Why does it name languages rather than countries?

Because most countries have more than one. India has twenty-two official languages, Nigeria has hundreds, and Switzerland has four. Tapping a country and answering with a single greeting would tell a class something that is not true, and it would be the wrong lesson to teach on a board about other people’s languages.

Why is the dot in that particular place?

It is a real place where the language is spoken, usually the capital, and it is a mark on the map rather than a country coloured in. Spanish is spoken across most of a continent, so no outline would be right; a dot says here, which is honest. Swahili’s is in Dar es Salaam rather than Nairobi, because Swahili is Tanzania’s national language, and Arabic’s is in Abu Dhabi, which is one of twenty-odd countries it could just as truly be in.

Why is nihao not written in Chinese characters?

Because the board cannot set them properly. Web fonts are loaded one alphabet at a time, and a page asked for a character it has no glyph for falls back to whatever the computer happens to have, differently on every display. A greeting drawn wrong is worse than a greeting romanised, so every one here is written in our alphabet with the pronunciation beside it.

Where do the flags come from?

Fifteen are drawn from the construction each country sets out: bands, crosses, discs, stars and crescents are exact at any size, so India’s wheel really has twenty-four spokes and Korea’s trigrams really are three bars each. Brazil, Fiji and New Zealand carry a coat of arms or writing, which cannot be drawn at the size a card holds without approximating somebody’s national flag, so those three are public domain files from Wikimedia Commons. A flag also keeps its real proportion: Nigeria’s is twice as wide as it is tall and Poland’s is eight by five.

How are the eighteen split up?

Three boards of six, and it is a measurement rather than a choice. Two press targets closer than a hundred stage units are a coin toss on a touchscreen, and on this projection Paris and Berlin are thirty-seven apart, so a board of European languages could not be tapped. Each board takes one western European language and five from elsewhere.

Not yet. If your class speaks a language that is not on it, tell us which one and where you would put the dot, and it can go in: that is the best possible reason for one to be on the list.

Hello Around the World

Languages · Year 1–Year 6

Say hello in eighteen languages, on a real world map.

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About the hello around the world

Eighteen ways of saying hello, on the same world map the continents tool uses. Tap a dot and the board writes the greeting at the side, then says which language it is, where it is spoken and how to say it out loud. Three boards of six, so a lesson can take one at a time.

The part is the language, not the country, and that is the decision the whole tool turns on. India is not a Hindi-speaking country, Nigeria is not a Yoruba-speaking one, and a board that tapped a country and answered with one greeting would be teaching something false in the one lesson that is about other people’s languages. The dot says where a language is spoken. It does not say that is all anybody speaks there.

The languages were picked for a British classroom rather than for a tour of the map. Polish, Urdu, Somali, Arabic and Yoruba are on it because they are spoken by children in the room, which is the best reason a language can have; French and Spanish are on it because they are what a primary teaches.

Every greeting is written in our alphabet, with the pronunciation beside it. Nihao and namaste are written in scripts a board cannot set properly, and a wrong glyph in a language lesson is a wrong coastline in a geography one. The accents that DO belong to our alphabet are all there: Olá, Dzień dobry and Māori are spelt the way they are spelt.

Tap a dot and a card appears above the map with the flag of the country the dot is in and two more things about the language: where else it is spoken, what the greeting is made of, which alphabet it takes.

All eighteen have a flag, and it is the flag of the country the dot stands in rather than of the language: the board never says a language belongs to a country. Fifteen of them are drawn from their own construction, because a flag made of bands, crosses, discs, stars and crescents is exact at any size. The three that carry a coat of arms or writing are real files from Wikimedia Commons, all public domain, because an approximation of somebody’s national flag is not something to put in front of a class who will copy it. Brazil’s is a drawing of the construction sheet annexed to the law that defines it.

Good for the European Day of Languages on 26 September, and good on any morning when a class is registering in a different language.

How to use it on your whiteboard

1Tap a dot on the map. The greeting appears at the side and the language is written underneath.
2Say it out loud together: the pronunciation is in brackets in the line under the map.
3Tap Next to work round the six in order, and again at the end to go on to the next six.
4Press Show all to put every greeting up at once, and Hide to take them off.
5The card above the map has the flag and two more things about the language.
6Ask who in the room speaks one of them, and get them to say it properly.

Questions

Why does it name languages rather than countries?: Because most countries have more than one. India has twenty-two official languages, Nigeria has hundreds, and Switzerland has four. Tapping a country and answering with a single greeting would tell a class something that is not true, and it would be the wrong lesson to teach on a board about other people’s languages.
Why is the dot in that particular place?: It is a real place where the language is spoken, usually the capital, and it is a mark on the map rather than a country coloured in. Spanish is spoken across most of a continent, so no outline would be right; a dot says here, which is honest. Swahili’s is in Dar es Salaam rather than Nairobi, because Swahili is Tanzania’s national language, and Arabic’s is in Abu Dhabi, which is one of twenty-odd countries it could just as truly be in.
Why is nihao not written in Chinese characters?: Because the board cannot set them properly. Web fonts are loaded one alphabet at a time, and a page asked for a character it has no glyph for falls back to whatever the computer happens to have, differently on every display. A greeting drawn wrong is worse than a greeting romanised, so every one here is written in our alphabet with the pronunciation beside it.
Where do the flags come from?: Fifteen are drawn from the construction each country sets out: bands, crosses, discs, stars and crescents are exact at any size, so India’s wheel really has twenty-four spokes and Korea’s trigrams really are three bars each. Brazil, Fiji and New Zealand carry a coat of arms or writing, which cannot be drawn at the size a card holds without approximating somebody’s national flag, so those three are public domain files from Wikimedia Commons. A flag also keeps its real proportion: Nigeria’s is twice as wide as it is tall and Poland’s is eight by five.
How are the eighteen split up?: Three boards of six, and it is a measurement rather than a choice. Two press targets closer than a hundred stage units are a coin toss on a touchscreen, and on this projection Paris and Berlin are thirty-seven apart, so a board of European languages could not be tapped. Each board takes one western European language and five from elsewhere.
Can we add our own?: Not yet. If your class speaks a language that is not on it, tell us which one and where you would put the dot, and it can go in: that is the best possible reason for one to be on the list.