跟读练习: Why the Arab World never united - 通过视频学习英语口语
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Imagine one contiguous country stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic.
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It would have close to half a billion citizens,
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a combined economy worth nearly four trillion dollars and sit on some of the most important trade routes on earth.
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Its territory would include the Suez Canal,
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the Atlas Mountains and the Fertile Crescent while sitting astride the of Hormuz and the Bab al -Mandeb.
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Its oil exports alone would hold more than half of the world's proven crude reserves.
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On paper, it would rank among the world's most powerful states.
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And for a time, people genuinely believed such a country could exist.
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Across the 20th century, Arab leaders repeatedly proposed mergers,
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governments, briefly surrendered sovereignty and mass movements all seem to point in the same direction.
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Yet today, the Arab world remains divided into more than 20 sovereign countries,
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and the idea of merging them now belongs more to history than politics.
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So how did a political project with that much popular support, strategic logic and momentum fail to produce a lasting union?
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For much of the 20th century the idea of a single
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Arab state was not as unrealistic as it sounds today.
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Arabic was spoken across an enormous stretch of territory.
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Many of the region's societies had emerged from the same
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Ottoman political order and the borders separating them were still relatively new.
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More importantly, millions of people rejected those borders as the natural limits of their political identity.
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Arab nationalism had started developing well before the Ottoman Empire disappeared, particularly in Syria, Palestine and Iraq.
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After the Ottoman collapse in 1918, it became a much larger political force.
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Britain and France then took control of much of the former
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Ottoman -era lands, while new states and mandates divided territories whose political future had still been unsettled.
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That unwelcome experience gave
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Arab nationalism an obvious enemy, foreign rule But independence created its own set of problems
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It was one thing to say that
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Arabs belonged to one nation while somebody else ruled them
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But it was another to decide what should happen once Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and the others had governments of their own
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And so early attempts at unity revealed deeper complexities
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In 1943, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al -Sayed proposed a larger state around the Fertile Crescent,
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bringing together Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan, before linking it with Iraq in a wider Arab Union.
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It had some geographical logic.
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These territories were relatively close and economically connected.
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Yet, even before the proposal could mature,
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local dynasties, rival governments and competing foreign relationships pulled the project in different directions.
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Then came Gamal Abdel Nasser.
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He had emerged as Egypt's dominant leader after overthrowing the monarchy and became president in 1956.
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That same year, he turned the Suez Crisis into an enormous political victory.
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Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.
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But international pressure eventually forced all three to withdraw.
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Across much of the Arab world, Nasser emerged from the crisis as the man who had stood up to the old colonial powers.
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That gave him something few
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Arab leaders possessed at the time, the ability to reach people across the region without going through their governments.
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Radio broadcasts from Cairo carried his speeches beyond national borders.
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His version of Arab nationalism promised independence abroad, social transformation at home, and eventually political unity.
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In Syria, that idea gained considerable momentum.
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A few years earlier, Damascus had experienced repeated coups and intense competition between political factions,
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including Baathists, Communists, Conservatives, and military officers.
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So, in January 1958, Syrian officers went to Cairo and pushed for immediate union with Egypt.
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Nasser had not originally planned to move that quickly and he demanded sweeping conditions,
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including the dissolution of Syrian political parties and a highly centralized political system.
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The Syrians accepted and a month later, Egypt and Syria became the United Arab Republic.
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For the first time, an independent
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Arab state had voluntarily surrendered its sovereignty in the name of Pan -Arab unity.
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However, that breakthrough immediately exposed a problem.
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Egypt was much larger than Syria, both in territory and population,
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and Nasser had no intention to settle for a loose association of two equal governments.
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As a result, decision -making increasingly moved toward Cairo,
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while Syrian politicians, officers and businessmen found themselves operating inside a system they had little control over.
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The question was no longer whether Arabs supported unity, it was what unity required from the states joining it.
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Meanwhile, Iraq and Jordan were watching nervously.
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Both were Hashemite monarchies, and Nasser's appeal carried a republican edge that directly threatened their ruling dynasties.
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So just 13 days after Egypt and Syria announced their union, Iraq and Jordan responded by declaring their own Arab Federation.
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King Faisal of Iraq became head of state while King Hussein of Jordan served as second in command.
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This produced an extraordinary situation.
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The Arab world now had two unions, Both supposedly moving toward the same goal, but each organized around a different center of power.
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One pointed toward Cairo, the other toward Baghdad.
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Ironically, Arab nationalism was beginning to unite countries and divide governments at exactly the same time.
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As it turned out though, the Iraqi Jordanian Federation survived only a few months.
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The monarchy in Baghdad was overthrown in July 1958 and the project disappeared with it.
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The United Arab Republic lasted longer, but Syrian resentment kept growing.
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Eventually, in 1961, Syrian officers seized power and withdrew from the Union.
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And yet, even that failure did not end the experiment.
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In 1963, Egypt, Syria and Iraq tried again, but negotiations quickly collapsed over the same problem.
