シャドーイング練習: Why Do We Call It AM and PM? The Surprisingly Ancient Reason [ID0801] - YouTubeで英語スピーキングを学ぶ
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If you've spent your entire life checking the time,
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If you've spent your entire life checking the time,
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setting alarms, or arranging schedules,
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then you've probably come across something so normal that you never even questioned it.
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The labels AM and PM.
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They're printed on clocks, digital displays,
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airline tickets, calendars, and phones.
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So familiar that we rarely stop to think about what they actually mean.
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But behind these two simple abbreviations lies a long history of astronomy,
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ancient civilizations, Roman influence,
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and the way humans have always tried to bring order to something as wild and unstoppable as time itself.
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Today, we're diving deep into why we call the first half of the day AM,
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the second half PM, and why the world still uses this system,
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even when there's an alternative 24-hour clock available.
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Let's explore right here on History of Simple Things.
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To understand AM and PM,
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you need to go all the way back to the civilizations that lived and died under the movement of the sun.
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For thousands of years, humans used sunlight as their primary reference for time,
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when the sun rose, when it was at its highest point,
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and when it set.
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The midpoint of the day,
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when the sun is directly overhead,
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was incredibly important for navigation,
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rituals, farming, and even survival.
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Ancient Egyptians used sundials thousands of years ago,
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dividing daylight into 12 hours based purely on the movement of shadows.
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But it wasn't until the ancient Romans
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that the idea of naming the periods before and after the sun's highest point became more formal and linguistic.
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They used Latin not just for religion or literature, but for daily life.
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So naturally, timekeeping terminology evolved in Latin as well.
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This brings us to the actual words.
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AM stands for ante meridiem,
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which literally means before midday or before the meridian,
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with meridium referring to the sun's position at its apex.
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Meanwhile, PM stands for post-meridium, meaning after midday.
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The concept is simple.
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The 12-hour cycle resets every time the sun reaches that midpoint.
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From midnight until just before noon,
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everything is considered ante meridium,
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leading up to the sun's highest point.
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And from noon until just before the next midnight, everything is post meridium.
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What's interesting is
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that these terms refer specifically to the sun's position relative to an imaginary line in the sky called the meridian,
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essentially a vertical arc running from the north pole to the south pole across your location.
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At solar noon, the sun crosses this meridian,
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marking that exact midpoint of the day.
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So a.m and p.m are literally describing the sun's cosmic travel schedule.
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Now here's something that confuses almost everyone at some point.
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Why is 12 p.m actually noon and 12 a.m actually midnight?
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Shouldn't noon be neither before nor after midday?
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You're right.
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By strict definition, noon is neither a.m nor p.m.
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Same with midnight.
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But because the timekeeping system needed labels for schedules,
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clocks, and communication, we applied the terms anyway.
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Historically, there were attempts to fix this.
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Some clocks used the word noon and midnight instead of a.m p.m.
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Some old railways labeled midnight as zero o'clock and noon as 12m.
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But eventually, by widespread convention,
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not by logic, 12 p.m became noon simply
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because it's easier to treat the numbers increasing after 12 o'clock as entering the post-midday cycle.
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Midnight got stuck with 12 a.m because it begins the before-midday hours.
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It's not mathematically elegant, but it's how the world standardized it.
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As you might expect, the 12-hour AM-PM format isn't universal.
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A large portion of the world uses the 24-hour clock,
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also known as military time.
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In that format, the day runs from 0 o'clock to 23.59 without resetting halfway way.
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Midnight is zero o'clock.
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Noon is 12 o'clock.
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And instead of saying 8 PM,
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you simply say 20 o'clock.
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It's logical.
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It reduces confusion.
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And it's used heavily in Europe,
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Asia, science, aviation, and medicine.
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So why does the United States,
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Canada, the Philippines, and several other countries still popularly use AM and PM?
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A lot of it comes down to cultural habit,
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historical practice, and the fact that analog clocks,
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which dominated for centuries, were designed around 12-hour cycles.
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The 12-hour format is also easy to read quickly and matches ancient human rhythms tied to daylight and night cycles.
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Even though digital systems allow for 24-hour displays,
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many cultures simply felt no need to change.
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However, the Latin term stuck because English,
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unlike some other languages, borrowed heavily from Latin in its early scientific,
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religious, and academic development.
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Timekeeping was something the Church and astronomers dealt with extensively,
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and both depended on Latin terms.
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So by the time English clocks and schedules became standardized,
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AM and PM were already the accepted scholarly way of referring to the two halves of the day.
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And because English-speaking nations spread their influence globally through trade,
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colonization, and technology, the system went with them.
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The result is that even in countries that now use the 24-hour clock,
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you can still find AM and PM in old documents,
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historic buildings, and traditional literature.
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In the big picture, AM and PM aren't just labels on your alarm clock.
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They're snapshots of history, history,
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echoes of ancient astronomers, Roman scholars,
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sundial makers, church timekeepers, and early scientists who shaped how the modern world understands time.
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The next time you set an early morning alarm or schedule a late-night meeting,
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remember, you're using a system older than most languages,
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older than modern nations, and older than the technology that now depends on it.
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And that system continues to work centuries later because of two simple Latin phrases,
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ante meridium and post meridium.
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If you enjoyed this video,
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文脈と背景
現代の生活において、私たちは時間を確認したり、アラームをセットしたり、スケジュールを調整したりすることが日常的になっています。その中で、「AM」と「PM」というラベルは非常に一般的ですが、その意味を考えたことはありますか？この短い略語の背後には、古代文明、天文学、ローマの影響など、時間を秩序だったものとして捉えようとする人類の努力が見え隠れします。このセクションでは、AMとPMの起源や古代の時間感覚について探っていきます。
日常会話に役立つ5つのフレーズ
- AM: “午前の”を意味し、日中の最初の部分を指します。
- PM: “午後の”を意味し、日中の後半を示します。
- 正午: 正確には12 PMで、昼の真ん中の時間です。
- 真夜中: 12 AMで、24時間循環の始まりです。
- 日中: それぞれの時間における太陽の位置と関係があります。
ステップバイステップのシャドーイングガイド
このビデオでの内容を最大限に活用するためには、以下の方法を試してみてください。特に、英語スピーキング練習や英語シャドーイングに役立ちます。これを通じて、語彙や発音を強化し、IELTS スピーキング対策にもつながります。
- リスニング: ビデオの内容を最初に数回視聴し、全体の流れを理解しましょう。
- フレーズの分析: 上記のフレーズをピックアップし、実際に声に出して繰り返します。
- 発音練習: 特に難しい単語やフレーズを選び、何度も練習します。shadow speakのテクニックを活用してください。
- 反復: 同じフレーズを使って、自分の言葉で例文を作成してみましょう。
- 録音: 自分の声を録音し、発音やイントネーションを確認します。
この過程を経ることで、英語に対する理解が深まり、スムーズな会話ができるようになるでしょう。時間に関する表現をマスターすることは、日常的な会話の中で非常に重要です。
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。