The Book of Tea

今回はあまりにも有名な岡倉天心(本名:岡倉覚三)の The Book of Tea の冒頭の一部分を読んでみたいと思います。初版出版年は1906年、今から120年近く前ですが、海外では現在でも広く愛読されています。また、天心の没後、今日に至るまで多くの邦訳が出版されています。
岡倉天心とかれの業績については日本人であれば恐らく知らない人は少ないでしょう。生粋の日本人でありながらすさまじい努力で英語を習得し、見事な英文で日本を西洋に紹介した人物として、同時代の新渡戸稲造と並ぶ英語の達人です。
ちなみに、明治から昭和にかけての英語の達人を紹介した斎藤兆史氏の『英語達人列伝ーーあっぱれ、日本人の英語』(中公新書)は、オススメの一冊です。

まずは、今回の英文に出てくる単語のいくつかの発音を確認します。(発音は General British です。)↓

medicine /ˈmed(ɪ)sən/,  beverage /ˈbevərɪdʒ/,
realm /relm/,  poetry /ˈpəʊətri/, ennoble /ɪˈnəʊbl/,
æstheticism /iːsˈθetɪcɪzəm/~/esˈθetɪcɪzəm/,
inculcate /ˈɪŋkʌlkeɪt/, romanticism /rə(ʊ)ˈmæntəsɪzəm/,
conducive /kənˈdjuːsɪv/,  introspection /ˌɪntrəˈspekʃ(ə)n/,
favourable /ˈfeɪv(ə)rəbl/,  Teaism /ˈtiːɪzəm/,
cuisine /kwɪˈziːn/,  porcelain /ˈpɔːslɪn/, lacquer /ˈlækə/,
literature /ˈlɪt(ə)rətʃə/, permeate /ˈpɜːmieɪt/,
boudoir /ˈbuːdwɑː/, abode /əˈbəʊd/, salutation /ˌsæljuˈteɪʃən/,
parlance /ˈpɑːləns/, insusceptible /ˌɪnsəˈseptəbl/,
serio-comic /ˌsɪəriəʊˈkɒmɪk/, stigmatise /ˈstɪɡmətaɪz/,
æsthete /ˈiːsθiːt/, mundane /mʌnˈdeɪn/, tragedy /ˈtrædʒədi/,
riot /ˈraɪət/, emancipated /ɪˈmænsəpeɪtɪd/

それでは、文章を朗読してみます↓

Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of æstheticism—Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.
—–
The long isolation of Japan from the rest of the world, so conducive to introspection, has been highly favourable to the development of Teaism. Our home and habits, costume and cuisine, porcelain, lacquer, painting—our very literature—all have been subject to its influence. No student of Japanese culture could ever ignore its presence. It has permeated the elegance of noble boudoirs, and entered the abode of the humble. Our peasants have learned to arrange flowers, our meanest labourers to offer his salutation to the rocks and waters. In our common parlance we speak of the man “with no tea” in him, when he is insusceptible to the serio-comic interests of the personal drama. Again we stigmatise the untamed æsthete who, regardless of the mundane tragedy, runs riot in the springtide of emancipated emotions, as one “with too much tea” in him.

 
Today’s my singing

今回は ‘Padre’ という美しいカンツォーネ風の曲を歌ってみます。
Padre とはキリスト教の「神父;牧師」のことです。カタカナで表記すると「パドレ」となりますが、英語の発音は /ˈpɑːdreɪ/ です。英語の音韻体系では音節を短母音 /e/ のみで終わらせることができないので、二重母音の /-/ か、または karaoke /ˌkæriˈəʊki/ のように /-i/ で発音されたりします。

The day that we wed
You blessed us and said
May heaven bestow you grace
There in that holy place
We shared our first embrace

Our cottage was small
But richer than all
The palaces of the king
All day the birds would sing
Our hearts were filled with spring

Padre, padre
What happened to our love so true
Padre, oh padre
In my grief I turn to you

Then he came along
And sang her his song
And won her with honey lies
He of the fiery eyes
Now it’s not her that cries

So I will pray
The hours away
And weary my heart has grown
Wondering where love has flown
Counting my beads alone

