☰
The Last Lesson
What had been put on the bulletin board?
A bulletin board had been put up at the Town Hall for every news and the announcement. It had been a place of great importance for the last two years due to German occupations. All their bad news had come from there. The details of lost battles, the draft and the orders of the commanding officer, all were put up on the bulletin board. A huge crowd used to gather there to get any kind of new information.
Sponsor Area
What changes did the order from Berlin cause in school that day?
How did Franz’s feelings about M. Hamel and school change?
The people in this story suddenly realise how precious their language is to them. What shows you this? Why does this happen?
Franz thinks : “Will they make them sing in German, even the pigeons ?” What could this mean ? (There could be more than one answer).
‘When a people are enslaved, as long as they hold fast to their language it is as if they had the key to their prison.” Can you think of examples in history where a conquered people had their language taken away from them or had a language imposed on them?
What happens to a linguistic minority in a state ? How do you think they can keep their language alive?
For example:
Punjabis in Bangalore
Tamilians in Mumbai
Kannadigas in Delhi
Gujaratis in Kolkata
Is it possible to carry pride in one’s language too far? Do you know what linguistic chauvinism means?
English is a language that contains words from muny other languages. This inclusiveness is one of the reasons it is now a ‘world language.’
For Example:
petite – French
kindergarten – German
capital – Latin
democracy – Greek
bazaar - Hindi
Find out the origins of the following words.Notice the underlined words in these sentences and tick the option that best explains their meaning:
“What a thunder clap these words were to me !”
The words were:
“When a people are enslaved, as long as they hold fast to their language it is as if they had the key to their prison.”
It is as if they have the key to the prison as long as they
Sponsor Area
Sponsor Area