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Interactive presentation – Constructing a phylogenetic tree of related languages

In this activity, students learn about methods of linguistics – they analyze the similarity between languages and construct a phylogenetic tree of the languages English, German, Russian, Ukrainian, French, and Turkish.

Link to teaching material
  • Teaching material type h5p interactive
  • Subject Areas History, Human Evolution, Language
  • Learning Goals Evolutionary Thinking
  • Suitable Grade Levels 9-12
  • Concepts Language, Phylogeny
  • Content Anchors​ Ancient Ancestors, Cultural Diversity

Author: Susan Hanisch

  • Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike [CC BY-NC-SA]

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A table of languages and words that are similar across the languages

Constructing a phylogenetic tree of languages

In this lesson, students use linguistic data (word similarities between languages) to reconstruct a phylogenetic tree of related languages and use the tree to infer the specific relationships between languages.

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