Shadowing Practice: Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography - Language - Learn English Speaking with Video

For me, it's a cause of some upset that more anglophones don't enjoy language.

Music is enjoyable, it seems,

so are dance and other athletic forms of movement.

People seem to be able to find sensual and sensuous pleasure in almost anything but words these days.

Words, it seems, belong to other people.

Anyone who expresses themselves with originality,

delight and verbal freshness is more likely to be mocked,

distrusted or disliked than welcomed.

The free and happy use of words appears to be considered elitist or pretentious.

Sadly, desperately sadly,

the only people who seem to bother with language in public today bother with it in quite the wrong way.

They write letters to broadcasters and newspapers in which they are rude and haughty about other people's usage,

and in which they show off their own superior knowledge of how language should be.

I hate that, and I particularly hate the fact that so many of these pedants assume that I'm on their side.

When asked to join in a let's persuade this supermarket chain to get rid of their five items or less sign,

I never join in.

Yes, I am aware of the technical distinction between less

and fewer and between uninterested and disinterested and infer and imply

and all the rest of them but none of these are of importance to me.

None of these are of importance, I said there.

You'll notice the old pedantic me would have insisted on none of them is of importance.

Well, I'm glad to say I've outgrown that silly approach to language.

Oscar Wilde, and there have been few greater and more complete lords of language in the past thousand years,

once included with a manuscript he was delivering to his publishers a compliment slip,

in which he had scribbled the injunction,

I'll leave you to tidy up the woulds and shoulds,

wills and shalls, that's and which's,

etc. Which gives us all encouragement to feel less guilty, don't you think?

There are all kinds of pedants around,

with more time to read and imitate Lynn Truss and John Humphreys than to write poems,

love letters, novels and stories, it seems.

They whip out their sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs,

shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings,

But do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language?

Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their

tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy, euphoric bliss?

Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound sex of it?

Do they use language to seduce,

charm, excite, please, affirm, and tickle those they talk to?

Do they?

I doubt it.

Their two farting busy sneering at a greengrocer's less than perfect use of the apostrophe.

Well, sod them to Hades.

They think they're guardians of language.

They're no more guardians of language than the kennel club is the guardian of dog kind.

And the worst of this sorry bunch of semi-educated losers are

those who seem to glory in being irritated by nouns becoming verbs.

How dense and deft a language development do you have to be?

If you don't like nouns becoming verbs,

then for heaven's sake avoid Shakespeare,

who made a doing word out of a thing word every chance he got.

He tabled the motion and chaired the meeting in which nouns were made verbs.

I suppose new examples from our time might take some getting used to.

He actioned it that day,

for instance, strike some as a verbing too far,

but we've been sanctioning, envisioning,

propositioning, and stationing for a long time, so why not actioning?

Because it's ugly, whinge the pedants.

Well, it's only ugly because it's new and you don't like it.

Ugly in the way Picasso,

Stravinsky, and Eliot were once thought ugly,

and before them Monet, Mahler, and Baudelaire.

Pedants will also claim, with what I'm sure is eye-popping insincerity and shameless disingenuousness,

that their fight is only for clarity.

Well, this is all very well,

but there's no doubt what,

for example, five items or less means.

Just as only adult can't tell from the context

and from the age

and education of the speaker whether disinterested is used in the proper sense of non-partisan or in the improper sense of uninterested.

No, the claim to be defending language for the sake of

clarity almost never ever holds water nor does the idea

that following grammatical rules in language demonstrates clarity of thought and intelligence of mind.

Having said this, I admit that if you want to communicate well for the sake of passing an exam or job interview,

then it's obvious that wildly original and excessively heterodox language could land you in the soup.

I think what offends examiners and employers when confronted with extremely informal,

unpunctuated and haywire language is the implication of not caring that underlies it.

You slip into a suit for an interview and you dress your language up too.

You can wear what you like linguistically or sartorily when you're at home or with friends,

but most people accept the need to smarten up under some circumstances.

It's only considerate.

But that's an issue of fitness, of suitability.

It has nothing to do with correctness.

There's no right language or wrong language any more than there are right or wrong clothes.

