跟读练习: Why is Russia So DAMN BIG? - 通过YouTube学习英语口语
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This video was sponsored by Skillshare,
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which is a place where you can learn basically anything you want for less than $10 a month.
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Anyway, let's get to it.
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Russia.
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Here we go.
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Like, this page and this page.
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This is Russia.
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It's huge.
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It doesn't even fit on one of these pages.
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I ripped the page.
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Let's look at Russia.
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But wait, yes, this is Russia,
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but Russia is also this, and this, and this.
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This one country encompasses over 100 languages spread across 11 time zones.
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I mean, the place is freaking huge.
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Countries aren't really supposed to be this big.
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So how did this happen?
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How did Russia become so damn big?
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Countries come in all shapes and sizes.
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You have really small countries like here in Europe,
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the country of Monaco is tiny.
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It's literally two square kilometers,
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like smaller than most cities.
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Now that's obviously an outlier.
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So let's look at a more average size country like Belgium.
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More like 11,000 square kilometers.
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Then you have even bigger countries like France with like 550,000 square kilometers.
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Over here in the United States where everything is apparently bigger,
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you have states that are bigger than France.
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Like the state of Texas is 695,000 square kilometers.
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All 48 of these continental United States are huge by European standards at least.
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This whole continental United States is 8 million square kilometers.
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So you have all these different sizes of countries.
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The The average sort of looks like this.
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And then you have the second largest country on Earth,
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which is Canada, huge.
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But now take a look at the size of the largest country on Earth.
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Russia is huge.
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It is more than double the size of the continental United States.
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17 million square kilometers.
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Makes up one eighth of the total habitable area on Earth and it's almost double the next biggest country on this list.
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I mean, it's mind-blowing.
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Russia is a part of Europe.
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It also shares a beach line with Turkey,
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but then you go all the way over here and it has an extensive border with China and North Korea.
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Keep going and it stretches all the way up here to where you could literally swim from Russia to the United States,
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assuming you can swim, you know,
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like two and a half miles.
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So yeah, Russia is huge.
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It's giant.
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But not that long ago, Russia wasn't huge.
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In fact, relative to empires and their borders,
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Russia was kind of a small fish.
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That's the story I want to tell you.
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A thousand years ago, Russia looked like this.
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A loose group of Slavic peoples who were a growing
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and prosperous society here in Eastern Europe but they had a pretty big weakness.
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And that weakness looked like this.
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These are flat grasslands, which are very easy to cross if you're an army looking to pillage land.
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And that's exactly what a group of horse riding warriors did.
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These guys were the Mongols.
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And they basically used this path of flat grasslands to traverse across Asia and expand their empire.
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40,000 of these Mongol guys on horses with bows and arrows,
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eventually made it all the way here to the Slavic peoples of Russia.
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Here's an image of them invading the cities and burning them down, conquering these people.
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Look how scared these people look.
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I mean, I would be too if 40,000 Mongols on horseback rode into my city.
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Anyway, so the Mongols take over this little block of Slavic people,
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and it really weakens their society.
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It breaks up all the cities that were sort of collaborating with each other.
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And now they're paying taxes to the Mongols,
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like this empire that was from super far away,
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like on the other side of the world.
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But there was one city in this area that was particularly ready to fight back.
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They were quietly getting more powerful.
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This city was called Muskovi or Moscow eventually.
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And it became the regional epicenter for trading fur,
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which is a thing that was becoming all the rage in Europe.
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Moscow was also learning how to use gunpowder and guns and technology from Europe.
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And before long, they were able to punch back against the Mongols,
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whose big-ass empire was getting really big and hard to maintain,
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and it sort of starting to crack.
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And Moscow was there to take advantage of this.
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I mean, let's be honest,
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there's only so long you can keep an empire that looks like this together.
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Way too big.
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I mean, this is the biggest land empire in history,
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but it didn't last long,
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even though they had these badass warriors on horseback.
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Anyway, so yeah, Moscow started punching back.
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They had fur money and they had gunpowder and they were having success pushing the Mongols out and moving east.
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One thing's for sure, said Moscow,
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which was soon becoming the Russian empire,
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we're not gonna let anyone sneak up on us again like the Mongols did.
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And everyone over here sort of chuckled in European and said,
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don't you realize that the only way to keep people out is to have like mountains and water to protect you?
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And the Russians were like,
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oh yeah, you mean like these?
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And the Europeans were like, nice.
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So Moscow, which was just a city,
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but is now becoming the Russian empire,
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starts expanding towards these mountains.
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And soon they have like a nice empire sized set of borders,
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some mountains for protection.
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They have an economy of fur,
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They have technology and commerce.
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They're getting rich.
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Things are looking good for Russia.