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Who would actually control the new state?
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The Ba 'ath party itself is perhaps the clearest example of the contradiction.
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Its ideology treated the Arab world as one nation and called political unity one of its central goals.
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Yet once separate Baathist governments became established in Syria and Iraq, they turned into bitter rivals.
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By the 1970s, the two were fighting over oil, water, regional influence, and even which one represented the legitimate Baath movement.
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Arab leaders increasingly put their own survival ahead of political union, even as they continued to speak the language of unity.
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Meanwhile, roughly at the same time, Muammar Gaddafi made his own pitch.
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Nasser had just passed away and so Gaddafi tried to revive the idea of of an Arab super state,
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first with Egypt and Syria in 1972 and then with Tunisia two years later.
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Both attempts flunked.
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By this point the pattern was hard to miss.
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Arab leaders could agree on the emotional appeal of unity but actual union meant deciding who controlled the military,
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who conducted foreign policy, which political parties survived and which capital had the final word.
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Every Every government entering a union had to ask whether it was gaining a larger country
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or simply losing control of its own.
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But politics alone does not quite explain why
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Arab unity failed.
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Geography fills in the blanks.
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On a language map, the Arab world looks coherent.
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Arabic stretches from the Atlantic coast of Morocco across
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North Africa and the Levant through Iraq and down the Arabian Peninsula.
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On a physical map, however, that same space breaks into several distinct regions.
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Egypt is organized around the Nile Valley.
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Iraq grew around the Tigris and Euphrates.
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Syria and the Levant form a space of their own.
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North Africa's population hubs snake along the Mediterranean coast.
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And much of the Arabian Peninsula is dominated by desert.
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These places are connected culturally, but vast distances and sparsely populated land separate many of them.
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Building a single political center within this geography is therefore extremely difficult.
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That same geography also created several competing centers of power rather than one obvious core.
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Egypt had the population and enormous cultural influence.
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Iraq had major oil reserves and a historical center in Baghdad.
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Syria sat at the heart of the Levant.
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Saudi Arabia had oil and also controlled two of Islam's holiest cities.
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Meanwhile, North Africa had political weight of its own, but lay thousands of kilometers west of the historical core of inter -Arab politics.
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In other words, the Arab world had no natural political center around which everyone else could easily organize.
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What's more, those same divisions were reinforced by an uneven economic landscape.
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You see, during the colonial era,
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infrastructure across the periphery was often built to connect individual territories to overseas markets rather than to create one integrated Arab economy.
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Ports, pipelines and commercial networks carried commodities outward.
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And so, commerce with the outside world was more important than commerce with each other.
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That economic reality remains visible even today.
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In 2021, trade within the wider
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Middle East and North Africa accounted for only 17 % of the region's total trade,
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despite linguistic ties and geographic proximity.
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Oil widened those differences even more.
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Hydrocarbon wealth was distributed quite disproportionately.
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Some states ended up with relatively small populations and enormous revenues,
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while countries such as Egypt had far larger populations and much less oil wealth per person.
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A political union would therefore have required more than drawing a new border around everyone.
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It would eventually have required decisions about taxation, revenue sharing, public spending, and political representation.
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But the longer the Arab states remained separate, the harder those decisions became.
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Every passing decade added another layer of permanence.
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Governments built ministries, armies, schools, intelligence services, and central banks,
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while businesses adapted to national borders and political elites built their power around the existing hierarchy.
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And this is where the story starts to reverse.
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Many Arab borders had originally been criticized as artificial products of imperialism.
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But borders do not remain politically artificial forever.
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Once a state survives for several generations, people and institutions become invested in keeping it alive.
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At that point, abolishing the state no longer means simply erasing a line on a map.
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It means uprooting the system that has grown around it.
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Political scientist Michael Barnett describes this as the gradual consolidation of sovereignty in the Arab state system.
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So Arab nationalism did not simply vanish overnight.
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Instead, its meaning changed until it could coexist with the continued existence of separate, sovereign Arab states.
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And that may be the key to understanding why all those
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Union projects failed.
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Foreign powers certainly helped create many divisions, while political rivalries and geographic and economic differences made unity even harder.
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But perhaps most important of all, every failed attempt at union strengthened the very states it was supposed to replace.
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By the time governments had the institutions, money and military power required to build a serious
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Arab superstate, those same institutions had given them far more to lose by joining as one.
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Everyone agreed the borders were artificial until someone had to erase his own.
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History like this is easier to follow when you can watch it unfold
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You can try it out at deltasweep .com Thank you for your time and Saal.
