Pratique du Shadowing: Tolkien Said He Would Have Refused to Go - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo
Création de la leçon...
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The man who wrote the greatest adventure story in the English language was asked whether he'd have gone on one.
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His answer, he'd have made an excuse.
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And that answer was never broadcast.
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It sat in a BBC archive for 51 years.
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In 1968, the BBC filmed what turned out to be Tolkien's last ever recorded interview.
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They aired a few extracts, then most of it went into the archive and stayed there until 2019.
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So here's what he said about his own hero and why he'd have turned Gandalf down.
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The one real adventure of his life, which he put almost directly into The Hobbit.
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The language that made him fail at university. On purpose.
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And the answer he gave when asked what moves him most in his own book.
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Because it is not the scene you're expecting, and it is not a death.
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That last one is the reason to stay.
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Start with how this even exists.
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1968. A BBC crew films J .R .R.
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Tolkien.
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He's in his 70s.
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The Hobbit came out 31 years earlier.
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The Lord of the Rings is already enormous.
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A few extracts go out on television that year, and the rest, the majority of it, goes into the archive.
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And there it stays.
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1970s, 80s, 90s.
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Through the Peter Jackson films, through the biggest fantasy boom in history, through every documentary anyone ever made about him.
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It came back out in 2019, unearthed for a radio program.
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51 years of Tolkien on tape unheard.
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And the very first thing in it tells you something nobody expects about the man.
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The Hobbit opens with a wizard turning up at a hobbit's door and talking him into a dangerous journey, so the BBC asked Tolkien the obvious question, what if that had been you?
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His answer, if a wizard had come to me as a small boy, the situation would be totally different than that in The Hobbit.
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Then, I should have found some excuse for not going.
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And then the line that explains him completely, I had no desire whatever to place myself in an awkward position just for the sake of adventure,
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not danger, not death, an awkward position.
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And then he adds, and you can hear the amusement in it, I'd been very well brought up to avoid conversations with dubious old gentlemen.
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Gandalf, a dubious old gentleman.
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The man invented the most famous wizard in fiction and said he'd have shut the door on him.
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That's the bit the BBC didn't broadcast, by the way.
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Something that honest and that funny, and it sat in a box for half a century.
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But he did have one real adventure
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and he used almost all of it 1911 tolkien is 19 years old
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and he goes hiking in switzerland here's how he described it in
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that interview one of the cardinal things in the hobbit is
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one of the few adventures i ever went through in my life they crossed mountain passes
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if you've read the hobbit you know
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that scene the storm in the mountains the stone giants hurling rocks in the dark
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that happened minus the giants he says the journey is an actual personal experience.
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Altered, of course.
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And then he delivers the best joke of the entire interview, completely straight.
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We met no goblin, a 19 -year -old on a walking holiday.
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26 years later, it's in a book that has never gone out of print since.
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But the real obsession of his life wasn't mountains.
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Tolkien was at Oxford studying classics, and he got distracted. By Finnish.
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Not by a person.
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Not by a war.
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Not by anything you'd expect.
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By the Finnish language.
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His description of it its formation, its sound texture, is very remarkable.
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And then, it actually makes me quite intoxicated.
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Intoxicated. By grammar.
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Here's what that cost him, in his own words.
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I just went away and learnt this when I should have been doing other things, and people couldn't make out why my essays on Greek drama were getting worse and worse.
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A man tanking his own degree because a language was too beautiful to ignore.
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And that's where Elvish comes from.
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He says so directly.
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The language of Middle Earth started out by being extremely Finnish.
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On a Finnish basis, he said, with some Greek and other languages layered in.
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Later, after the First World War, he took a job at the Oxford English Dictionary writing etymologies.
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He remembered which words?
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Winter, walrus, wampum.
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Wampum sent him into the Algonquin languages of Eastern America, which he'd never touched before.
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His verdict on the job, so it's a wonderful place, a dictionary?
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Now, the question he was really there to answer, they asked Tolkien about Gollum.
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He called the character an example of corruption, straightforward enough.
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And then the interviewer raised one specific scene, and by the account of the Oxford professor who studied these recordings, Tolkien lit up.
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Here's the moment, described by Stuart Lee, professor of English at Oxford, on the radio program that brought the tapes back out.
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Gollum is with Frodo, and he is beginning to change back into Smeagol, the person he was before the ring took him apart.
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In Lee's words, he's winning the battle.
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The good side is winning through.
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Frodo is asleep, and Gollum reaches out to touch him, a creature who has been a monster for centuries, reaching out gently.
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Then Sam wakes up.
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Sam.
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who loves Frodo.
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Sam, whose entire purpose in the story is protecting him.
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Sam, who has been right about Gollum from the beginning.
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And Sam says, take your hands off.
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Here's what Tolkien said about that.
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People have often asked me what moves me most.
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I think the most tragic point in the whole story is the terrible irony that good often does evil.
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Read that again.
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Good often does evil he continues the most tragic moment is
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when sam and his protectiveness says take your hands off
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and therefore defeats gollum's repentance and then the line
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that makes it land because
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that seems to be very true to life understand what he's
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saying in a book with wars with a dark lord with
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entire peoples destroyed the author says the saddest moment is a loyal friend being protective at exactly the wrong second.
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Nobody does anything wrong.
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Sam is right about Gollum.
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Sam is defending someone he loves.