Padre, oh padre
Please tell me how such things can be
Padre, oh padre
Pray for my love and me


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【朗読】“The Upside-Down Mice” by Roald Dahl

本当に久しぶりの更新です。今回は、イギリスの人気作家 Roald Dahl の “The Upside-Down Mice” を朗読してみたいと思います。まずは本文に出てくるいくつかの単語の発音を確認してみます。(発音は General British です)↓

quiet /ˈkwaɪət/, multiply /ˈmʌltɪplaɪ/, 
bother /
ˈbɒðə/, mousetrap /ˈmaʊstræp/, glue /gluː/,
tremendous /trɪˈmendəs/, gracious /ˈgreɪʃəs/,
hysterical /hɪˈsterɪkəl/, obediently /əˈbiːdiəntli/,
firmly /ˈfɜːmli/

‘obediently’ の ‘-tly’ (/-tli/) の部分は側面開放(lateral release)で発音しましょう。

では、本文を朗読してみます。(発音は General British です。)↓

Once upon a time there lived an old man of 87 whose name was Labon. All his life he had been a quiet and peaceful person. He was very poor and very happy.

When Labon discovered that he had mice in his house, it did not bother him much at first. But the mice multiplied. They began to bother him. They kept on multiplying and finally there came a time when even he could stand no longer.

“This is too much,” he said. “This really is going a bit too far.” He hobbled out of the house down the road to a shop where he bought some mousetraps, a piece of cheese and some glue.

When he got home, he put the glue on the underneath of the mousetraps and stuck them to the ceiling. Then he baited them carefully with pieces of cheese and set them to go off.

That night when the mice came out of their holes and saw the mousetraps on the ceiling, they thought it was a tremendous joke. They walked around on the floor, nudging each other and pointing up with their front paws and roaring with laughter. After all, it was pretty silly, mousetraps on the ceiling.

When Labon came down the next morning and saw that there were no mice caught in the traps, he smiled but said nothing.

He took a chair and put glue on the bottom of its legs and stuck it upside-down to the ceiling, near the mousetraps. He did the same with the table, the television set and the lamp. He took everything that was on the floor and stuck it upside-down on the ceiling. He even put a little carpet up there.

The next night when the mice came out of their holes they were still joking and laughing about what they had seen the night before. But now, when they looked up at the ceiling, they stopped laughing very suddenly.

“Good gracious me!” cried one. “Look up there! There’s the floor!”

“Heavens above!” shouted another. “We must be standing on the ceiling!”

“I’m beginning to feel a little giddy,” said another.

“All the blood’s going to my head,” said another.

“This is terrible!” said a very senior mouse with long whiskers. “This is really terrible! We must do something about it at once!”

“I shall faint if I have to stand on my head any longer!” shouted a young mouse.

“Me too!”

“I can’t stand it!”

“Save us! Do something, somebody, quick!”

They were getting hysterical now. “I know what we’ll do,” said the very senior mouse. “We’ll all stand on our heads, then we’ll be the right way up.”

Obediently, they all stood on their heads, and after a long time, one by one they fainted from a rush of blood to their brains.

When Labon came down the next morning the floor was littered with mice. Quickly he gathered them up and popped them all in a basket.

So the thing to remember is this: whenever the world seems to be terribly upside-down, make sure you keep your feet firmly on the ground.

お話しの朗読は本当に難しいですね。何度やっても満足できることがありませんが、練習あるのみですね。

——————

Today’s my singing

今回の歌は ‘Tonight Is So Right For Love’ という古い歌に挑戦です。General American のような rhotic accent で発音する人であっても、歌うときは ‘appear’, ‘here’, ‘near’, ‘door’, ‘for’, ‘more’ などの語中の ‘r’ を発音しない(少なくとも強く発音しない)ようにするのがポイントと言えるでしょう。

Hold me tight
The moon is so bright
Tonight is so right for love

Now’s the time
To say
 you’ll be mine
Tonight is so right for love

One by one the stars appear
They twinkle in your eyes
Who’d believe that we’d be here
So near to paradise

