort to the dictionary regularly; but that is far less common now. Over time, they also came to recognise verb forms and tenses: all quite painlessly.

As we translate the different words, somebody writes the literal translation directly underneath the French text. I may point out some aspect of grammar as we go, but not always. After that, one of the children finds a Bible, and we write the verse as we know it underneath the literal translation. Doing this takes us about 5-10 minutes a day.

Sometimes my children use these texts as copywork passages.

This year we are continuing with our calendar work, but we have added in several more languages, and instead of taking only 5 minutes a day, it now takes us closer to half-an-hour. Again we begin with the text in French, but if the day's verse comes from the Old Testament, my daughter writes up the text in Hebrew; if it comes from the New Testament, she writes it in Greek. We also include the same text in Latin and German.

This is "living" language study in more ways than one. We have all learned a lot about English vocabulary and grammar. Most of us are now fairly competent with being able to read the Greek characters, while our Hebrew is coming along rather more slowly. We have come to understand why different languages translate particular verses in such different ways (usually based on alternative translations of the Hebrew or Greek words). We have learned that we need to be wary: the verse numbers in the different languages do not always match up with our English Bibles, especially in the Psalms, where the "heading" in English is usually verse 1 in other language versions. (The numbering in the Latin Vulgate is different again.)

Our calendar work is based on the living Word of God, and it has been a great blessing to us by giving us an understanding of Scripture in ways we never anticipated.

We bought our calendar from the Trinitarian Bible Society. It is one of the Golden Thoughts calendars, which are produced in a number of different languages: Afrikaans, English, French, Hausa, Ndebele, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Xhosa.

Of course, a foreign-language calendar is not necessary to be able to use these ideas: any passage from the Bible would do. For us, the main advantages of the calendar have been that we do not have to decide each day (or each week) which verse we are going to translate; we do not have to go hunting for the text in the language we have chosen as it is there in front of us; and because the calendar is on the wall in full view, we tend to be more consistent with our language work than might otherwise be the case.

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