Pratica di Shadowing: The haunting history of the Paris Catacombs - Stephanie H. Smith - Impara a parlare inglese con YouTube

C2
It’s 1780 in Paris, and the heavy spring rains are saturating the earth.
⏸ In Pausa
35 frasi
Se le frasi sono troppo corte o troppo lunghe, clicca su Edit per modificarle.
1
It’s 1780 in Paris, and the heavy spring rains are saturating the earth.
2
In a home near the center of town, a basement wall collapses under the pressure, releasing a flood of decomposing corpses— remains from the neighboring Cemetery of the Innocents.
3
Rumors spread that everyone in the house got sick due to bad air emanating from the decaying flesh.
4
With the overcrowded cemetery housing generations of dead Parisians, there was a growing worry that the entire city was in grave danger of falling ill.
5
For centuries, Parisians had buried their dead in the Innocents, the city’s largest cemetery.
6
While cemeteries across Europe were originally placed outside of urban areas, in the 9th century, the Church began allowing burials directly on its grounds.
7
As these urban parish cemeteries filled, some churches started creating bone chapels, like the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic, to make room for new burials.
8
By the 18th century, public opinion on urban cemeteries shifted, as Enlightenment thinkers and physicians promoted new scientific ideas that linked hygiene to health.
9
They didn't yet understand the concept of germs, believing instead that disease spread through “miasma,” or bad air.
10
Consequently, overcrowded cemeteries spewing cadaverous odors were cast as public health threats.
11
Even after the Innocents and other cemeteries closed in the early 1780s, residents continued to worry about the foul smells and petitioned the government for a long-term solution.
12
But where could they move the remains of the millions of Parisians?
13
The vast abandoned network of quarries beneath the city offered a logical solution.
14
Dating back to Roman times, the mines had provided the limestone and plaster to build Paris.
15
But by the 18th century, they had begun collapsing under the city’s weight, creating deadly sinkholes.
16
So in 1777, King Louis XVI established a team of engineers to survey and reinforce the area.
17
And in 1785, Charles-Axel Guillaumot, the Inspector General of Quarries, was tasked with turning sections of the unused tunnels into a massive crypt.
18
The Catholic Church initially resisted, as it stood to lose income from burials and cemetery maintenance fees, but public health concerns prevailed.
19
The transfer of human remains was done mostly at night, to avoid upsetting passersby and to limit public exposure to the miasma.
20
Millions of anonymous bones were dug up by hand, carted across Paris, and dumped unceremoniously in the Catacombs.
21
It was a distinctly modern project, focused on efficiency rather than memorialization.
22
The Cemetery of the Innocents was the largest source, though bones were soon brought from cemeteries throughout the city.
23
The French Revolution temporarily stalled relocation efforts.
24
Though the Catacombs did offer a space where inconvenient bodies could disappear.
25
Some of the over 1,000 prisoners executed in the Revolution’s September Massacres of 1792 were hastily cast there.
26
However, the Catacombs weren’t generally used for new burials.
27
Instead, the newly dead were interred in garden cemeteries established, once again, on the city’s outskirts.
28
By the end of the Revolution, the relocation project had sprung back to life.
29
And in 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte, aware of the unifying power of monuments, ordered that a small section of the chaotic space be curated and open to the public.
30
Piles of bones were pushed to the sides, facades of skulls and femurs were artfully arranged, and quotes about the fleeting nature of life were hung on the walls.
31
The rest of the Catacombs— housing the remains of an estimated 6 million Parisians— was, and largely remains, untouched.
32
After its beautification, the Catacombs became a hugely popular tourist destination.
33
While signs indicated the cemetery where the bones were moved from, the remains themselves were anonymous— aristocrats lay next to laborers, raiders next to defenders, the young next to their elders.
34
And so, the site became a symbol of what one 19th-century photographer called the “confused equality of death.” Sources vary, but some say the last remains were moved as recently as the 1930s.
35
Today, people from around the world continue to visit the Catacombs, finding amidst its caverns a haunting reminder of our shared, inevitable future.

Scarica l'app

Valutazione AI per ogni frase che pronunci

Scansiona per scaricare
Scansiona per scaricare
Download on theApp Store
Get it onGoogle Play
TRENDING

Popolari

Informazioni su questa lezione

In questa lezione, esplorerai la storia affascinante delle Catacombe di Parigi, un luogo carico di mistero e significato storico. Attraverso l'ascolto del video, avrai l'opportunità di migliorare le tue abilità di comprensione orale e arricchire il tuo vocabolario. Imparerai a utilizzare l'inglese in un contesto storico, imparando al contempo a esprimere idee complesse in modo chiaro e conciso. Questo esercizio ti aiuterà a perfezionare l'arte dello shadow speech, in modo che tu possa praticare il tuo accento e la tua intonazione in situazioni reali.

Vocabolario chiave e frasi

  • Corpses - Cadaveri
  • Overcrowded - Sovraffollato
  • Miasma - Miasma, aria cattiva
  • Relocation - Relocazione
  • Public health - Salute pubblica
  • Crypt - Cripta
  • Anonymity - Anonimato
  • Monuments - Monumenti

Consigli per la pratica

Quando ti approcci al video, cerca di prestare attenzione alla pronuncia e al ritmo di Stephanie H. Smith. Per una pratica efficace, utilizza la tecnica dello shadow speak: ascolta una frase e poi ripetila immediatamente, cercando di imitare il modo in cui la relatrice esprime le parole. Il video ha un ritmo moderato, il che lo rende ideale per esercitarsi nello shadowing in inglese. Inizia con frasi più brevi e poi avanza verso quelle più lunghe man mano che ti senti più sicuro. Registra te stesso mentre pratichi e riascolta per identificare aree di miglioramento. Utilizzando questi metodi, potrai non solo ampliare il tuo lessico ma anche migliorare la tua fluidità nell'inglese parlato. Ricorda, la chiave per imparare l'inglese con youtube è la ripetizione e la pratica costante, quindi assicurati di dedicare tempo a questo interessante argomento!

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.

☕ Offrici un caffè