节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2013-10-29
难易度:Medium
关键字:temporarily, chili pepper, prevalent, fascinating, maize, linguist
Hello, and welcome to Studio Classroom.
My name is Gabe.
And my name is Carolyn.
And your English will improve today.
Thank you for joining us for the second part of our lesson about The Whistlers
of Mexico,
or as we learned how to pronounce it yesterday - The Whistlers of Mexico, these
people, the Chinantecs, in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Now they have a very unique language - whistling, and it's very rare.
And many people think that we should try to protect a language like this.
Do you think that there are any advantages to protecting a language like this?
Carolyn?
Well, it is very unique and very interesting to study.
I love learning languages, so I think it would be a good idea to protect it.
But I also know, as we are going to read more in our article, that it becomes
more and more difficult to protect these rare languages,
and keep them in use when there're so many other languages and technology being
made now that make it really not necessary to use these old languages.
That's right.
But it is, of course, a very rare and unique kind of language.
And today we're going to be learning a little bit about the Chinantec lifestyle,
how these people live, how these whistlers live.
Let's get started.
The Whistlers of Mexico.
The Chinantec lifestyle.
Over 104,000 Chinantec people live in northern Oaxaca, Mexico, mostly in small
villages where their traditional languages are spoken.
Some temporarily move to Mexico City to work, but most return home afterward.
Most Chinantecs farm maize and beans.
They also produce coffee, timber and chili peppers as well as pottery and
baskets.
Most of them no longer wear traditional clothing except on special occasions,
but they may make and sell it.
The whistled language is mostly used by men, and while women usually can
interpret it, they don't "speak" it.
All right.
Let's go back to the beginning here and look at this a little more closely.
The Chinantec lifestyle.
Over 104,000 Chinantec people live in northern Oaxaca, Mexico, mostly in small
villages where their traditional languages are spoken.
OK, so that's not a little amount of people.
104,000 people live in this area.
That's right.
It is not just a few people but quite a few - 104,000!
And they live in small villages.
So we even know there is a fairly large number of them.
They live in small villages where their traditional languages are spoken.
And you see that it is "languages," with an S.
So more than one language is spoken in Oaxaca.
All right.
Well, I wonder what it would be like to visit this place and hear people
speaking in these slightly different languages.
Well, some temporarily move to Mexico City to work, but most return home
afterward.
OK, so some people go there temporarily.
Let's look at that word.
It's one of our key words.
If you do something temporarily, that means you do it for a short period of
time.
You're not there forever.
That's right, so.
When I went back to the U.S. this past year, I said: Oh, no, don't worry. I will
only be there temporarily.
I will be back to Taiwan in no time.
In no time.
And of course you could use this in other ways.
Maybe you have a job, but you don't want it for a long time.
You find a job temporarily so that you can get prepared or be ready for the job
that you want.
OK. So the opposite of this word "temporarily," do you know it?
Permanently. P-E-R-M-A-N-E-N-T-L-Y.
If you do something permanently, that means you're doing it forever.
That's right, so.
We hope that you will permanently be learning English.
It is a great thing to do - not just temporarily but to learn it for your whole
life and to use it as you master this language.
Well, continuing on about the Chinantec people, we learn:
Most Chinantecs farm maize and beans.
So that's what they do.
They are farmers.
That's right. They farm maize.
Have you ever seen this word before?
M-A-I-Z-E.
For me, I... you know, I don't know if I've seen maize in person before.
But from what I understand, it kind of looks like corn.
It's a kind of corn, right, Carolyn?
Yes, it is very similar to corn.
And a lot of times you might see maize flour or corn flour that you use for
baking.
All right. So most of these people farm maize and beans.
Well, let's take a look at what Steve and Ken have to share with us in the
Information Cloud about these words: some, most.
OK. Let's take a look at what they have to share.
Quantifiers are, as the name suggests, words that express the quantity of
something.
They're different from numbers and that they don't give a precise amount.
They are approximate.
Some of the most common quantifiers are all, some, much and most.
And quantifiers normally come before nouns.
In today's lesson, our author writes:
Most Chinantecans farm maize and beans.
"Most" is the quantifier here, and it modifies the noun Chinantecan.
And so, we learn that not all Chinantecans are farmers who raise maize and
beans.
Quantifiers can sometimes act as pronouns, though.
Let's look back to the previous sentence for an example.
OK. In it we read:
Some temporarily move to Mexico City to work, but most return home afterward.
Here the quantifiers "some" and "most" are acting as pronouns.
OK. Finally, we should know that certain quantifiers only work for certain kinds
of nouns.
Right.
The quantifier "most," for example, works for both uncountable nouns, like
maize, and countable nouns, like beans.
Others like "a little" work only with uncountable nouns - a little maize.
While other quantifiers like "each" work only with countable nouns - each being.
Now the best way to keep quantifiers straight?
Practice.
(Chinese).
Thank you, guys.
Now continuing to learn about the Chinantec people's lifestyle, we learn that
they are farmers.
They farm maize and also beans.
And we learn something else.
They also produce coffee, timber and chili peppers as well as pottery and
baskets.
So they really do a lot.
Yes, they do.
I love coffee.
And sometimes I like chili peppers in my food.
Let's take a look at those words: chili peppers.
Carolyn, do you enjoy chili peppers?
I do not like chili peppers in my food.
Chili peppers are a long, thin pepper.
They are very spicy.
And I do not like very spicy food.
Well, I also shouldn't eat chili peppers too often.
But every once in a while it does add a nice flavor to my food, nice spicy
flavor.
Well, they produce coffee, timber (wood) and chili peppers as well as pottery
and baskets.
Now most of them no longer wear traditional clothing except on special
occasions, but they may make and sell it.
This sounds like a lot of people around the world who have traditional clothing.
They still wear modern clothing.
But sometimes on special occasions, you might see them wearing traditional
clothes.
That's right.
So usually for festivals, people that have a clothing tradition or the style,
they will wear it for the festival.
And of course it is very popular to sell traditional style clothing to people
who are visiting, to tourists.
We continue learning:
The whistle language is mostly used by men, and while women usually can
interpret it, they don't "speak" it.
Very interesting.
Yeah... OK, so the men speak this language, the whistled language.
But uh, Carolyn, I guess you would be able to understand it but not speak it if
you lived there.
That's right.
And I guess that's why I didn't understand you yesterday, Gabe, because women
don't really speak the language.
And I haven't learned how to interpret it yet.
(Background Noise).
Uh... Oh, really! I understand.
(Background Noise).
I think what you were trying to say is it's time to join Michelle in the
Language Lab.
Exactly right!
Hi, everyone. I'm Michelle.