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1、初中生英语演讲三分钟初中生英语演讲三分钟1i have the answer to a question that weve all asked. the question is, why is it that the letter x represents the unknown? now i know we learned that in math class, but now its everywhere in the culture - the x prize, the x-files, project x, tedx. whered that come from?about six
2、years ago i decided that i would learn arabic, which turns out to be a supremely logical language. to write a word or a phrase or a sentence in arabic is like crafting an equation, because every part is extremely precise and carries a lot of information. thats one of the reasons so much of what weve
3、 come to think of as western science and mathematics and engineering was really worked out in the first few centuries of the common era by the persians and the arabs and the turks.this includes the little system in arabic called al-jebra. and al-jebr roughly translates to “the system for reconciling
4、 disparate parts.“ al-jebr finally came into english as algebra. one example among many.the arabic texts containing this mathematical wisdom finally made their way to europe - which is to say spain - in the 11th and 12th centuries. and when they arrived there was tremendous interest in translating t
5、his wisdom into a european language.but there were problems. one problem is there are some sounds in arabic that just dont make it through a european voice box without lots of practice. trust me on that one. also, those very sounds tend not to be represented by the characters that are available in e
6、uropean languages.初中生英语演讲三分钟2heres one of the culprits. this is the letter sheen, and it makes the sound we think of as sh - “sh.“ its also the very first letter of the word shalan, which means “something“ just like the the english word “something“ - some undefined, unknown thing.now in arabic, we c
7、an make this definite by adding the definite article “al.“ so this is al-shalan - the unknown thing. and this is a word that appears throughout early mathematics, such as this 10th century derivation of proofs.the problem for the medieval spanish scholars who were tasked with translating this materi
8、al is that the letter sheen and the word shalan cant be rendered into spanish because spanish doesnt have that sh, that “sh“ sound. so by convention, they created a rule in which they borrowed the ck sound, “ck“ sound, from the classical greek in the form of the letter kai.later when this material w
9、as translated into a common european language, which is to say latin, they simply replaced the greek kai with the latin x. and once that happened, once this material was in latin, it formed the basis for mathematics textbooks for almost 600 years.but now we have the answer to our question. why is it
10、 that x is the unknown? x is the unknown because you cant say “sh“ in spanish. (laughter) and i thought that was worth sharing.初中生英语演讲三分钟3camp was more like a keg party without any alcohol. and on the very first day our counselor gathered us all together and she taught us a cheer that she said we wo
11、uld be doing every day for the rest of the summer to instill camp spirit. and it went like this: “r-o-w-d-i-e, thats the way we spell rowdie. rowdie, rowdie, lets get rowdie.“ yeah. so i couldnt figure out for the life of me why we were supposed to be so rowdy, or why we had to spell this word incor
12、rectly. (laughter) but i recited a cheer. i recited a cheer along with everybody else. i did my best. and i just waited for the time that i could go off and read my books.but the first time that i took my book out of my suitcase, the coolest girl in the bunk came up to me and she asked me, “why are
13、you being so mellow?“ - mellow, of course, being the exact opposite of r-o-w-d-i-e. and then the second time i tried it, the counselor came up to me with a concerned expression on her face and she repeated the point about camp spirit and said we should all work very hard to be outgoing.and so i put
14、my books away, back in their suitcase, and i put them under my bed, and there they stayed for the rest of the summer. and i felt kind of guilty about this. i felt as if the books needed me somehow, and they were calling out to me and i was forsaking them. but i did forsake them and i didnt open that
15、 suitcase again until i was back home with my family at the end of the summer.now, i tell you this story about summer camp. i could have told you 50 others just like it - all the times that i got the message that somehow my quiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the right way to go
16、, that i should be trying to pass as more of an extrovert. and i always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty excellent just as they were. but for years i denied this intuition, and so i became a wall street lawyer, of all things, instead of the writer that i had always longed to be - partly because i needed to prove to myself that i could be bold and assertive too. and
