シャドーイング練習: Why Is So Much of the Amazon Still Unexplored? - 動画で英語スピーキングを学ぶ
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182 文
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At first glance, the Amazon looks like a place humans should have already conquered.
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We have satellites, helicopters, GPS, drones, laser scanners, and aircraft capable of crossing the entire forest in hours.
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Yet beneath the green canopy, there are enormous areas where humans have barely walked.
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Some places have never been mapped at ground level.
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Some rivers remain difficult to reach.
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And scientists continue discovering species that have never been described before.
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So how can one of the most studied places on Earth still contain so many unknowns?
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The answer begins with a simple problem.
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You cannot see the Amazon from inside the Amazon.
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From above, the forest looks like an enormous green carpet.
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But underneath that carpet is a completely different world.
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Trees can rise more than 50 meters above the ground.
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Their leaves form layers so dense that sunlight barely reaches the forest floor.
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A person standing beneath the canopy can be surrounded by thousands of trees while seeing only a tiny fraction of them.
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And unlike a normal forest, the Amazon is not one continuous environment.
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It is a maze.
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Rivers divide the landscape.
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Swamps interrupt dry ground.
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Steep cliffs appear beside flooded valleys.
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Dense vegetation blocks movement.
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And during the rainy season, entire regions can disappear beneath water.
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For an explorer, every kilometer becomes an obstacle.
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A road can solve that problem.
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The Amazon has very few roads.
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Instead, rivers form the natural highways of the forest.
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But even rivers create another problem.
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The Amazon basin contains an enormous network of waterways.
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Some are wide enough for large boats.
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Others shrink into narrow channels that twist between trees.
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And many change dramatically between wet and dry seasons.
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A route that works in August may become impossible in March.
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Then there is the ground itself.
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In some areas, the soil is firm enough to walk across.
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In others, every step sinks into mud.
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A person carrying equipment may move only a few kilometers in an entire day.
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And scientists cannot explore the forest empty -handed.
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They need cameras, food, water, batteries, medical supplies, navigation equipment, sample containers, and communication systems.
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Every kilogram matters because there may be no nearby road, no hospital, and no reliable way to evacuate someone quickly.
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But the greatest obstacle isn't distance.
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It is scale.
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The Amazon rainforest covers millions of square kilometers.
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That is larger than many entire countries combined.
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Even if a research team explored one small region, it would represent only a tiny fraction of the entire basin.
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Imagine placing a single person inside a city the size of a continent and asking them to inspect every building.
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That is roughly the scale of the problem.
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And there is another complication.
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The Amazon is constantly changing.
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Trees fall.
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Rivers move.
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Islands appear.
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Channels disappear.
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Vegetation grows over old trails.
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A path used by researchers several years ago can become almost invisible.
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The forest doesn't preserve human footprints for long.
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It erases them.
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Rain washes them away.
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Plants grow through them.
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Roots break apart the ground.
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And fallen leaves cover everything.
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This is why satellite technology changed Amazon exploration.
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For the first time, humans could study enormous sections of the forest without physically entering them.
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Satellites can reveal rivers, deforestation, forest structure, and changes in vegetation.
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But satellites have a major limitation.
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They see the surface.
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The forest canopy can hide almost everything underneath.
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A village can disappear beneath trees.
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An ancient road can become invisible.
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A stone structure can be buried beneath vegetation.
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And an archaeological site can remain hidden for centuries.
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Then, scientists developed another weapon, LIDAR.
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Instead of relying entirely on visible light, LIDAR sends millions of laser pulses toward the ground.
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Some hit leaves.
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Others Travel through tiny gaps in the canopy.
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Eventually, some reach the forest floor.
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The returning signals can be combined into detailed three -dimensional maps.
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And something remarkable happened.
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Researchers began discovering landscapes that nobody could see from the ground.
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Raised platforms.
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Ancient roads.
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Canals.
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Settlements.
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Agricultural systems.
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The forest had been hiding an entire human landscape beneath its canopy
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and this changed one of the oldest assumptions about the Amazon.
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For a long time, many outsiders imagined the rainforest as almost untouched wilderness.
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But archaeological discoveries have shown that humans have lived throughout parts of the Amazon for thousands of years.
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They modified forests, built settlements, moved along rivers, managed plants, and sometimes transformed enormous areas of land.
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The forest wasn't necessarily empty.
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It was simply difficult to see.
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And that is the strange paradox of the Amazon.
