Prática de Shadowing: Part 4 Early history of salt - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo

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Part 4.
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You will hear part of a presentation about the early history of salt.
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First, you have some time to look at questions 31 to 40.
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Thank you.
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Now, listen carefully and answer questions 31 to 40.
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In my presentation, I'm going to talk about salt.
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In modern times, when we talk about salt, people may associate it with high blood pressure or increased heart risk,
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and many health experts warn that we should use less salt in our meals and dishes.
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However, we should not ignore its importance in our cuisine and even in early human history.
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Salt is one of the oldest, most ubiquitous food seasonings.
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The taste of salt is one of the basic human tastes.
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More importantly, salt plays an indispensable role in the health of human beings.
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For example, it regulates the body's acid-base balance.
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Because of its importance to survival, salt has often been considered a valuable commodity during human history.
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This can be tracked all the way back to ancient Greece, ancient Egypt and ancient Rome, when salt was highly valued and used as a method of trade and currency.
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In ancient Rome, the busiest road leading to the city was the via salaria, which means the salt root in English.
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A soldier's pay, which partly consisted of salt, was known as salarium argentum in Latin, from which we derived the English word salary.
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A soldier's salary was cut if he was not worth his salt, an expression still used today.
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In fact, salt was not only the first condiment discovered, but also the first preservative.
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We know today that food goes bad because microorganisms in the food multiply in abundance,
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and a high salt environment is not conducive to microbial reproduction.
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Extremely high concentrations of salt can even kill microorganisms in the food.
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The ancients certainly didn't know this, but they did know that salted food can be preserved for a long time.
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The use of salt as a preservative can be traced to ancient Sweden.
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At first, hunting was the principal means of livelihood.
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In this case, meat supplies were unlikely to be frequent.
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What's more, fewer animals were available for hunting.
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In order to ensure the supply of meat, many families in Sweden began to raise animals in the surrounding forests during the summer,
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when the weather was suitable for animals to survive.
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These animals were fed every day until about three to four months later.
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That's in October, they were ready to be butchered for meat, and that was the only month when ancient Swedish people had fresh meat on their table.
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Then, with the continuous increase in productivity, people finally had some meat left.
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However, how to store the meat had become a headache until someone invented a whole new way to preserve food, salting.
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People tried to keep meat from going bad by adding some salt to it, and it could be preserved for several months and even years.
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There was evidence that salt was widely used to preserve meat.
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Historical documents in 1573 recorded the Swedish king's everyday meals,
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mentioning that 175 pounds of meat was consumed each year, but over 150 pounds was salty.
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From this, we can clearly see the importance of salt in Sweden at that time.
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In addition, the documents also noted the annual sales of beer in Sweden soared during that period,
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and this must be related to high levels of salt in their food.
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Now, let's turn to the sources of salt.
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Where is salt from?
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Well, salt is common in nature.
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It has long been found that salt can be extracted from seawater, mineral deposits, saline lakes, brine,
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spring, etc., among which the two most important ones are oceans and basins.
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On the floor of the latter often lie deserts where traces of salt can be found, such as the Sahara.
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Furthermore, the quality of different salt types varies a lot.
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For example, salt from seawater is always mixed with impurities, so after the salt is dried,
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the sediments and other chemicals need to be purified before eating.
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However, this is not the case with salt from spring water.
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We can hardly find any impurities and the salt level is much more concentrated.
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Then, how did people distribute salt around the world?
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Of course, in modern times we have various ways of transporting goods, but in ancient times it was not the case.
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Take ancient Sweden we mentioned before as an example.
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Because of the heavy use of salt in the diet, Sweden could not feed itself and had to import large amounts of salt from other countries.
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In order to make sure they could buy enough salt from abroad, the Swedish had to attach great importance to shipping and keep it undamaged,
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as it was the most crucial way at that time.
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While in other ancient countries, in order to distribute salt to other places, groups of men were employed.
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They put bags of salt on their shoulders or backs and moved them to the surrounding regions, and gradually these people were considered as a mode of transport in early times.
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Later, with the improvement of traffic conditions, salt trade between different regions was boosted, and long-distance food trade was also promoted,
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making communication between different cultures more frequent and.. and...

Por que praticar a fala com este vídeo?

Praticar a fala em inglês usando vídeos informativos, como este sobre a história antiga do sal, proporciona uma experiência de aprendizado rica e contextualizada. Ao ouvir e repetir o que o apresentador diz, você não apenas melhora sua pronúncia, mas também aprende novas vocabulários e expressões em um contexto importante. A prática de conversação em inglês através de vídeos permite aumentar a fluência e a compreensão auditiva, essenciais para uma comunicação eficaz.

Gramática & Expressões em Contexto

No vídeo, várias estruturas gramaticais e expressões são usadas que são cruciais para um bom entendimento do inglês. Aqui estão algumas delas:

  • “It plays an indispensable role”: Esta frase demonstra como usar o presente simples para descrever a importância contínua de algo.
  • “Salt has often been considered a valuable commodity”: O uso da voz passiva aqui ilustra como as ações podem ser descritas sem especificar o ator, uma estrutura útil para conversação.
  • “A soldier's pay... was known as...”: O uso do passado simples aqui ajuda a narrar eventos históricos, essencial para contar histórias.
  • “The use of salt as a preservative can be traced”: Esta estrutura é um exemplo de como falar sobre práticas que evoluíram ao longo do tempo, utilizando a forma passiva.

Essas estruturas não apenas melhoram a compreensão, mas também são úteis para criar suas próprias frases em contexto.

Armadilhas Comuns de Pronúncia

Ao praticar shadow speech ou shadowing em inglês com o vídeo, você pode encontrar algumas palavras e expressões desafiadoras para pronunciar:

  • “Commodity”: Uma palavra que pode parecer complicada, especialmente pelo som do “o”, que é pronunciado como um “a”.
  • “Preservative”: Preste atenção na pronúncia da letra “v” e na ênfase na sílaba correta.
  • “Via salaria”: Uma expressão em latim que pode exigir prática para acertar a pronúncia do “salaria” sem confundir com palavras comuns em inglês.

Esses são apenas alguns exemplos que você deve praticar ao usar a prática de conversação em inglês a partir deste vídeo. Usar técnicas como shadowing site para repetir as falas do apresentador pode ajudar a superar essas armadilhas e melhorar sua habilidade de fala.

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.