This could be the kiss
To unlock heaven’s door
That magic hour of bliss
That we both waited for
I love you more and more

Oh, we could fly
Right up to the sky
The things that we’ve been dreamin’ of
And how real they would seem
A midsummer night’s dream
Can’t you see that tonight’s so right for love

And how real they would seem
A midsummer night’s dream
Can’t you see that tonight’s so right for love

Hold me tight
The moon’s so bright
Tonight is so right for love

(*発音矯正を望まれる歌手・俳優、また、英語教師などの英語を使うお仕事をされている方は、ホームページをご覧の上メールにてお気軽にご相談ください。)

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【朗読】Lafcadio Hearn の「雪女」

ラフカディオ・ハーン(小泉八雲)については、おそらく皆さんも良くご存知のことと思います。日本に帰化し、生涯日本と日本人を愛したラフカディオ・ハーン。私は心の底から敬愛の念を抱いております。
今回は彼の有名な Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things の中から、“YUKI-ONNA” の全文を朗読に挑戦してみたいと思います。

まずは本文に出てくるいくつかの単語の発音を確認しておきます。(発音は General British です)↓

woodcutter /ˈwʊdkʌtə/, apprentice /əˈprentɪs/,
brazier /ˈbreɪzɪə/, fasten /ˈfɑːs(ə)n/,
awful /ˈɔːf(ə)l/, continual /kənˈtɪnjʊəl/,
furiously /ˈfʊəriəsli/, billet /ˈbɪlɪt/,
frightened /ˈfraɪtnd/, lately /ˈleɪtli/,
Yedo /ˈjiːdəʊ/*, servant /ˈsɜːvənt/,
betrothed /bɪˈtrəʊðd/, pledged /pledʒd/,
honourable /ˈɒnərəbl/, daughter-in-law /ˈdɔːt(ə)rɪnlɔː/,
confidence /ˈkɒnfɪdəns/, declare /dɪˈkleə/,
persuade /pəˈsweɪd/, peasant /ˈpezənt/,
sewing /ˈsəʊɪŋ/, shriek /ʃriːk/, shudder /ˈʃʌdə/

* ‘Yedo’ /ˈjedəʊ/ /ˈjiːdəʊ/ の2通りの発音があるようですが、今回は後者で発音しています。なお、現在では ‘Edo’ と綴るのが一般的で、発音は /ˈedəʊ/ が主流です(J.C. Wells, Longman Pronunciation Dictionary 参照)が、/ˈiːdəʊ/ も耳にすることがあります。

それでは、全文を朗読します。(発音は General British です)↓

In a village of Musashi Province, there lived two woodcutters: Mosaku and Minokichi. At the time of which I am speaking, Mosaku was an old man; and Minokichi, his apprentice, was a lad of eighteen years. Every day they went together to a forest situated about five miles from their village. On the way to that forest there is a wide river to cross; and there is a ferry-boat. Several times a bridge was built where the ferry is; but the bridge was each time carried away by a flood. No common bridge can resist the current there when the river rises.

 Mosaku and Minokichi were on their way home, one very cold evening, when a great snowstorm overtook them. They reached the ferry; and they found that the boatman had gone away, leaving his boat on the other side of the river. It was no day for swimming; and the woodcutters took shelter in the ferryman’s hut, thinking themselves lucky to find any shelter at all. There was no brazier in the hut, nor any place in which to make a fire: it was only a two-mat hut, with a single door, but no window. Mosaku and Minokichi fastened the door, and lay down to rest, with their straw rain-coats over them. At first they did not feel very cold; and they thought that the storm would soon be over.
 The old man almost immediately fell asleep; but the boy, Minokichi, lay awake a long time, listening to the awful wind, and the continual slashing of the snow against the door. The river was roaring; and the hut swayed and creaked like a junk at sea. It was a terrible storm; and the air was every moment becoming colder; and Minokichi shivered under his rain-coat. But at last, in spite of the cold, he too fell asleep.

