シャドーイング練習: Why Can't You Remember Being a Baby? - 動画で英語スピーキングを学ぶ

You spent about a thousand days as a baby.

Learning to walk.

Learning to talk.

Being held, fed, sung to sleep.

Thousands of hours that turned you into a person.

And you can't remember a single second of it.

. But here's the strange part scientists are only now uncovering.

Those memories might not be gone at all.

For a long time, the answer seemed obvious.

A baby's brain is too undeveloped to record anything, so there's nothing to remember.

Simple. Except it's wrong.

And the real story flips twice.

Here's the first flip.

Your baby brain was recording the whole time.

In 2025, scientists at Yale slid awake babies into a scanner and watched the hippocampus, the brain's memory center, light up as it locked onto specific images.

When it lit up more, the baby recognized that image later.

So the camera was never off.

It was rolling from the first year of life.

Then the second flip.

In experiments with mice, scientists tagged the exact neurons that held a memory from infancy, and later, in the adult, switched those neurons back on.

The memory came back.

Which means it was never deleted.

It was just impossible to reach on your own.

. You didn't lose the tapes.

You lost the machine that plays them.

So if it's still in there, why is it locked?

Two reasons, and both are kind of beautiful.

The first is that you forgot because you were growing too fast.

At birth, your brain is a quarter of its adult size.

By age two, it's three quarters.

That's an explosion.

And to build that fast, the hippocampus floods itself with new neurons.

Here's the twist.

Every new neuron rewires the circuit, and that rewiring scrambles the memories already stored there.

In mice, more of this growth means more forgetting, and less of it means the memories survive.

So the forgetting isn't your brain failing.

It's your brain learning so hard it has to overwrite its own files to make room.

You paid for your first memories with the fastest learning of your life.

The second reason is even stranger.

Back then, there wasn't really a "you" yet for the memory to be about.

. A real autobiographical memory needs a self, a continuous "I" that things happen to.

And that self doesn't switch on until around eighteen to twenty-four months, right about when a toddler first recognizes their own face in a mirror.

It also needs language, the ability to turn an event into a story.

Before that, the events were still recorded, but with no owner, no timeline, no label.

Like photos with no album.

Real pictures, impossible to find.

And notice what you did keep.

You didn't keep the scenes, but you kept the lessons.

How to walk, how to talk, how to feel safe with the people who held you.

Everything your first years taught you about being a person is still running right now.

You just can't watch the footage it came from.

Which leaves this strange, tender thing.

The years that shaped you the most are the ones you can reach the least.

And the people who loved you back then remember all of it.

Your first steps, your first words, the face you made falling asleep.

The most shared time of your whole life is remembered by only one side.

But if the science is right, and it's a lost key and not a fire, then none of it was wasted.

It's still in you.

One honest warning, though.

That reactivation happened in mice, not people.

There's no reliable way to pull a real baby memory out of a human brain, and anyone selling hypnosis or regression to do it is usually planting a fake one instead.

So if your earliest memory feels crystal clear, and it's from before you were two, be gentle with it.

It might be a beautiful thing your mind built later, out of a photo someone showed you.

So the next time you reach back and hit nothing, don't mourn it.

That blank isn't emptiness.

It's the receipt for the fastest learning you'll ever do, and for a self that was still being built.

The footage may still be in there, quiet and keyless.

And the people who were holding the camera?

They remember every frame.

Go ask them.

If questions like this one are your thing, subscribe, and I'll keep finding them.

So tell me down below, what's your earliest memory?

And be honest.

Do you actually remember it, or were you told it happened?

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この動画で話す練習をする理由

「赤ちゃんの頃の記憶がないのはなぜ？」という興味深いテーマの動画は、英語シャドーイングに最適です。科学的な説明が自然に織り込まれているため、日常会話だけでなく論理的な表現も学べます。YouTubeで英語学習をするなら、この動画で英語スピーキング練習をすれば、リズムやイントネーションを磨きながら、知識も増やせます。また、「記憶が消えたわけではなく、アクセスできなくなった」などの比喩的表現が多く、shadow speakの練習によって、自然な英語の使い方を身につけることができます。

文脈の中の文法と表現

動画の中には、実用的な文法構造と表現がいくつかあります。

"Those memories might not be gone at all."："might not be"で「～かもしれない」という推測を柔らかく表現しています。日常会話でも、確信がない場合によく使われます。
"the hippocampus floods itself with new neurons"："flood ~ with ~"で「～を～で満たす」という表現。比喩的に使われることが多く、印象的な表現になります。
"You paid for your first memories with the fastest learning of your life."："pay for ~ with ~"で「～の代償として～を払う」。因果関係を明確に表し、論理的な文章を作るのに役立ちます。

発音の注意点

動画の中で発音が難しい単語やアクセントに注意が必要です。

"hippocampus"：ヒッポカンパス（海馬）という意味で、"hip-po-CAM-pus"とアクセントがあります。最後の"us"は弱く発音します。
"neurons"：ニューロン（神経細胞）で、"NUR-ons"と発音します。"eu"の部分が「ュー」となるので、注意しましょう。
"autobiographical"：自伝的なという意味で、"aw-toh-bye-uh-GRAF-i-kuhl"と長い単語です。スピードを抑えて、一音一音はっきり発音することが重要です。

これらの単語をshadowing siteなどで繰り返し練習すれば、正確な発音が身につきます。

この動画の文法

話し手がよく使っている文型を、動画の実際の表現とともに紹介します。

文型	動画での表現
受動態 be + 過去分詞 — 誰がするかより、何が起きるかに焦点を当てる	Being held · was never deleted · were still recorded
関係詞節 who / which + 節 — 人や物について情報を加える	people who held · people who loved · people who were

シャドーイングとは？英語上達に効果的な理由

シャドーイング（Shadowing）は、もともとプロの通訳者養成プログラムで開発された言語学習法で、多言語習得者として知られるDr. Alexander Arguelles によって広く普及されました。方法はシンプルですが非常に効果的：ネイティブスピーカーの英語を聞きながら、1〜2秒の遅延で声に出してすぐに繰り返す——まるで「影（shadow）」のように話者を追いかけます。文法ドリルや受動的なリスニングと異なり、シャドーイングは脳と口の筋肉が同時にリアルタイムで英語を処理・再現することを強制します。研究により、発音精度、抑揚、リズム、連音、リスニング力、そして会話の流暢さが大幅に向上することが確認されています。IELTSスピーキング対策や自然な英語コミュニケーションを目指す方に特におすすめです。

シャドーイングのやり方: ステップ別の完全ガイドを読む →

シャドーイング練習: Why Can't You Remember Being a Baby? - 動画で英語スピーキングを学ぶ

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