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Something can be visible from space and still be almost invisible to the person standing directly above it.
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But archaeology isn't the only reason scientists keep finding surprises.
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Biology is another.
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The Amazon contains an extraordinary diversity of life.
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Insects, frogs, snakes, birds, fish, mammals, fungi, plants, and microscopic organisms.
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Many are extremely difficult to identify.
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A scientist may discover an unfamiliar insect,
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only to learn that determining whether it is a new species requires comparing its DNA with specimens from museums around the world.
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And sometimes, the animal is tiny.
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A frog hidden beneath leaves.
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A beetle living inside a fallen tree.
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A fungus growing on a single plant.
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A fish living in a remote tributary.
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Finding something new is one problem.
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Proving that it is new is another.
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This is why the Amazon continues producing new scientific discoveries even after centuries of exploration.
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We haven't simply failed to look.
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There is simply too much to look at.
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And the deeper scientists go the stranger the environment becomes.
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Some forests flood for months every year.
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Trees have adapted to living with their roots underwater.
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Fish enter forests during floods.
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Aquatic animals move between channels that barely exist during the dry season, and places that appear to be solid forest can temporarily become underwater ecosystems.
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Exploration here isn't just about walking farther.
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It means understanding an environment that can completely change depending on the season, Then comes another obstacle, the weather.
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The Amazon is hot, it is humid, and rainfall can be extreme.
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Equipment can fail, clothing stays wet, electronic devices become difficult to protect, footpaths turn into mud, rivers rise,
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and storms can arrive with little warning.
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A research expedition therefore has to fight the environment before it can even begin studying it.
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And there is one danger people often underestimate mate.
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The forest is alive, not just with animals, but with insects, mosquitoes, ticks, stinging ants, wasps, and countless other organisms.
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A researcher may spend hours collecting samples while constantly protecting themselves from bites and infections.
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This doesn't mean the Amazon is impossible to explore.
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It means exploration is expensive, slow, and physically demanding.
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That is why modern scientists increasingly combine methods.
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Satellites provide the large -scale picture.
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Aircraft provide detailed surveys.
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LIDAR reveals hidden structures.
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Drones investigate smaller areas.
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Boats provide access through rivers.
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And finally, people enter the forest.
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Each technology solves a different part of the puzzle, but none can replace the others completely.
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A satellite can detect a strange shape.
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A LIDAR scan can reveal a hidden structure.
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A drone can photograph it.
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But eventually, someone may still need to walk there.
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And that final step is often the hardest.
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There is also another reason the Amazon remains incompletely explored.
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Some areas are not supposed to be entered freely.
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The rainforest is home to indigenous peoples.
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Some communities have lived there for generations.
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Some groups maintain limited or no sustained contact with the outside world.
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For scientists, and governments.
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Protecting those communities can mean restricting access.
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So unexplored does not always mean forgotten.
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Sometimes it means protected.
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And this creates an important distinction.
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There are places humans haven't physically explored.
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Places that have been surveyed from the air.
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Places known through indigenous knowledge.
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And places that scientists have studied only indirectly.
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Unexplored can therefore mean several different things.
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A satellite may have photographed an area.
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A geologist may know its elevation.
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An ecologist may know its vegetation.
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Yet nobody may have conducted a detailed biological survey on the ground.
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So the map can look complete, while the scientific knowledge remains incomplete.
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And that is why the Amazon continues to surprise us.
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Not because humans have never entered it.
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They have.
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Not because the entire forest is a blank space.
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It isn't.
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And not because modern technology is useless.
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It is incredibly powerful.
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The real problem is scale.
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The Amazon is simply too large,
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too dense, too dynamic, and too biologically complex to be completely understood by humans anytime soon.
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Every new road can reveal one part of the forest.
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Every river expedition reveals another.
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Every LIDAR scan exposes something hidden beneath the canopy.
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Every biological survey adds another species to the record.
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And sometimes, the biggest discovery isn't a new animal.
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It's evidence that humans were already there.
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The Amazon still has secrets because the forest is very good at hiding them.
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It covers old settlements, erases trails, moves rivers, swallows structures, and constantly creates new ecological relationships.
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So when you look at a satellite image of the Amazon, you are not looking at an empty green wilderness.
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You're looking at the surface of one of the most complicated environments on Earth.
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And beneath that surface, there are still rivers we haven't followed, species we haven't described, landscapes we haven't mapped,
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and archaeological traces waiting beneath thousands of tons of leaves and vegetation.
