Pagan or Pre-Christian influence on English and the English-speaking or "Western" society are subjects little covered in ESL curriculum. As Halloween, a holiday with pre-Christian origins, is coming and the students as me to talk about it I decided that this would make a good subject for my advanced ESL class at William K. Sanford Town Library.
I focused on several different topics and loosely linked them together.
The first was a rough map of Europe circa 800AD (ish) on which I had marked the lands of the Celts or Celtic peoples as well as the Vikings / Norse and a big circle labelled German tribes.
I pointed at the circular area labelled "Celtics" and asked if anyone knew the name of the Boston professional basketball team. (the "Celtics") and waited for answers. Some guessed "Red Sox" and there were other guesses but soon I just went to google and typed "boston professional basketball" on the board.
Then I decided to talk and teach a bit about the history of the English language. I used three youtube videos for this.
Old English poem of the Battle of Brunanburgh
This is interesting, but, of course, there's no need to play the whole thing.
How Far Back in Time Could You Go and Understand English?
Quite good, but I take exception to the portion where they refer to the King James Version of the Bible as "the Bible" (It is one of many versions of the Bible, not "THE" version of the Bible.)
Old English Greetings
This one is a bit amateurish, I thought (not how he often seems to be reading from cue cards) but it is kind of fun. Also there is the portion where he teaches the phrase "Gode Niht" or "Good night" and pronounces "niht" sort of as "ni ccckk t" with a sound like the German or Scottish "ch" in "ach!" --this is a good place to address those pesky, oddball "gh" letters that keep cropping up in English spelling.
i.e. night, knight, through, rough, though, etc.
In all of these words, the "gh" was originally a "ch"as in the Scottish or German pronunciation of the "ch" and, by the way, it is my undertanding that all of the "ough" s at one time ha d a uniform pronunication a bit like "ooooooccckkk" but with the German / Scottish "ch" on the end.
Also worth noting, and again these were very advanced students, I would not do this with lower level students, is the way in which some English words show plurality with a vowel shift instead of an attached "s." i.e. man/ men, woman/ women, tooth / teeth, foot / feet, mouse/ mice, etc. I just found it interesting that the roots of this practice lie back in the British languages.
I also, just in passing, mentioned Gaelic and Welsh.
I showed clips from Ashley MacIsaac and Mary Jane Lamond's 1990s version of "Sleepy Maggie." I noted that it is in Gaelic and not English and said, truthfully, that it was once one of my favorite songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoApELfgWcg
The students were a little confused by the role of Gaelic but a segment or two from this delightful short film, Yu Ming is Ainm Dom, put it in perspective for them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqYtG9BNhfM
There's a wonderful part where a Chinese man who has learned Irish Gaelic actually tries to use it in a bar in Ireland. It's about 8:00 minutes into the film.
Next we got to the part on some pre-Christian / Pagan influences on our society.
These were, first, the "strange" practice of "knocking on wood" for luck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc4khyR6yBk
I explained that although this custom had origins in a belief in tree spirits and tree gods. I also mentioned that most Americans do not know this and I had only learned it when I was about 27 years old from a friend.
I then went to the names of the days of the weeks.
While Sunday and Monday are named after the Sun and the Moon respectively, the other five days of the week are named after pagan / pre-Christian god.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are named after the Norse / Viking gods Tyr, Wodin, Thor, and Freya respectively. I used Google images to explain and show pictures of who they all were and, of course, mentioned the Marvel Comics film. I also mentioned that now they knew why there was a "d" in the middle of the word for "Wednesday."
Of course, i had to share this too.
I also mentioned that the names of the planets came from Roman Gods.
I focused on several different topics and loosely linked them together.
The first was a rough map of Europe circa 800AD (ish) on which I had marked the lands of the Celts or Celtic peoples as well as the Vikings / Norse and a big circle labelled German tribes.
I pointed at the circular area labelled "Celtics" and asked if anyone knew the name of the Boston professional basketball team. (the "Celtics") and waited for answers. Some guessed "Red Sox" and there were other guesses but soon I just went to google and typed "boston professional basketball" on the board.
Then I decided to talk and teach a bit about the history of the English language. I used three youtube videos for this.
Old English poem of the Battle of Brunanburgh
This is interesting, but, of course, there's no need to play the whole thing.
How Far Back in Time Could You Go and Understand English?
Quite good, but I take exception to the portion where they refer to the King James Version of the Bible as "the Bible" (It is one of many versions of the Bible, not "THE" version of the Bible.)
Old English Greetings
This one is a bit amateurish, I thought (not how he often seems to be reading from cue cards) but it is kind of fun. Also there is the portion where he teaches the phrase "Gode Niht" or "Good night" and pronounces "niht" sort of as "ni ccckk t" with a sound like the German or Scottish "ch" in "ach!" --this is a good place to address those pesky, oddball "gh" letters that keep cropping up in English spelling.
i.e. night, knight, through, rough, though, etc.
In all of these words, the "gh" was originally a "ch"as in the Scottish or German pronunciation of the "ch" and, by the way, it is my undertanding that all of the "ough" s at one time ha d a uniform pronunication a bit like "ooooooccckkk" but with the German / Scottish "ch" on the end.
Also worth noting, and again these were very advanced students, I would not do this with lower level students, is the way in which some English words show plurality with a vowel shift instead of an attached "s." i.e. man/ men, woman/ women, tooth / teeth, foot / feet, mouse/ mice, etc. I just found it interesting that the roots of this practice lie back in the British languages.
I also, just in passing, mentioned Gaelic and Welsh.
I showed clips from Ashley MacIsaac and Mary Jane Lamond's 1990s version of "Sleepy Maggie." I noted that it is in Gaelic and not English and said, truthfully, that it was once one of my favorite songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoApELfgWcg
The students were a little confused by the role of Gaelic but a segment or two from this delightful short film, Yu Ming is Ainm Dom, put it in perspective for them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqYtG9BNhfM
There's a wonderful part where a Chinese man who has learned Irish Gaelic actually tries to use it in a bar in Ireland. It's about 8:00 minutes into the film.
Next we got to the part on some pre-Christian / Pagan influences on our society.
These were, first, the "strange" practice of "knocking on wood" for luck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc4khyR6yBk
I explained that although this custom had origins in a belief in tree spirits and tree gods. I also mentioned that most Americans do not know this and I had only learned it when I was about 27 years old from a friend.
I then went to the names of the days of the weeks.
While Sunday and Monday are named after the Sun and the Moon respectively, the other five days of the week are named after pagan / pre-Christian god.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are named after the Norse / Viking gods Tyr, Wodin, Thor, and Freya respectively. I used Google images to explain and show pictures of who they all were and, of course, mentioned the Marvel Comics film. I also mentioned that now they knew why there was a "d" in the middle of the word for "Wednesday."
Of course, i had to share this too.
I also mentioned that the names of the planets came from Roman Gods.
And then, and only then, did I actually get into Halloween which I explained with this video. I did stop the video from time to time to clarify or explain a point.
I then mentioned the Easter bunny and Easter eggs (pre-Christian influences) and Santa's elves, another sort of pre-Christian borrowing.
To finish the class and give the students a chance to talk to each other and not just listen to me, I asked them to offer their solutions to the following advice column questions, each of which had a Halloween theme.
http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/2014/10/20/halloween-cowgirl-can-leave-her-pistol
This one I did not actually use in class as it contained sexual content but I did find it funny.
http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/2014/12/10/wifes-birthday-gag-gift-turns-out
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