Prática de Shadowing: Listening part four (The impact of digital technology on the Icelandic language) - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo

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Part 4.
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You will hear a lecturer on a languages course talking about the impact of digital technology on Icelandic,
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the native language of Iceland.
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First you have some time to look at questions 31 to 40.
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Now listen carefully and answer questions 31 to 40.
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Right, everyone, let's make a start.
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Over the past few sessions, we've been considering the reasons why some world languages are in decline,
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and today I'm going to introduce another factor that affects languages, and the speakers of those languages,
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and that's technology, and in particular, digital technology.
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In order to illustrate its effect, I'm going to focus on the Icelandic language, which is spoken by around 321,000 people,
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most of whom live in Iceland, an island in the North Atlantic Ocean.
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The problem for this language is not the number of speakers, even though this number is small, nor is it about losing words to other languages, such as English.
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In fact, the vocabulary of Icelandic is continually increasing, because when speakers need a new word for something,
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they tend to create one, rather than borrowing from another language.
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All this makes Icelandic quite a special language.
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It's changed very little in the past millennium, yet it can handle 21st century concepts related to the use of computers and digital technology.
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Take, for example, the word for web browser.
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This is Vafri in Icelandic, which comes from the verb to wander.
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I can't think of a more appropriate term because that's exactly what you do mentally when you browse the internet.
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Then there's an Icelandic word for podcast, which is too hard to pronounce, and so on.
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Icelandic, then, is alive and growing, but, and it's a big but, young Icelanders spend a great deal of time in the digital world,
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and this world is predominantly English.
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Think about smartphones.
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They didn't even exist until comparatively recently, but today, young people use them all the time to read books,
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watch TV or films, play games, listen to music and so on.
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Obviously, this is a good thing in many respects because it promotes their bilingual skills,
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but the extent of the influence of English in the virtual world is staggering, and it's all happening really fast.
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For their parents and grandparents, the change is less concerning because they already have their native speaker skills in Icelandic, but for young speakers, well,
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the outcome is a little troubling.
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For example, teachers have found that playground conversations in Icelandic secondary schools can be conducted entirely in English,
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while teachers of much younger children have reported situations where their
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classes find it easier to say what is in a picture using English rather than Icelandic.
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The very real and worrying consequence of all this is
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that the young generation in Iceland is at risk of losing its mother tongue.
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Of course, this is happening to other European languages too.
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But while internet companies might be willing to offer, say, French options in their systems, it's much harder for them to justify the expense of doing the same for a language
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that has a population the size of a French town, such as Nice.
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The other drawback of Icelandic is the grammar, which is significantly more complex than in most languages.
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At the moment, the tech giants are simply not interested in tackling this.
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So what is the Icelandic government doing about this?
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Well large sums of money are being allocated to a language technology fund
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that it is hoped will lead to the development of Icelandic-sourced apps and other social media and digital systems.
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But clearly this is going to be an uphill struggle.
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On the positive side, they know that Icelandic is still the official language of education and government.
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It has survived for well over a thousand years, and the experts predict that its future in this nation-state is sound and will continue to be so.
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However, there's no doubt that it's becoming an inevitable second choice in young people's lives.
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This raises important questions.
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When you consider how much of the past is tied up in a language, will young Icelanders lose their sense of their own identity?
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Another issue that concerns the government of Iceland is this.
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If children are learning two languages through different routes, neither of which they are fully fluent in.
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Will they be able to express themselves properly?
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That is the end of part four.
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You now have one minute to check your answers to part four.

Sobre esta lição

Nesta lição, você vai praticar a compreensão auditiva em inglês enquanto aprende sobre o impacto da tecnologia digital na língua islandesa. Além de aprimorar sua capacidade de ouvir e entender conversações em inglês, você também vai conhecer dicas valiosas para melhorar sua pronúncia e fluência por meio do shadowing. É uma oportunidade perfeita para aprender inglês com vídeos de forma divertida e informativa!

Vocabulário e frases-chave

  • Decline (Declínio): Refere-se à diminuição ou perda de importância de algo, como uma língua.
  • Bilingual skills (Habilidades bilíngues): Capacidade de falar duas línguas com fluência.
  • Staggering (Esmagador): Descreve algo que é surpreendente ou muito grande em escala.
  • Uphill struggle (Luta difícil): Uma tarefa que exige muito esforço para ser concluída.
  • Identity (Identidade): O conjunto de características que definem uma pessoa ou grupo, como cultura e língua.

Dicas de prática

Para praticar o shadow speech com este vídeo, siga estes passos: Primeiro, ouça o áudio uma vez para entender o contexto geral. Em seguida, reproduza pequenos trechos (3-5 segundos) e repita imediatamente, tentando imitar a entonação, a velocidade e a pronúncia do falante. O shadowing em inglês é uma técnica eficaz para melhorar sua fluência, pois treina seu cérebro a processar a língua de forma mais rápida. Lembre-se de focar na clareza das palavras, especialmente em termos como "Icelandic" e "bilingual", que podem ser desafiadores. Se precisar, pause o vídeo e repita o trecho quantas vezes forem necessárias. Com prática regular, você vai notar que sua pronúncia em inglês vai se tornando mais natural e confiante. Não se preocupe se no início for difícil – cada tentativa é um passo para o sucesso!

O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing é uma técnica de aprendizado de idiomas com base científica, originalmente desenvolvida para o treinamento de intérpretes profissionais. O método é simples, mas poderoso: você ouve áudio em inglês nativo e repete imediatamente em voz alta — como uma sombra seguindo o falante com 1-2 segundos de atraso. Pesquisas mostram melhora significativa na precisão da pronúncia, entonação, ritmo, sons conectados, compreensão auditiva e fluência na fala.