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The Amazon isn't unexplored because we lack satellites.
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It's unexplored because the forest is simply bigger than our ability to examine it piece by piece.
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And every time we develop a better way to look inside it, we discover that there was even more hiding underneath.
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このレッスンの語彙とスピーキングのポイント
このスピーキングレッスンは、動画「Why Is So Much of the Amazon Still Unexplored?」を教材にしています。 繰り返し出てくる語は次のとおりです：forest, Amazon, river, beneath, scientist。 この動画には、シャドーイング用の文が182文、単語が1610語あります。 音声の長さは11:03です。 話す速さは1分あたり約146語で安定しており、シャドーイングしやすいペースです。 英語の頻出3,000語に含まれる単語は75%だけなので、語彙は難しめです。
この動画の重要語彙
動画に出てくる覚えておきたい単語15語を、発音と意味つきで紹介します。
| 単語 | 発音 | 意味 |
|---|---|---|
| satellite 名詞 | /ˈsætəlaɪ̯t/ | 衛星 |
| vegetation 名詞 | /ˌvɛd͡ʒəˈteɪʃən/ | 草木, 植生 |
| reveal 動詞 | /ɹɪˈviːl/ | 現す, 表す |
| explore 動詞 | /ɪkˈsploɹ/ | 探検する |
| enormous 形容詞 | /ɪˈnɔː.məs/ | 巨大な |
| discover 動詞 | /dɪˈskʌvə/ | 発見する, 見つける |
| landscape 名詞 | /ˈlan(d)skeɪp/ | 景色, ランドスケープ |
| exploration 名詞 | /ˌɛkspləˈɹeɪʃən/ | 探検, 探査 |
| discovery 名詞 | /dɪˈskʌv.ɹi/ | 発見 |
| flood 名詞 | /flʌd/ | 洪水, 大水 |
| disappear 動詞 | /dɪsəˈpɪɹ/ | 消える |
| invisible 形容詞 | /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/ | 目に見えない, 不可視の |
| drone 名詞 | /dɹoʊn/ | 雄蜂 |
| dense 形容詞 | /ˈdɛns/ | 濃い, 密 |
| researcher 名詞 | /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/ | 研究員, 研究者 |
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 |
|---|---|
| 現在完了形 have/has + 過去分詞 — 過去の出来事が今も関係している | have never been mapped · have never been described · have shown |
| 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 | been mapped · been described · can be surrounded |
注意したい発音
話し手はisn't, haven't, doesn'tなど、短縮形や弱形を15回使っています。聞こえたとおりの短い形で発音しましょう。
- 「th」の音: beneath /bɪˈniːθ/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, clothing /ˈkloʊðɪŋ/
- 「sh」と「zh」の音: vegetation /ˌvɛd͡ʒəˈteɪʃən/, exploration /ˌɛkspləˈɹeɪʃən/, expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, fraction /ˈfɹæk.ʃən/, infection /ɪnˈfɛkʃən/
- 長い単語（アクセントの位置に注意）: vegetation /ˌvɛd͡ʒəˈteɪʃən/, exploration /ˌɛkspləˈɹeɪʃən/, invisible /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/, biological /ˌbaɪ.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/, indigenous /ɪnˈdɪd͡ʒənəs/
日本語話者が苦手な音：
- /r/ と /l/ の区別 — /l/ は舌先を歯茎につけ、/r/ はどこにもつけない: reveal /ɹɪˈviːl/, explore /ɪkˈsploɹ/, exploration /ˌɛkspləˈɹeɪʃən/, trail /tɹeɪl/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/
- /v/ — /b/ にならないように、上の歯を下唇に当てる: vegetation /ˌvɛd͡ʒəˈteɪʃən/, reveal /ɹɪˈviːl/, discover /dɪˈskʌvə/, discovery /dɪˈskʌv.ɹi/, invisible /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/
- /f/ — 「フ」ではなく、上の歯と下唇で出す: flood /flʌd/, physically /ˈfɪz.ɪ.kli/, photograph /ˈfoʊ.təˌɡɹæf/, fraction /ˈfɹæk.ʃən/, roughly /ˈɹʌf.li/
この動画での練習方法
- まず声を出さずに動画を最後まで聞き、知らない単語をメモします。
- 通常の速度で一文ずつシャドーイングし、話し手のリズムに合うまで繰り返します。
- 自分の声を録音して元の音声と比べます。satellite, vegetation, revealなどの単語に特に注意しましょう。
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。