Context, convention and circumstance are all.

I can't deny that a small part of me still clings to a ghastly Radio 4 newspaper letter-writer pedantry,

but I fight against it.

In much the same way,

I try to fight against my gluttony,

anger, selfishness, and other vices.

I must confess, for example,

that I find it hard not to wince when someone aspirates the word,

and it is a word, H-A-I-T-C-H.

Thank you.

✨ Aanbevolen Video

233 zinnen

Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Deze spreekles op niveau C2 is gebaseerd op de video “Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography - Language”. Deze woorden komen het vaakst terug: language, word, seem, pedants, ugly. Deze video bevat 94 zinnen en 991 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 6:16. De spreker praat in een natuurlijk tempo van ongeveer 158 woorden per minuut, dicht bij een alledaags gesprek. Slechts 77% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden, dus de woordenschat is pittig.

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

De 15 moeilijkste woorden uit de video, met uitspraak en betekenis:

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
pedant zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈpɛdənt/	wijsneus, weetal
verb zelfstandig naamwoord	/vɝb/	werkwoord
noun zelfstandig naamwoord	/naʊn/	zelfstandig naamwoord, substantief
clarity zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈklæɹ.ɪ.ti/	helderheid, klaarheid
apostrophe zelfstandig naamwoord	/əˈpɑs.tɹə.fi/	weglatingsteken, apostrof
disinterested bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/dɪsˈɪnt(ə)ɹəstəd/	belangeloos
uninterested bijvoeglijk naamwoord		ongeïnteresseerd, niet geïnteresseerd
circumstance zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈsɝ.kəmˌstæns/	omstandigheid
considerate bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/kənˈsɪdəɹət/	zorgzaam, voorkomend
correctness zelfstandig naamwoord		correctheid, juistheid
distrust zelfstandig naamwoord	/dɪsˈtɹʌst/	wantrouwen
excessively bijwoord	/ɪkˈsɛsɪvli/	buitensporig, extreem
excite werkwoord	/ɪkˈsaɪt/	prikkelen, opwinden
freshness zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈfɹɛʃnəs/	frisheid, versheid
ghastly bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/ˈɡæs(t).li/	afgrijselijk, afschuwelijk

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Woord	Betekenis
show off werkwoord	zich aanstellen, pronken met

Grammatica in deze video

De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:

Structuur	In de video
Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet	be mocked · be considered · being irritated
Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding	Anyone who expresses · people who seem · those who seem

Uitspraak om op te letten

De spreker gebruikt 16 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals don't, I'm, can't. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.

De klanken “sh” en “zh”: envision /ɪnˈvɪʒn̩/, freshness /ˈfɹɛʃnəs/, injunction /ɪnˈd͡ʒʌŋk.ʃən/, preposition /ˌpɹɛpəˈzɪʃən/, pretentious /pɹɪˈtɛn.ʃəs/
Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: apostrophe /əˈpɑs.tɹə.fi/, disinterested /dɪsˈɪnt(ə)ɹəstəd/, considerate /kənˈsɪdəɹət/, excessively /ɪkˈsɛsɪvli/, grammatical /ɡɹəˈmæt.ɪ.kəl/

Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:

Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: verb /vɝb/, disinterested /dɪsˈɪnt(ə)ɹəstəd/, infinitive /ɪnˈfɪnɪtɪv/, whinge /(h)wɪnd͡ʒ/, offend /əˈfɛnd/
/æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: clarity /ˈklæɹ.ɪ.ti/, circumstance /ˈsɝ.kəmˌstæns/, aspirate /ˈæs.pə.ɹeɪt/, ghastly /ˈɡæs(t).li/, grammatical /ɡɹəˈmæt.ɪ.kəl/
/g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: ghastly /ˈɡæs(t).li/, gluttony /ˈɡlʌ.tən.i/, grammatical /ɡɹəˈmæt.ɪ.kəl/, linguistically /lɪŋˈɡwɪstɪk(ə)li/, outgrow /ˌɑʊtˈɡɹoʊ/

Zo oefen je met deze video

Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als pedant, verb, noun.

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?

Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.

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