跟读练习: 4 Reasons to Learn a New Language | John McWhorter | TED - 通过YouTube学习英语口语
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The language I'm speaking right now is on its way to becoming the world's universal language, for better or for worse.
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The language I'm speaking right now is on its way to becoming the world's universal language, for better or for worse.
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Let's face it, it's the language of the internet, it's the language of finance, it's the language of air traffic control, of popular music, diplomacy -- English is everywhere.
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Now, Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more people, but more Chinese people are learning English than English speakers are learning Chinese.
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Last I heard, there are two dozen universities in China right now teaching all in English.
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English is taking over.
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And in addition to that, it's been predicted that at the end of the century almost all of the languages that exist now -- there are about 6,000 -- will no longer be spoken.
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There will only be some hundreds left.
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And on top of that, it's at the point where instant translation of live speech is not only possible, but it gets better every year.
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The reason I'm reciting those things to you is because I can tell that we're getting to the point where a question is going to start being asked, which is: Why should we learn foreign languages -- other than if English happens to be foreign to one?
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Why bother to learn another one when it's getting to the point where almost everybody in the world will be able to communicate in one?
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I think there are a lot of reasons, but I first want to address the one that you're probably most likely to have heard of, because actually it's more dangerous than you might think.
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And that is the idea that a language channels your thoughts, that the vocabulary and the grammar of different languages gives everybody a different kind of acid trip, so to speak.
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That is a marvelously enticing idea, but it's kind of fraught.
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So it's not that it's untrue completely.
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So for example, in French and Spanish the word for table is, for some reason, marked as feminine.
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So, "la table," "la mesa," you just have to deal with it.
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It has been shown that if you are a speaker of one of those languages and you happen to be asked how you would imagine a table talking, then much more often than could possibly be an accident, a French or a Spanish speaker says that the table would talk with a high and feminine voice.
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So if you're French or Spanish, to you, a table is kind of a girl, as opposed to if you are an English speaker.
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It's hard not to love data like that, and many people will tell you that that means that there's a worldview that you have if you speak one of those languages.
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But you have to watch out, because imagine if somebody put us under the microscope, the us being those of us who speak English natively.
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What is the worldview from English?
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So for example, let's take an English speaker.
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Up on the screen, that is Bono.
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He speaks English.
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I presume he has a worldview.
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Now, that is Donald Trump.
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In his way, he speaks English as well.
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(Laughter) And here is Ms. Kardashian, and she is an English speaker, too.
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So here are three speakers of the English language.
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What worldview do those three people have in common?
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What worldview is shaped through the English language that unites them?
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It's a highly fraught concept.
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And so gradual consensus is becoming that language can shape thought, but it tends to be in rather darling, obscure psychological flutters.
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It's not a matter of giving you a different pair of glasses on the world.
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Now, if that's the case, then why learn languages?
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If it isn't going to change the way you think, what would the other reasons be?
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There are some.
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One of them is that if you want to imbibe a culture, if you want to drink it in, if you want to become part of it, then whether or not the language channels the culture -- and that seems doubtful -- if you want to imbibe the culture, you have to control to some degree the language that the culture happens to be conducted in.
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There's no other way.
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There's an interesting illustration of this.
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I have to go slightly obscure, but really you should seek it out.
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There's a movie by the Canadian film director Denys Arcand -- read out in English on the page, "Dennis Ar-cand," if you want to look him up.
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He did a film called "Jesus of Montreal." And many of the characters are vibrant, funny, passionate, interesting French-Canadian, French-speaking women.
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There's one scene closest to the end, where they have to take a friend to an Anglophone hospital.
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In the hospital, they have to speak English.
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Now, they speak English but it's not their native language, they'd rather not speak English.
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And they speak it more slowly, they have accents, they're not idiomatic.
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Suddenly these characters that you've fallen in love with become husks of themselves, they're shadows of themselves.
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To go into a culture and to only ever process people through that kind of skrim curtain is to never truly get the culture.
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And so to the extent that hundreds of languages will be left, one reason to learn them is because they are tickets to being able to participate in the culture of the people who speak them, just by virtue of the fact that it is their code.
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So that's one reason.
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Second reason: it's been shown that if you speak two languages, dementia is less likely to set in, and that you are probably a better multitasker.
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And these are factors that set in early, and so that ought to give you some sense of when to give junior or juniorette lessons in another language.
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Bilingualism is healthy.