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本课的词汇与口语要点
这节 C1 级别的口语课以视频“Why the Arab World never united”为素材。 视频中反复出现的词有：Arab, Syria, union, Iraq, Egypt。 这段视频共有 171 个句子、2127 个单词可供跟读。 讲话部分时长为 16:20。 说话人语速平稳，每分钟约 130 个词，很适合跟读。 只有 76% 的单词属于英语最常用的 3,000 词，词汇难度较高。
视频中的重点词汇
视频中最难的 15 个单词，附发音和释义：
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| nationalism 名词 | /ˈnæʃ(ə)nəˌlɪzəm/ | 民族主義 /民族主义, 國民主義 /国民主义 |
| sovereignty 名词 | /ˈsɑv(ə)ɹənti/ | 主權 /主权 |
| emerge 动词 | /ɪˈmɝd͡ʒ/ | 出現 /出现 |
| geography 名词 | /d͡ʒiˈɑɡɹəfi/ | 地理學 /地理学 |
| workflow 名词 | /ˈwɝkfloʊ/ | 工作流 |
| monarchy 名词 | /ˈmɑnɚki/ | 君主制, 王政 |
| dynasty 名词 | /ˈdaɪnəsti/ | 王朝, 朝 |
| sovereign 名词 | /ˈsɑv(ə)ɹɪn/ | 君主 |
| geographic 形容词 | /d͡ʒiəˈɡɹæfɪk/ | 地理的 |
| withdraw 动词 | /wɪðˈdɹɔ/ | 撤退 |
| momentum 名词 | /ˌmə(ʊ)ˈmɛntəm/ | 動量 /动量 |
| surrender 动词 | /səˈɹɛndə(ɹ)/ | 投降 |
| disappear 动词 | /dɪsəˈpɪɹ/ | 消失 |
| abolish 动词 | /əˈbɑl.ɪʃ/ | 取消, 廢除 /废除 |
| astride 副词 | /əˈstɹaɪ̯d/ | 跨騎 /跨骑, 橫跨兩側 /横跨两侧 |
视频中出现的短语动词
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| sign up 动词 | 報名 /报名, 註冊 /注册 | |
| carry out 动词 | /ˈkæ.ɹi aʊt/ | 進行 /进行 |
| fill up 动词 | 裝滿 /装满 | |
| go ahead 动词 | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | 請便 /请便 |
| go through 动词 | 通過 /通过 | |
| pass away 动词 | 去世, 逝世 | |
| stand up to 动词 | 面對 /面对 | |
| turn out 动词 | 原來 /原来 |
视频中的语法
说话人最常用的结构，并附上视频中的原话：
| 结构 | 视频中的用法 |
|---|---|
| 被动语态 be + 过去分词 — 强调发生了什么，而不是谁做的 | was spoken · been unsettled · is organized |
| 现在完成时 have/has + 过去分词 — 过去发生但与现在仍有关联的事 | has moved · They've tested · have required |
需要注意的发音
说话人用了 5 次缩略和弱读形式，例如 you'll, I'll, they've。请按听到的简短形式来说。
- “th” 音: withdraw /wɪðˈdɹɔ/, breakthrough /ˈbɹeɪk.θɹuː/, threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/, strengthen /ˈstɹɛŋ(k)θən/
- “sh” 和 “zh” 音: nationalism /ˈnæʃ(ə)nəˌlɪzəm/, abolish /əˈbɑl.ɪʃ/, contradiction /ˌkɑːntɹəˈdɪkʃən/, disproportionately /ˈdɪs.pɹəˌpɔɹ.ʃən.ət.li/, dissolution /ˌdɪsəˈluʃən/
- 长单词——注意重音位置: nationalism /ˈnæʃ(ə)nəˌlɪzəm/, sovereignty /ˈsɑv(ə)ɹənti/, geography /d͡ʒiˈɑɡɹəfi/, momentum /ˌmə(ʊ)ˈmɛntəm/, contiguous /kənˈtɪɡ.ju.əs/
中文母语者容易读错的音：
- /v/ — 不要读成 /w/，上齿轻触下唇: sovereignty /ˈsɑv(ə)ɹənti/, sovereign /ˈsɑv(ə)ɹɪn/, uneven /ʌnˈivən/, revive /ɹɪˈvaɪ̯v/, voluntarily /ˌvɑlənˈtɛɹɪli/
- 词尾辅音 — 要读清楚，后面不要加元音: emerge /ɪˈmɝd͡ʒ/, geographic /d͡ʒiəˈɡɹæfɪk/, arabic /ˈæɹəbɪk/, abolish /əˈbɑl.ɪʃ/, astride /əˈstɹaɪ̯d/
- /r/ 和 /l/ 的区别: centralize /ˈsɛntɹəlaɪz/, disproportionately /ˈdɪs.pɹəˌpɔɹ.ʃən.ət.li/, gradual /ˈɡɹæd͡ʒuəl/, voluntarily /ˌvɑlənˈtɛɹɪli/, ironically /aɪˈɹɑnɪkli/
如何用这段视频练习
- 先完整听一遍视频，不要开口，记下不认识的单词。
- 用正常速度逐句跟读，每句重复到你的节奏与说话人一致为止。
- 录下自己的声音并与原声对比，特别注意 nationalism, sovereignty, emerge 这类单词。
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。