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And that is precisely what destroys the only chance at redemption in the entire story.
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Professor Lee's summary of Tolkien's whole worldview.
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What happens in his mythology is that good can sometimes do excessive evil unintentionally, not evil defeating good.
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Good being good, causing the damage.
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The interviewer put it to him that the morality in his books looked fairly simple.
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Good over here, evil over there.
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Tolkien half agreed and then took it apart.
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The general lines are rather simple, he said.
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But of course, as a matter of fact, it isn't really, is it?
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And then, you see evil on the good side.
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It isn't just goodies against baddies, as they call it modern parlance.
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That is the author of The Lord of the rings in
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1968 personally rejecting the thing his book gets accused of most
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often he wasn't writing a story where the good people are good
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and the bad people are bad he was writing one where the most tragic thing
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that happens is done by the most decent character in it out of love
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and then almost none of that went out on television a few extracts aired
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and the rest waited 51 years in a box one last thing
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and it's the reason today is the day to think about this The Hobbit was published on the 21st of September, 1937.
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The week around that date is now called Tolkien Week, a man who said he'd have found an excuse not to go, who met no goblin in Switzerland,
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who wrecked his own essays learning Finnish, and who thought the saddest thing in his masterpiece was a friend being too protective.
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So does he convince you?
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Is that really the most tragic moment in the book, or would you pick a different one?
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Tell me in the comments, because I suspect a lot of people have a different answer, and I'd like to see them argued out.
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Subscribe if you'd rather hear what the author actually said than what everyone assumes he meant.
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That's what this channel does, the whole story, without the gloss.
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Vocabulaire et conseils d’expression pour cette leçon
Cette vidéo contient 122 phrases et 1408 mots à répéter en shadowing. La partie parlée dure 7:55. Le locuteur parle à un rythme naturel d’environ 178 mots par minute, proche d’une conversation courante. 83 % des mots font partie des 3 000 mots les plus courants en anglais ; le reste mérite d’être vu avant de commencer.
Vocabulaire clé de cette vidéo
15 mots de la vidéo à retenir, avec leur prononciation et leur sens :
| Mot | Prononciation | Sens |
|---|---|---|
| adventure nom | /ədˈvɛn.t͡ʃə/ | aventure |
| tragic adjectif | /ˈtɹæd͡ʒɪk/ | tragique |
| extract nom | /ˈɛkstɹækt/ | extrait |
| archive nom | /ˈɑɹˌkaɪv/ | archives |
| wizard nom | /ˈwɪzɚd/ | mage, sorcier |
| broadcast nom | /ˈbɹɔːd(ˌ)kɑːst/ | émission |
| awkward adjectif | /ˈɔk.wɚd/ | maladroit, gauche |
| essay nom | /ˈɛs.eɪ/ | essai, rédaction |
| gentleman nom | /ˈd͡ʒɛn.təl.mən/ | monsieur |
| protective adjectif | /pɹəˈtɛk.tɪv/ | protecteur |
| dictionary nom | /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/ | dictionnaire, dico |
| interviewer nom | /ˈɪntɚvjuɚ/ | intervieweur, intervieweuse |
| ignore verbe | /ɪɡˈnɔː/ | ignorer, ne pas prêter attention à |
| defend verbe | /dɪˈfɪnd/ | défendre |
| argue verbe | /ˈɑɹ.ɡju/ | affirmer, débattre |
Les verbes à particule que vous entendrez
| Mot | Prononciation | Sens |
|---|---|---|
| hands off | pas touche !, bas les pattes ! | |
| come out verbe | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | sortir |
| go away verbe | partir, s'en aller | |
| make out verbe | /meɪk aʊt/ | libeller |
| reach out verbe | tendre la main | |
| wake up verbe | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | se réveiller |
La grammaire de cette vidéo
Les structures que le locuteur utilise le plus, avec les mots exacts de la vidéo :
| Structure | Dans la vidéo |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + participe passé — une action passée qui compte encore maintenant | have gone · have made · have turned |
| Voix passive be + participe passé — l’accent est mis sur ce qui arrive, pas sur qui le fait | was asked · is done · was published |
| Propositions relatives who / which + proposition — une précision sur une personne ou une chose | man who wrote · man who said |
Prononciation à surveiller
Le locuteur utilise 18 contractions et formes réduites, comme he'd, I'd, isn't. Prononcez-les sous leur forme courte, telles que vous les entendez.
- Les sons « th »: mythology /mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, unearth /ʌnˈɜː(ɹ)θ/
- Les sons « sh » et « zh »: dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/, corruption /kəˈɹʌpʃən/, obsession /əbˈsɛʃən/, redemption /ɹɪˈdɛmpʃən/
- Mots longs — placez bien l’accent: dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, documentary /ˌdɒk.jʊˈmɛn.tɹi/, morality /məˈɹælɪti/, mythology /mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, intoxicated /ɪnˈtɑksɪkeɪtɪd/
Comment s’entraîner avec cette vidéo
- Écoutez la vidéo en entier une fois sans parler et notez les mots que vous ne connaissez pas.
- Commencez à la vitesse 0,75×, répétez phrase par phrase, puis revenez à la vitesse normale quand cela devient facile.
- Enregistrez-vous et comparez avec l’original, en faisant attention à des mots comme adventure, tragic, extract.
Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?
Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.