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And then, third -- languages are just an awful lot of fun.
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Much more fun than we're often told.
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So for example, Arabic: "kataba," he wrote, "yaktubu," he writes, she writes.
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"Uktub," write, in the imperative.
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What do those things have in common?
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All those things have in common the consonants sitting in the middle like pillars.
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They stay still, and the vowels dance around the consonants.
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Who wouldn't want to roll that around in their mouths?
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You can get that from Hebrew, you can get that from Ethiopia's main language, Amharic.
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That's fun.
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Or languages have different word orders.
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Learning how to speak with different word order is like driving on the different side of a street if you go to certain country, or the feeling that you get when you put Witch Hazel around your eyes and you feel the tingle.
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A language can do that to you.
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So for example, "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back," a book that I'm sure we all often return to, like "Moby Dick." One phrase in it is, "Do you know where I found him?
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Do you know where he was? He was eating cake in the tub, Yes he was!" Fine. Now, if you learn that in Mandarin Chinese, then you have to master, "You can know, I did where him find?
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He was tub inside gorging cake, No mistake gorging chewing!" That just feels good.
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Imagine being able to do that for years and years at a time.
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Or, have you ever learned any Cambodian?
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Me either, but if I did, I would get to roll around in my mouth not some baker's dozen of vowels like English has, but a good 30 different vowels scooching and oozing around in the Cambodian mouth like bees in a hive.
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That is what a language can get you.
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And more to the point, we live in an era when it's never been easier to teach yourself another language.
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It used to be that you had to go to a classroom, and there would be some diligent teacher -- some genius teacher in there -- but that person was only in there at certain times and you had to go then, and then was not most times.
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You had to go to class.
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If you didn't have that, you had something called a record.
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I cut my teeth on those.
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There was only so much data on a record, or a cassette, or even that antique object known as a CD.
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Other than that you had books that didn't work, that's just the way it was.
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Today you can lay down -- lie on your living room floor, sipping bourbon, and teach yourself any language that you want to with wonderful sets such as Rosetta Stone.
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I highly recommend the lesser known Glossika as well.
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You can do it any time, therefore you can do it more and better.
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You can give yourself your morning pleasures in various languages.
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I take some "Dilbert" in various languages every single morning; it can increase your skills.
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Couldn't have done it 20 years ago when the idea of having any language you wanted in your pocket, coming from your phone, would have sounded like science fiction to very sophisticated people.
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So I highly recommend that you teach yourself languages other than the one that I'm speaking, because there's never been a better time to do it.
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It's an awful lot of fun.
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It won't change your mind, but it will most certainly blow your mind.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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为何要通过此视频练习口语？
在这个视频中，约翰·麦克沃特探讨了学习新语言的重要性，强调了语言在我们生活中的普遍性和与文化的连接。通过 英语口语练习，我们不仅可以提高语言能力，还可以更深入地理解身处的文化。视频中的说话者充满激情，情感丰富，这使得练习时能够传递出更多的语境和情感。在这样的环境下练习口语，可以增强我们的表达能力和流利度，让我们在真实对话中不再感到羞涩。
语法与表达在语境中的分析
- 被动语态 - 约翰提到：“英语正在被广泛使用”，这种结构可以帮助我们在谈论事物受到影响时更加准确。
- 条件句 - 他提到：“如果我们学习新的语言……”，这种句式在谈论可能性和假设时非常有用，能够增强我们的表达技巧。
- 比喻与隐喻 - 视频中提到“语言作为文化的通行证”，这种表达不仅吸引人，更能帮助我们用生动的方式描述复杂的概念。
常见发音陷阱
在视频中，一些词汇的发音可能会让学习者感到挑战。例如，“universal”这个词在不同的口音中有不同的发音，尤其是非母语者在发音时常会忽略重音，而导致发音不清楚，影响听者的理解。通过 提高英语发音 的练习，我们可以有效克服这些问题。此外，学习者在说“cultural”时，可能会出现某些音节的拉长或缩短，导致不准确的发音，这些都是需要注意的地方。利用 shadowspeak 技术，模仿演讲者的发音和语调，能够帮助我们避免这些误区，并提升口语流利度。
总之，通过有效的 shadow speak 练习，你不仅仅是在学习语言，还是在探索其背后的文化和思想。这种方法能够使你在掌握语言的同时，理解并融入其独特的文化内涵。
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跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。