Every card in UKLO 2010
The whole deck, in order — so you can read it through before your child ever sees it.
- An unfamiliar word turns up in 'a ___ of sweet tea' and again in 'two ___s of soup'. What kind of thing is it most likely to name?
Something you serve food in
HintWhich English words could sit in that gap before 'of'?
WhyThe frame round an unknown word gives away its kind: 'a ___ of' wants a dish or a measure, 'four ___s' wants something you can count, 'too much ___' wants a liquid or a mass. You can sort every invented word on a menu this way without translating a single one.
- Nouns that take 'many' and 'fewer', and can be made plural — 'four biscuits' — are called … nouns? (one word)
countable
HintLook at what 'a' and 'four' can go in front of.
WhyCountable nouns take 'a' or a number and have a plural; uncountable nouns take 'some' or 'much' and have none. The company a noun keeps tells you which kind it is.
- In 'old men and women', does 'old' describe the women too? The phrase allows both readings. What do we call that?
Ambiguity
HintAsk which noun 'old' is standing next to, and whether it could reach further.
WhyOne wording, two meanings: the adjective can attach to 'men' alone or to the whole pair, and nothing in the English decides. Some languages can remove the doubt, because an adjective that agrees with its noun may show by its ending which noun it belongs to. Spot both readings before you translate.
- In Spanish and Italian the describing word usually comes ____ the noun, the reverse of English.
after
HintCompare where 'black' sits in French 'chat noir'.
WhyEnglish fixes the adjective before its noun; Spanish, Italian and French usually put it afterwards — French 'chat noir' is literally 'cat black'. Work the order out from the data rather than importing English; once you know it, a phrase like 'cats black and dogs' shows which noun the adjective is sitting beside, and therefore which noun it describes.
- In a made-up language 'She carries the pot up' is three words, and the last of them also stands alone as a sentence meaning 'She climbs'. What is that last word?
A second verb
HintLook for the same word used on its own, then ask what English replaces it with.
WhySome languages string verbs together where English uses a little word like 'up', 'down' or 'here': 'carry pot climb' for 'carry the pot up'. The tell-tale is a word that appears both at the end of longer sentences and by itself as a whole sentence. Once you have the pattern, build new sentences the same way: main verb, then object, then the direction verb.
- A puzzle's rule fits every word but a couple, and the setter says those came from abroad. What are they called?
Loanwords
HintWhere did the two come from originally? Perhaps not from this language at all.
WhyA loanword is a word borrowed from another language. Borrowed words often keep the habits of their source and so break the borrowing language's own patterns — English 'pizza', 'ski' and 'yacht' break English spelling rules in the same way. When a rule fits nearly everything, the leftovers may be foreign rather than proof that your rule is wrong.
- 'kicked' ends with a 't' sound and 'hugged' with a 'd' sound, yet both are spelt -ed. What decides which sound the ending takes?
The sound before it
HintSay 'kick' and 'hug' with a finger on your throat and feel the difference.
WhyThe -ed ending matches its neighbour: after the 'k' of 'kick' it sounds like 't'; after the 'g' of 'hug' it sounds like 'd'. Puzzle languages do the same, often in their spelling, so one suffix turns up in two forms with one meaning. The rule lives in the sound just in front of the ending — never in the meaning.
- A consonant made with the vocal cords buzzing, like b, d, g, v or z
A voiced consonant
HintPut a hand on your throat and say 'zzz' rather than 'sss'.
WhyEvery consonant is either voiced (b, d, g, v, z, m, n, l, r, w) or voiceless (p, t, k, f, s, sh, ch, 'th' as in thin). Each voiceless one usually has a voiced partner made in the same place in the mouth: p/b, t/d, k/g, f/v, s/z. Languages often let an ending copy the voicing of the sound before it, which is why a suffix can be spelt with 'd' in one word and 't' in the next.
- In some languages a suffix's vowel copies the vowels of the root, so one ending has several spellings with a single meaning. This matching is called vowel … ? (one word)
harmony
HintFinnish and Hungarian are famous for it.
WhyThe vowels in a word agree, so an ending is spelt one way after a root with 'front' vowels (e, i, ö, ü) and another after 'back' vowels (a, o, u). In a puzzle, when a suffix shows up as -lok, -lek, -lük with identical meaning, look at the vowels of the root — in Turkish the last one — because that is what is choosing the spelling.
- Rewriting a word letter by letter from one alphabet into another
Transliteration
HintWhat a tourist does to read a Greek street sign aloud.
WhyTransliteration swaps one script for another: a Moscow metro sign in Cyrillic can be rewritten in our letters so you can say it, without translating anything. Puzzles with metro maps, brand names or place names in an unfamiliar alphabet are transliteration puzzles: pair a name you can recognise with its spelling, harvest the letters, then read the rest — and a sign shaped like one of our letters need not sound like it.
- English affixes carry fixed meanings: one suffix names the ____, one prefix means ____, and one prefix means ____.
doer; again; not
HintThink of 'baker', 'rewrite' and 'unhappy'.
Why'-er' in 'baker' names the person who does it; 're-' in 'rewrite' means again; 'un-' in 'unhappy' means not. An affix carries a stable meaning wherever it goes, which is what makes puzzles solvable: if one ending turns 'bake' into 'baker' and 'sing' into 'singer', it will do the same to any other verb. Languages differ in which meanings they hand to an affix, never in the principle.
- '-less' turns a noun into an adjective meaning ____ that thing.
without
HintThink what a homeless person does not have.
Why'homeless' is 'lacking a home', 'careless' is 'lacking care'. Many languages have a suffix doing the same job, and puzzles often pair it with a 'person who does' suffix so that the two endings can be swapped on one root. Find the root first, then the two endings — and expect each ending to change its spelling to match the root.
1★ KS3-ENLA-UKL-0013
2★ KS3-ENLA-UKL-0014
3★ KS3-ENLA-UKL-0015
4★ KS3-ENLA-UKL-0016
5★ KS3-ENLA-UKL-0017
6★ KS3-ENLA-UKL-0018
7★ KS3-ENLA-UKL-0019
8★ KS3-ENLA-UKL-0020
9★ KS3-ENLA-UKL-0021
10★ KS3-ENLA-UKL-0022
11★ KS3-ENLA-UKL-0023
12★ KS3-ENLA-UKL-0024
Keep what you learn
Here, nothing is saved. In your child’s own sky every card is scheduled — it comes back just before they’d forget it — and the professor who wrote it is one tap away.