跟读练习: How English is taking over the internet - What in the World podcast, BBC World Service - 通过YouTube学习英语口语
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English is everywhere on the internet.
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English is everywhere on the internet.
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I think we are seeing the effects of this
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and we're taking our social cues from sort of an Anglo-centric part of the world.
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I love watching films and not everything is translated to Thai.
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So understanding English helps me enjoy them fully.
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I started learning English at school because I wanted to open up for myself lots of opportunities and study abroad.
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Hey, it's Hannah here and this is What in the World,
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your podcast for the stories that get people talking from the BBC World Service.
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In this episode, we're speaking about one of my favourite things, languages.
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English, as you've probably guessed,
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is the most widely spoken language in the world.
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There are millions of people who learn it at school and as adults too.
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But have you ever wondered how English became so dominant in the first place and what impact does that have on AI,
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internet culture and other smaller languages.
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And here to chat us through this is Georgie Thorman from BBC Learning English.
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That's the part of the BBC that helps millions of people around the world improve their English.
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Hello, welcome to the podcast.
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Hi, Hannah.
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Thank you.
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I'm excited to be here.
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So English is the most widely spoken language.
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Just how many people speak it globally?
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Hundreds of millions of people around the world.
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In fact, 1.5 billion people speak English.
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And what's interesting is that only 400 million of those,
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or around 25% of those,
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are native speakers, which makes it distinct from other languages,
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because if you compare that to the second most spoken language,
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Mandarin Chinese, with 1.1 billion speakers,
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the vast majority of those are native speakers.
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So people, hundreds of millions of people are learning English as either a second or foreign language.
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So how did English become the most widely spoken language in the world?
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For a variety of reasons.
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So one of those being colonisation.
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So for about 400 years,
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Britain had an empire, which meant that English spread to many parts of the world
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and was the main language used for things like government,
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education, trade, things like that.
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And when countries gained their independence,
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many of them kept English as an official language,
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which is why we have varieties like Indian English,
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Nigerian English and American English.
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another factor was the rise of the USA as a global superpower so after the world wars
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the USA became the world's largest economy it also became a leader in things like the entertainment industry
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so Hollywood lots of us were watching movies in English it also became a leader in the tech industry
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so we're all using Google,
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Apple, Microsoft and other tech giants And then after that,
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it kind of became the language of business, diplomacy, even academia.
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We're going to get more on to English in tech in just a bit,
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but you mentioned some of the different variations of English and how it has transformed American English, Indian English.
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There's hybrid languages like Spanglish,
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which is Spanish and English,
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and that's massive in the States.
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And of course, there are so many different regional variations here in the UK.
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How do languages evolve to develop these different variations, dialects?
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So accent and dialect variation happens when concentrations of people are talking in a certain way in a particular area.
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So if we look outside of the UK to ex-colonies like India,
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where one of the official languages is English,
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their English variety, Indian English,
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is heavily influenced by the local languages in the area.
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So again, Indian English has very distinct pronunciation features.
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It has some of its own vocabulary and the exchange goes both ways.
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So some words from Indian languages have kind of seeped into a more global English,
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which is why we have words like pyjamas and bungalow.
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So English is just a big patchwork quilt of diversity.
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And I read about Hinglish,
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Benglish and Tanglish as well,
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different variations mixed with Hindi, Bengali and Tamil.
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Yes, so hybrid languages.
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These are more of a mix of the language.
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How common is it for English to be taught in schools around the world as well?
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Yeah, so English is definitely the most studied foreign language around the world.
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In Europe, for example, almost all of the schools have English as a mandatory core subject in primary and secondary school.
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So across the world in terms of English being the main language of instruction,
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it's harder to find stats.
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But in the ex-colonies where English is an official language,
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many of these countries will have English as the main language for not only English,
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but the core subjects like math, science, history.
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That will be the main language of instruction.
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Georgie, thanks so much.
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Thank you.
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And we've also been hearing from some of you about why you chose to learn English.
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Hi guys, my name is Kaziza and I'm from Kazakhstan.
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I started learning English at school because I wanted to open up for myself lots of opportunities and study abroad.
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English actually made it happen.
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I'm currently residing and studying in Japan using English on a daily basis to communicate with people from around the world.
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Hi everyone, I'm Jin from Thailand.
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The reason why I learn English is because it's opened up the world to me.
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I love watching films and not everything is translated to Thai.
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So understanding English helps me enjoy them fully and feel closer to the world outside Thailand.
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My name is Marcos and I'm from Paraguay.
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I chose to learn English because I wanted to travel the world.
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I knew that English serves as a rich language,
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which allows you to communicate with people from different nationalities and cultures.
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Hey there, I'm Fatma Binteomer from Pakistan.
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You know, English started as just another subject at school.
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But then I realised it is actually a passport to my dreams.
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Because of English, I made it to the London School of Economics.
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And now I can connect,
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learn and dream without borders.
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Now let's find out how English has shaped the internet and AI,
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artificial intelligence, and what the future might look like.
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I'm speaking to Linda Heimersdottir.
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Hi, Linda.
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Hi.
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Nice to be with you.
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Really nice to have you.
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So you're a linguist.