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But wait a minute.
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Can we overlay that green layer on the map that shows the super highway of grasslands that the Mongols used to invade?
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Yeah, that one, that one.
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Ugh, look, there's a flaw in the plan.
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Nice try, Russia, but you see that this natural border,
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which is great, has a huge gap of flat grasslands that people can easily pass directly on their way to Moscow.
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So it's the middle of the 1500s.
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Moscow has beat back the Mongols, is expanding east.
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They're doing their fur thing.
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They find kind of a natural border,
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but it doesn't really work.
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So they're still looking for a natural border or water or something to buffer their country to the east.
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And then this terrible guy comes into power.
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His name was literally Ivan the Terrible.
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And he had some pretty big ambitions for expanding Russia.
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He's like, dude, we don't need to stop at these mountains.
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Let's see how far we can push this thing east,
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way past the mountains.
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What he finds on the other side of these mountains is a very sparsely populated land of ice called Siberia.
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There wasn't a lot of people here and the people that were there weren't super resistant to this Russian takeover.
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The main thing that the Russians had to fight against was the cold,
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but with cold comes furry animals who have thick coats of fur,
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which again was incredibly valuable in European markets and that helped fuel this race to just keep going east.
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Is it just me or are they sort of overcompensating?
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Like, yeah, we get it.
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You got invaded by the Mongols and you wanna make sure it doesn't happen again,
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but settle down.
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They just kept moving east eventually they reached the pacific ocean the edge of the world
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but they didn't stop there they just kept going i mean listen this is
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so far away from the original starting point of moscow
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and it started to get to the point where the government
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back in moscow was sort of sending out expeditions not really sure what they were doing
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and what they were taking over
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because they couldn't really like stay in touch with them they were just sort of of hoping for the best.
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After one Russian dude went out on an expedition and conquered some remote city in the Far East,
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a government official back in Moscow said,
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nobody really knows why he did that and to what end.
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There is however, something erotic taking place in the borders of our empire.
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Erotic, I guess that's one way to talk about it.
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But here's the most interesting part to me about this Russian imperialism
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that is very different than most imperialism that I've looked into.
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When the Russians would find a tribe or a people
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or a culture that was very different than theirs because they were so far from home,
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they first tried to negotiate with them and convince them to join the Russian empire.
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If people resisted, it got very predictable imperialism very quickly,
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but a lot of tribes didn't resist and they found it beneficial to be a part of this growing empire.
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So this empire grew without a lot of conflict
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and in the process enveloping a lot of cultures that sort of kept their identity,
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their language, their culture, far, far away from Moscow.
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Because of this, Russia today is,
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yes, this huge land mass,
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but perhaps a better way to look at it is this.
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Russia today is divided into 85 territories.
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22 of these territories are actually called republics.
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They have their own official language,
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their own legislature, and basically are totally independent from Russia,
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except for in international affairs.
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It's like 22 countries within a country,
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all with their own unique style.
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So yeah, while Russia is this,
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there's also other versions of Russia,
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and I wanna show you some of those.
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Stop one, let's look at the Republic of Sakha.
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It's located way in the east and it's huge.
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3.1 million square kilometers.
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Massive.
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This place is in a time zone six hours ahead of Moscow.
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The people here don't look like Putin at all.
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Their ancestors are not from the original Moscow-Russia area.
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And they speak their own Northern Siberian Turkic language as well.
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The capital of this Russian Republic is way up here.
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It's called Yakutsk.
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It's the coldest large city on earth with an average temperature of minus eight degrees centigrade.
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And this whole region is full of these giant holes.
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In these holes, they're looking for diamonds.
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25% of the world's diamonds are mined in this Republic.
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So yeah, this is Russia.
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Next stop down here is Dagestan,
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which borders the countries of Azerbaijan and Georgia.
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The climate here is so different than what I think of when I think of Russia.
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It is hot and dry,
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and people here speak 13 different official languages besides Russian.
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Plus, there's a bunch of unofficial languages.
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And 83% of the people here identify as Muslim,
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which again, like, I don't think of Muslims in Russia,
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but this is Russia.
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It's right next to Chechnya,
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which is another part of Russia,
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which is politically and culturally very much doing its own thing.
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The people here declared independence in the 90s,
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which caused rebel groups to militarize.
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And then there was war and terrorist attacks and people died.
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And Putin may
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or may not have planned a bombing to frame Chechnyan terrorists to then go to war with them
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so he could get approval ratings,
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so he could take over the country and become a full return.
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No, no, no, wait, no,
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I'm not going down the freaking rabbit hole.