 He was awakened by a showering of snow in his face. The door of the hut had been forced open; and, by the snow-light, he saw a woman in the room — a woman all in white. She was bending above Mosaku, and blowing her breath upon him; and her breath was like a bright white smoke. Almost in the same moment she turned to Minokichi, and stooped over him. He tried to cry out, but found that he could not utter any sound. The white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until her face almost touched him; and he saw that she was very beautiful, though her eyes made him afraid. For a little time she continued to look at him; then she smiled, and she whispered: “I intended to treat you like the other man. But I cannot help feeling some pity for you, because you are so young… You are a pretty boy, Minokichi; and I will not hurt you now. But, if you ever tell anybody — even your own mother — about what you have seen this night, I shall know it; and then I will kill you… Remember what I say!”

 With these words, she turned from him, and passed through the doorway. Then he found himself able to move; and he sprang up, and looked out. But the woman was nowhere to be seen; and the snow was driving furiously into the hut. Minokichi closed the door, and secured it by fixing several billets of wood against it. He wondered if the wind had blown it open; he thought that he might have been only dreaming, and might have mistaken the gleam of the snow-light in the doorway for the figure of a white woman: but he could not be sure. He called to Mosaku, and was frightened because the old man did not answer. He put out his hand in the dark, and touched Mosaku’s face, and found that it was ice! Mosaku was stark and dead…

 By dawn the storm was over; and when the ferryman returned to his station, a little after sunrise, he found Minokichi lying senseless beside the frozen body of Mosaku. Minokichi was promptly cared for, and soon came to himself; but he remained a long time ill from the effects of the cold of that terrible night. He had been greatly frightened also by the old man’s death; but he said nothing about the vision of the woman in white. As soon as he got well again, he returned to his calling, going alone every morning to the forest, and coming back at nightfall with his bundles of wood, which his mother helped him to sell.

 One evening, in the winter of the following year, as he was on his way home, he overtook a girl who happened to be travelling by the same road. She was a tall, slim girl, very good-looking; and she answered Minokichi’s greeting in a voice as pleasant to the ear as the voice of a song-bird. Then he walked beside her; and they began to talk. The girl said that her name was O-Yuki; that she had lately lost both of her parents; and that she was going to Yedo, where she happened to have some poor relations, who might help her to find a situation as a servant. Minokichi soon felt charmed by this strange girl; and the more that he looked at her, the handsomer she appeared to be. He asked her whether she was yet betrothed; and she answered, laughingly, that she was free. Then, in her turn, she asked Minokichi whether he was married, or pledged to marry; and he told her that, although he had only a widowed mother to support, the question of an “honourable daughter-in-law” had not yet been considered, as he was very young…

After these confidences, they walked on for a long while without speaking; but, as the proverb declares, “when the wish is there, the eyes can say as much as the mouth.” By the time they reached the village, they had become very much pleased with each other; and then Minokichi asked O-Yuki to rest awhile at his house. After some shy hesitation, she went there with him; and his mother made her welcome, and prepared a warm meal for her. O-Yuki behaved so nicely that Minokichi’s mother took a sudden fancy to her, and persuaded her to delay her journey to Yedo. And the natural end of the matter was that Yuki never went to Yedo at all. She remained in the house, as an “honourable daughter-in-law.”

 O-Yuki proved a very good daughter-in-law. When Minokichi’s mother came to die, some five years later, her last words were words of affection and praise for the wife of her son. And O-Yuki bore Minokichi ten children, boys and girls — handsome children all of them, and very fair of skin.
 The country-folk thought O-Yuki a wonderful person, by nature different from themselves. Most of the peasant-women age early; but O-Yuki, even after having become the mother of ten children, looked as young and fresh as on the day when she had first come to the village.

 One night, after the children had gone to sleep, O-Yuki was sewing by the light of a paper lamp; and Minokichi, watching her, said: “To see you sewing there, with the light on your face, makes me think of a strange thing that happened when I was a lad of eighteen. I then saw somebody as beautiful and white as you are now — indeed, she was very like you.” Without lifting her eyes from her work, O-Yuki responded: “Tell me about her… Where did you see her?”
 Then Minokichi told her about the terrible night in the ferryman’s hut, and about the White Woman that had stooped above him, smiling and whispering, and about the silent death of old Mosaku. And he said: “Asleep or awake, that was the only time that I saw a being as beautiful as you. Of course, she was not a human being; and I was afraid of her — very much afraid — but she was so white!… Indeed, I have never been sure whether it was a dream that I saw, or the Woman of the Snow.”

