Language families are relatedThe title of our project sounds like a platitude. It was chosen to illustrate that our project is about the mediation of language skills and giving an insight into our linguistic roots. Five exchange partners from Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain will deal with common features of their linguistic families. To become aware of their own language, students will identify the origin of central European words and learn about their original and their derived meanings.The aims of the project are: strengthening of language skills and intercultural skills and therefore creating empathy for the European idea. By dealing with different foreign-language texts and communicating among each other, students will in particular practice easy linguistic methods and learn about the European origin of central words.The project will be divided into five structured sub-projects. Exchange partners from Spain and Italy will deal with the Romanic linguistic family and in particular with words derived from Latin language by means of religious or political texts, songs, inscriptions and legislative texts. Since a few exchange partners from the Romanic linguistic family will take part on the project, there will be an insight into Latin language. Furthermore, the local university will support the students by finding ways to analyse manipulative aspects in political language.The Slavic linguistic family is the focus of our exchange in Poland. As our partner city Bialystock is the birthplace to the inventor of the artificial language Esperanto, we will have intense workshops in the local Esperanto-museum. Especially the analysis of this easy and clearly structured artificial language shall give the students basic insights into the structure, grammar and basic vocabulary of European languages. Germany represents the Germanic linguistic family. In Neuss students will deal with central and international German words, and they will also work on the English linguistic word field since we have no English-speaking exchange partners. English words will be identified in for example songtexts, advertising language, the IT field or in malls. Each project will take place over four days and they all shall be structured in the same way. We begin with a „meet and greet“ and move on with an opening ceremony. Workshops will mainly take place at school but also in churches, museums and malls. All students will be welcomed by employees of each town hall and sightseeing trips are planned. On the last day of each project students will present and evaulate their results that should be documented in a creative way e.g. on posters.