語学の勉強

It may seem like the semicolon is struggling with an identity crisis . セミコロンは自己認識の危機に悩んでいるように思われるかもしれません。 may seem like … ～のように思われるかもしれない struggle with … （困難などに）取り組む、奮闘する、苦労する identity crisis … 自己認識の危機 It looks like a comma crossed with a period. セミコロンはコンマとピリオドの合いの子のようにも見えます。 cross (with) … （動植物を）交配する、掛け合わせる、 Maybe that's why we toss these punctuation marks around like grammatical confetti . たぶんそれで私たちは、これらの句読点を文法上の紙吹雪のように、よく考えずに使ってしまうのでしょう。 toss (sth) around … 放り投げる、よく考えずに使う confetti [kənféti] … 紙吹雪 We're confused about how to use them properly. 私たちは句読点の正しい使い方がよくわかっていないのです。 be confused about … ～について混乱している、困惑している、よくわからない In fact, it's the semicolon's half-half status that makes it useful. 実のところ、セミコロンが有用であるのは、それが 半々の立場にあるからです。 It's stronger than a comma, and less final than a period. セミコロンはコンマよりも強く、ピリオドほど終わった感じがしません。 It fills the spaces in between, and for that reason, it has some specific and important tasks. セミコロンはコンマとピリオドの間を埋めるも...

出典： TED-Ed Say you're helping plan a friend's party, and he sends you a text asking you to "bring Bob, a DJ and a clown." say … ～と仮定する、～としておく You're pretty impressed. You had no idea Bob was so multitalented . multitalented … 多才な But when the day arrives, it turns out that he's not, and you were supposed to bring three different people. As you and Bob sit at the silent, clownless party, it occurs to you that the confusion could've been avoided simply by using another comma after DJ. This final comma in a list, placed directly before the main conjunction , such as and, or, or nor, is called the serial comma, or Oxford comma. conjunction … 接続詞 And it has long driven grammar nerds crazy because even major language institutions can't agree on whether it should be used. nerd … おたく、専門ばか Ironically , the Oxford comma is more common in the United States, where it's recommended by the MLA, the Chicago Style Manual, and the US Gover...

We all start life as one single cell. Then that cell divides and we are two cells, then four, then eight. Cells form tissues, tissues form organs, organs form us. These cell divisions, by which we go from a single cell to 100 trillion cells, are called growth. trillion - 1兆 And growth seems like a simple thing because when we think of it, we typically think of someone getting taller or, later in life, wider, but to cells, growth isn't simple. Cell division is an intricate chemical dance that's part individual, part community-driven. intricate [íntrikət ] - 入り組んだ、複雑な And in a neighborhood of 100 trillion cells, some times things go wrong. Maybe an individual cell's set of instructions, or DNA, gets a typo, what we call a mutation . mutation - 突然変異 Most of the time, the cell senses mistakes and shuts itself down, or the system detects a troublemaker and eliminates it. But, enough mutations can bypass the fail-safes , driving the cell to divide reck...

(日本語字幕を見るには動画の「設定」から選択してください) I want to tell you all about a piece of American history that is so secret, that nobody has done anything about it for 167 years, until right now. 今まで167年間にわたって極秘とされ、誰も手を付けてこなかったアメリカの歴史の一部についてお話ししたいと思います。 And the way that we're going to uncover this vestigial organ of America past is by asking this question: Why? このアメリカ史の名残を明らかにする方法は、「なぜ？」と問うことです。 uncover … 明らかにする、暴露する、発見する vestigial [vèstídʒiəl] … 痕跡の、名残の As we all know, we are in the middle of another presidential election, hotly contested , as you can see. 皆さんもご存知のように、今は次期大統領選の真っ最中で、熱い戦いが繰り広げられています。 hotly … 激しく、熱心に contest … 争う、闘う But what you may not know is that American voter turnout ranks near the bottom of all countries in the entire world, 138th of 172 nations. しかし、あまり知られていないかもしれませんが、アメリカの投票率は全世界の国々の中で最下位に近く、172か国中138位です。 turnout … 投票率 This is the world's most famous democracy. これが世界で最も有名な民主主義国なのです。 So ... Why do we vote on Tuesday? さて、なぜ投票日が火曜日なのでしょうか？ Does anybod...

出典： TED Ed How many times can you fold a piece of paper? Assume that one had a piece of paper that was very fine, like the kind they typically use to print the Bible. In reality, it seems like a piece of silk. To qualify these ideas, let's say you have a paper that's one-thousandth of a centimeter in thickness. That is 10 to the power of minus three centimeters, which equals .001 centimeters. qualify … （言葉や意味などを）限定する (A) to the power of (B) … （A）の（B）乗 Let's also assume that you have a big piece of paper, like a page out of the newspaper. Now we begin to fold it in half. How many times do you think it could be folded like that? And another question: If you could fold the paper over and over, as many times as you wish, say 30 times, what would you imagine the thickness of the paper would be then? Before you move on, I encourage you to actually think about a possible answer to this question. OK. After we have folded the paper once, it is now two thousandths of a c...

出典： TED Ed Are you familiar with the word symbiosis ? symbiosis … 共生 It's a fancy term for a partnership between two different species, such as bees and flowers. fancy term … しゃれた用語、凝った用語 In a symbiosis, both species depend on each other. I want to tell you about a remarkable symbiosis between a little bird, the Clark's Nutcracker , and a big tree, the Whitebark Pine . Clark's Nutcracker … ハイイロホシガラス Whitebark Pine … アメリカシロゴヨウ（松の一種） Whitebark grow in the mountains of Wyoming, Montana and other western states. They have huge canopies and lots of needles, which provide cover and shelter for other plants and animals, and Whitebark feed the forest. canopy … 林冠（樹林の枝葉による屋根のような覆い） Their cones are packed with protein. cone … 球果（松かさのような実） Squirrels gnaw the cones from the upper branches so they fall to the ground, and then race down to bury them in piles, or middens . squirrel … リス gnaw [nɔ́ː ]  … かじる midden … （動物が集めた種子や葉などの）山 But they don't...

出典： TED Fifty years ago in the old Soviet Union, a team of engineers was secretly moving a large object through a desolate countryside. 50年前の旧ソビエト連邦の人里離れた地方で、技術者のチームが大きな物体を秘密裏に移動していました。 desolate [désələt] (adj.) 荒れ果てた、荒涼とした、人けのない、人里離れた With it, they were hoping to capture the minds of people everywhere by being the first to conquer outer space. その物体で宇宙空間を初めて制覇することにより、世界中の人々の心をとらえたいと思っていました。 The rocket was huge. そのロケットは巨大でした。 And packed in its nose was a silver ball with two radios inside. その先端には、2つの無線機が内蔵された銀色の球体が格納されていました。 On October 4, 1957, they launched their rocket. 1957年10月4日、彼らはそのロケットを打ち上げました。 One of the Russian scientists wrote at the time: 当時、あるロシア人科学者が次のように書き残しています。 "We are about to create a new planet that we will call Sputnik. 「我々はまさに新しい惑星を作ろうとしています。スプートニクという惑星を。 In the olden days , explorers like Vasco da Gama and Columbus had the good fortune to open up the terrestrial globe . その昔、ヴァスコ・ダ・ガマやコロンブスなどの探検家たちは、この地球を開拓するという幸運に恵まれていました。 old...