 O-Yuki flung down her sewing, and arose, and bowed above Minokichi where he sat, and shrieked into his face: “It was I—I—I! Yuki it was! And I told you then that I would kill you if you ever said one word about it!… But for those children asleep there, I would kill you this moment! And now you had better take very, very good care of them; for if ever they have reason to complain of you, I will treat you as you deserve!”
 Even as she screamed, her voice became thin, like a crying of wind; then she melted into a bright white mist that spired to the roof-beams, and shuddered away through the smoke-hold… Never again was she seen.

Today’s my singing

今回の歌は ‘Mine’ というバラードです。語数の少ない歌詞で、しかもスローなバラードなので、興味のある方はぜひ一緒に歌ってみてください。この曲を歌う時に一番気をつけるべきは ‘mine’(/maɪn/)の発音です。語尾が /n/ であることに注意しなければなりません。つまり、最後に舌尖を alveolar ridge にきちんと接触させるのを忘れないようにしましょう。

Mine is a heart
That beats for only you
Mine is a love
That always will be true

Forever more
Beyond the end of time
I will be your love
Promise you’ll be mine

(*発音矯正を望まれる歌手・俳優、また、英語教師などの英語を使うお仕事をされている方は、ホームページをご覧の上メールにてお気軽にご相談ください。こちらの旧サイトもぜひご覧下さい。)

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Shirlock Holmes を General British と General American で読み比べ

今回は Shirlock Holmes シリーズの A Study in Scarlet の中の一節を General British と General American で読み比べてみたいと思います。以前のブログで General British と General American の主な違いについては何度か紹介しました。たとえば General American は rhotic(綴りの ‘r’ はすべて発音しようとする)であるということと、/t/ が頻繁に tap [ t̬ ] で発音される傾向(‘city’, ‘sitting-room’, ‘narcotic’ など)は基本として知っておくといいですね。また、General British と General American の母音の種類や音色の違いは英語学習者にとってはいつでも厄介な問題かと思います。ではまず、今回の英文に出てくるいくつかの単語で、General British と General American の母音の違いがよくあらわれているのもをいくつか確認しておきます。(発音は General British に続いて General American です)↓

certainly £/ˈsɜːtnli/ – $/ˈsɜːrtnli/(rhoticity と母音の音色の違い),
not £/nɒt/ – $/nɑːt/(母音の音色の違い),
after £/ˈɑːftə/ – $/ˈæftər/(rhoticity と母音の違い),
laboratory £/ləˈbɒrətri/ – $/ˈlæbrətɔːri/(母音と強勢位置の違い),
hardly £/ˈhɑːdli/ – $/ˈhɑːrdli/(rhoticity と母音の音色の違い),
word £/wɜːd/ – $/wɜːrd/(rhoticity と母音の音色の違い),
narcotic £/nɑːˈkɒtɪk/ – $/nɑːrˈkɑːtɪk/(rhoticity と母音の違い)

それでは全文を朗読してみます。まずは General British で朗読します↓

Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with. He was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular. It was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning. Sometimes he spent his day at the chemical laboratory, sometimes in the dissecting-rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which appeared to take him into the lowest portions of the City. Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion.

次に General American で朗読してみます↓

Today’s my singing

今回の歌は軽快なカントリー・ナンバー ‘(Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such as I’ です。ビル・トレイダーが作詞・作曲し、1952年にハンク・スノウが歌ってヒットしました。エルビスがカバーしたバージョンもとても有名になりました。

Pardon me, if I’m sentimental
When we say goodbye
Don’t be angry with me should I cry
When you’re gone, yet I’ll dream
A little dream as years go by
Now and then there’s a fool such as I

Now and then there’s a fool such as I am over you
You taught me how to love
And now you say that we are through

I’m a fool, but I’ll love you dear
Until the day I die
Now and then there’s a fool such as I

 

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