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You work for an AI company in Iceland,
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which is, of course, in Europe,
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and you know all about the technical side of languages and AI.
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Why is English the most used language online?
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Yeah, that's an excellent question.
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I would say some of the reasons are historical.
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So the early development of the Internet happened mostly in the US in the UK.
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So you could say that it happened early that English became established as sort of the default language of communication online.
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Then, of course, we have a very English-centric tech sector.
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So we have a lot of big tech companies that prefer English.
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But of course, maybe the main reason is that English is our lingua franca.
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So about a quarter of the world's population speaks English.
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So if you have a message and you want to be able to reach the largest possible audience,
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then you might want to choose English as your language to convey that.
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And talking of AI, it's trained on vast amounts of information from the internet,
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as you've said that most of the language on the internet is in English.
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Does that mean that AI works best in English?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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That's not to say that you cannot use it perfectly adequately in other languages than English.
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But when you're using AI in,
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let's say, Icelandic, you certainly have to be more thoughtful about how you're using the models.
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You have to be more critical of the output.
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And it's not just a matter of the language either.
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There's a cultural aspect to this.
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So AI models, they might often default to an Anglo-centric view of the world
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and they won't be as knowledgeable about the history and culture of smaller language areas.
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And how are AI and translation apps changing how English is used online and also offline?
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Yeah, that's an interesting question.
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So, of course, we are surrounded online by English and we live a lot of our life online as it is.
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And nowadays we use AI a lot in our schoolwork and in the workplace,
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for example, to make our lives easier,
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to make our work more efficient, et cetera.
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So of course we want to do that in the best way possible.
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So people might tend to use these tools in English rather than chancing a worse outcome
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if they do it in their own language.
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But there are also opportunities there, right?
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Because language technology for a lot of languages,
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including Icelandic, has taken a huge leap forward because of these models that are so powerful.
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So we are now able to do a lot of things with technology in our own language
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that we weren't able to do just a few years ago
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and you mentioned translation so that's one sort of application
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that has become a lot more powerful and that could of course mean
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that people may no longer need to use english as the lingua franca as a common denominator
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if they're able to speak to each other directly
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and instantly using ai using these translation apps which are just getting better and better and what What about internet culture,
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things like memes?
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Is there any evidence that English media is also taking over in different countries and cultures as well?
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Oh, absolutely.
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Yeah.
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I mean, when you think back just a few decades,
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I mean, I grew up in the 90s and I definitely watched a lot of American television and movies.
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But when it came to sort of current cultural phenomena,
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I was getting my information from magazines and newspapers in Icelandic and the radio,
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etc. And nowadays everything happens online.
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So sort of young people's cultural awareness comes a lot more from the Internet than any other place.
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And again, because English is everywhere on the Internet,
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I think we are seeing the effects of this.
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So sort of American culture is penetrating our lives in many different ways.
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And we're taking our social cues from sort of an Anglo-centric part of the world,
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you could say.
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We can also worry a little bit about other aspects.
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So if a language starts losing ground to another language in certain domains of society,
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that's something that we need to look at.
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There is this term that has been coined,
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digital language death, which is used to describe when a language becomes irrelevant in the digital domain,
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you stop being able to use it to converse with technology.
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And that is something that we need to consider
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but we don't really know what that means
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and what kind of an effect that has on the language as a whole
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because we're just so early into this AI boom and this truly kind of technical age that we are living in.
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Linda, great speaking to you.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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That's it from me, but I am keen to hear from you.
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We know that loads of you use What in the World to practice your English
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and hopefully you're big fans of BBC Learning English too.
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So get in touch with us,
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drop us a comment below.
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We're also on Instagram at BBC What in the World and we're on WhatsApp.
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I'm Hannah.
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This is What in the World from the BBC World Service and we'll see you next time.
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为什么要通过这个视频练习口语？
在当前的数字时代，英语无处不在，成为互联网的主流语言。通过观看这样的YouTube视频，学习者不仅可以提高自己的英语能力，还能深入了解现代英语在全球的影响力，以及不同地区英语的变体。由于删除了翻译，配合“shadow speak”技巧，学习者可以利用视频中的真实对话来练习英语口语，提升社交能力和国际交流的信心。
语法和表达在语境中的应用
- 使用“why”引导原因句：例如：“Why did I start learning English?” 这种结构能够帮助学习者在表达原因时更加自信。
- 使用“from”表明来源：如“take our social cues from...”，这个短语常用于描述影响来源，有助于提高表达的准确性。
- 比较级的使用：在提到语言的影响时，使用到形容词的比较级，如“the most widely spoken language”，这有助于学习者掌握比较句型。
常见的发音陷阱
在视频中提到的某些词汇可能对学习者构成挑战，例如“colonisation”和“economic”。注意这些单词的重音和音节划分，避免发音不当。此外，美国英语和英国英语之间的发音差异也值得学习者留意，这可以通过“看YouTube学英语”来练习，帮助提高英语发音。
总体来说，通过“shadowing site”进行口语练习，结合这一视频的内容，不仅有助于提高语言能力，同时也为学习者提供了丰富的文化背景，从而加深对英语的理解。无论是在学习过程中还是交流时，良好的发音和合适的表达都会让英语学习变得更加顺利。
什么是跟读法？
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。