Reader's Digestは宣伝の個所もだいたい読んでいます。次の宣伝記事は６月号からの引用です。
Lorna Whiston's REAL READING System(TM) encourages higher comprehension skills such as deduction, hypothesis and inference. This stands the students in good stead for their reading comprehension papers in school.
"stead" の単語は "in stead of" での用法しか知りませんが、上の "in good stead" はどんな意味になるのでしょうか？
辞書を見ると "stand someone in good stead" と言うイデオムがあることが分かりました。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Be advantageous or useful to someone over time or in the future: 'his early training stood him in good stead’
・Cambridge English Dictionary: If an experience stands a person in good stead, it is or will be of great use to them: Getting some work experience now will stand you in good stead (for) when you apply for a permanent job.
・McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs: [for something] to be of great use and benefit to someone. I know that my large vocabulary will always stand me in good stead at college. Any experience you can get in dealing with the public will stand you in good stead no matter what line of work you go into.
Reader's Digestには動物の記事が必ずありますが、次の引用文は6月号の亀の話からです。
Our neighbour's tortoise, Harold, would constantly escape from their garden, often warranting a large search party to find him. My father, who was a scientific engineer, offered to build a tracking device.
"warrant" と言うと、「保証する」と「認可する」の意味しか覚えていないので、上記の文脈には合いません。別の意味もあるに違いありません。辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Justify or necessitate (a certain course of action): ‘that offense is serious enough to warrant a court marshal’
・Macmillan Dictionary: to make an action seem reasonable or necessary: What he did was serious enough to warrant punishment.
・Vocabulary.com: It's a noun! It's a verb! It's a word that warrants our attention! As a noun, it's the piece of paper they show you through the keyhole during an investigation. It's also a reason for doing something, or a promise (think of the warranty on your new car, the promise that it'll work for a certain amount of time). As a verb, it means to make something seem reasonable or necessary, such when the ticking suitcase warrants bringing in the bomb squad, or when the teenager's sneaking in late again warrants a stricter curfew.
"warrant" のこの意味も覚える必要があるのは当然の事ですね。
前にもReader's DigestにAre you normal? or Nuts?の特集があった記憶がありますが、次の引用は6月号からのその一部です。
Why are you so scared? Because puppets are creepy. There's even a name for it: pupaphobia.
The problem with puppets - and dolls and ventriloquist dummies - is that they occupy what's called the uncanny valley - between alive and not alive.
特に人形嫌いではありませんが、生きている人間の様で、でも本物ではないと分かる人形、例えばマダムタッソーの蝋人形が気味の悪い感じがするのは分かる気がします。その感じを "uncanny valley" と言うのは興味があります。辞書に説明があるでしょうか？
・Oxford English Dictionary: Used in reference to the phenomenon whereby a computer-generated figure or humanoid robot bearing a near-identical resemblance to a human being arouses a sense of unease or revulsion in the person viewing it: ‘anyone attempting to build a believable human facsimile also has to beware of the uncanny valley’
何故 "uncanny valley" と言うのかも次の様に出ていました。
1970s: from a translation of Japanese Bukimi no Tani Gensho, coined by the roboticist Masahiro Moti, who created a graph that plotted the emotional response of a human being to a robot against the increase in the perceived realism of a robot; the graph showed a significant dip at the point where the robot's resemblance to a human is perceived to be almost exact.
何と日本人が研究した論文で使われた日本語から来ているとは知りませんでした。
長くなるので引用しませんが、より詳しい説明がWikipediaにあり、そこには不気味の谷を示すグラフも出ています。
今日の単語もReader's Digest 6月号の脳の記事からです。
Your Brain: Glial Cells
These cell are an essential part of the brain. The word glia means "glue" and they hold the active neurons in place. They also work in multiple ways to keep the whole nervous system healthy. Humans have the most abundant and largest glial cells of any animal.
"glia" についての辞書の説明を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: The connective tissue of the nervous system, consisting of several different types of cell associated with neurons. Also called neuroglia.: These factors play a pivotal role in brain development by direction the formation of neurons and supporting cells called glia from uncommitted progenitor cells.
この手の単語はWikipediaの方が詳しい説明があるのでWikipediaから一部を抜粋します。
As the Greek name implies, glia are commonly known as the glue of the nervous system; however, this is not fully accurate. Neuroscience currently identifies four main functions of glial cells:
1.To surround neurons and hold them in place
2.To supply nutrients and oxygen to neurons
3.To insulate one neuron from another
4.To destroy pathogens and remove dead neurons.
For over a century, it was believed that the neuroglia did not play any role in neurotransmission. However 21st century neuroscience has recognized that glial cells do have some effects on certain physiological processes like breathing, and in assisting the neurons to form synaptic connections between each other.
今週はReader's Digest 6月号を読みます。まず脳についての記事The Amazing Brainに出てきた単語を採り上げます。
Serrell is an acquired savant - someone for whom a brain injury has unlocked astonishing mental powers, ones that scientists believe lie latent within all of us.
"savant" の説明が文中にありますが、辞書あるいはWikipediaに記述があるか調べます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A learned person, especially a distinguished scientist.: They're obsessed with systems, and they're good at systemizing, even when they don't happen to be mathematics profssors or savants.
・Vocabulary.com: You know that girl in your school with a GPA over 100? She is a savant in the making. A savant is someone over-the-top smart, a scholar. It might take a savant only five minutes to do an entire math test.
Savant is the French word for "learned" and it goes back to the Latin word "to be wise", sapere. There are savants who are wise and learned, and then there are idiot savants, who are brilliant in very specific areas, but not in others, like an idiot savant who knows absolutely everything about the American Civil War but has no ability with learning a foreign language.
どの辞書も大体上のような説明で記事で使われているような特殊な状況による知能の持ち主ではありません。しかし、Wikipediaに "Savant syndrome" の項で次の説明がありました。
Savant syndrome is a condition in which a person with a mental disability, such as an autism spectrum disorder, demonstrates profound and prodigious capacities or abilities far in excess of what would be considered normal. People with savant syndrome may have neurodevelopmental disorders, notably autism spectrum disorders, or brain injuries. The most dramatic examples of savant syndrome occur in individuals who score very low on IQ tests, while demonstrating exceptional skills or brilliance in specific areas, such as rapid calculation, art, memory, or musical ability. In spite of the name "syndrome", it is not recognized as a mental disorder nor as part of mental disorder in medical manuals such as the ICD-10 or the DSM-V.
記事での "savant" はこの "savant syndrome" による "savant" の様です。
What does a clock do when it's hungry? It goes back four seconds.
Japan Times Online July 2 の記事GM is no transformer and that’s the problem に出てきた "lifer" と言う単語が気になりました。
GM’s inability to look outside of itself for talent, still relying on company lifers even in the face of undeniable evidence of deep cultural rot, demonstrates how far the firm is from a genuine transformation. In the latest corporate reshuffle, Barra named GM’s North American manufacturing chief to a new position in charge of “product excellence,” and replaced him with yet another company lifer.
GMは外部の優秀な人材を探すことができず "lifer" に頼っていると言うことは "lifer" に内部の人材の意味があるようですが、辞書で確かめます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A person serving a life sentence in prison.: ‘Before most lifers die in prison, they grow old, get sick, and must be cared for.’someone who has been sent to prison for the rest of their life
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: 1.a person who spends an entire career in the same job 2. a criminal who has been sentenced to spend the rest of his or her life in prison: He was a lifer at the factory.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: someone who has been punished by being put in prison for a very long time or until they die
GMは牢獄ですか？ 米国では転職して待遇のより良い会社、身分になるのが好まれることが良く分かります。
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