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I'm doing one of those fun geography videos where we talk about cultural diversity
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and and like borders and history
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and not this stuff come on just this once can i
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just go into a video without having to talk about the fact
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that some people are really terrible anyway
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so daga stan down here has all these different languages
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and people so different than what i think about
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when i think of russia plus i mean look at this fashion culture okay
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so there's a republic here right on these mountains these these mountains
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that we talked about that were sort of a good natural border,
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but had a big hole in them, the Ural Mountains.
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This is the Komi Republic.
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The main thing about this Republic is it doesn't look like the sort of ice swept Moscow streets
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that I'm used to of Russia.
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This place is known for its natural beauty,
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beautiful landscapes, and where the gulags were,
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the brutal Russian prisons during the Soviet times where they would do terrible things.
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Anyway, there's these beautiful rock formations that are super unique,
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and people aren't supposed to climb on them because there's some legend and it's bad luck,
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but of course foreigners show up and do stupid things,
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and they couldn't resist, and here they are.
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Anyway, this is Russia.
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Okay, a couple more.
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You have this Republic of Kalmykia.
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You just need to look at this place and its people to know
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that this feels very different than what you think of as Russia.
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And yet, this is Russia.
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Mother Russia has been sort of brutal to these people over the years,
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trying to erase their culture.
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But even still, they persist.
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The last one I want to talk about is called Tuva.
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It's down here.
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Here's Putin visiting Tuva a while back.
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This is another place where Russian ethnicity and language is a minority.
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The people here are more related to the Mongols,
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and they speak a Turkic language called Tuvan, which sounds like this.
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So yeah, the upside here is that this is Russia,
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but so is this, and this, and this, and this.
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Russia got really big as they were searching for a border and for fur,
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and they just kept expanding their empire,
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enveloping all of the people and cultures that came with it.
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Okay, let me just be clear about something.
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Russia is giant.
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This video is not 15 hours long,
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and so I was able to give a very brief overview of the history.
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The history is so much more mind-bendingly complicated.
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It's like Game of Thrones on steroids.
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Not to mention, today's Russia is also so much more diverse,
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like a mosaic of cultures and languages,
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that I was able to give a little overview for.
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But I know that a lot of you watching are thinking,
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why isn't he mentioning fill in the blank?
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I want to hear from you.
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What are the parts of Russia that you know about
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that I didn't mention here that are the most interesting or the most surprising,
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that are more different from the Russia that we sort of think of.
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Let me know in the comments.
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I got fascinated with Russia as we did the Navalny video a while back,
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and I'm now becoming deeper and deeper into this place and where it came from and what it looks like today.
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I've never visited and I want to,
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so maybe I can't though because I did that Navalny video and they'll be angry at me if I go there.
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Anyway, hadn't thought about that.
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Okay, before you go, I want to tell you how you can sign up for Skillshare for free and start learning stuff.
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including a lot of stuff on Skillshare.
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They're really good practical courses,
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I'm also a major believer that you can acquire so many skills on your own outside of a formal environment.
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Go check out Skillshare.
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Thank you all for being here and watching.
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Thanks to my patrons for like being such great supporters and lots more videos to come soon.
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So I'll see you all in the next one.
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Bye-bye.
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为什么通过这个视频练习说话？
通过观看这段关于俄罗斯的视频，您可以在轻松的环境中练习英语口语。讲者以生动的例子和丰富的细节来阐述俄罗斯的庞大，这为您提供了与实际会话相关的真实语境。通过模仿他们的表达方式和语调，您可以加深对英语句式的理解，提升自己的表达能力。此外，您将能够练习流利讲话，有助于提高您的整体语言能力和听力理解。使用shadowing site，您可以在练习时获得即时反馈，帮助您确认自己的发音是否正确。
语法和表达在语境中的运用
在这段视频中，讲者使用了一些有趣的语法结构和表达方式，适合作为学习的重点：
- 比较级和最高级的使用：例如，“Russia is huge. It is more than double the size of the continental United States.” 这种比较语句帮助听众理解俄罗斯的大小。
- 时间状语：讲者提到“over 100 languages spread across 11 time zones”，这种结构有效地向听众传达了俄罗斯的多样性。
- 条件句的运用：句子“assuming you can swim”展示了如何使用条件句来限制事实，很好地丰富了语言内容。
利用这些句型进行shadow speech练习，您将能够在真实对话中更加自信地表达自己。
常见的发音陷阱
在视频中，有一些单词和短语可能会造成发音上的困难：
- huge：这个词发音时需要注意音调，很多学习者容易发成“huge”的长音，正确的发音应更轻快。
- countries：包含多个元音的单词可能会令发音者感到困惑，练习时可重复其发音学习。
- extensive：此词常被发音不清，建议多听并跟读，确保音节的清晰。
通过在shadowspeaks中反复练习这些发音，您能显著提高英语发音。
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。