【質問 No. 23335】 so few speakers の so について |
Brian |
2023-11-08 05:04:11 |
Ong uyanmadongo?
You probably don’t know how to answer that question ー unless you happen to be one of the roughly 430 people in the world who speak a language called Matukar Panau. Then, you would know it means, “How are you?” Matukar Panau is one of the world’s rarest languages. It is spoken in just two small coastal villages in Papua New Guinea. This tropical island nation lies in the southwest Pacific Ocean.
Until five years ago, David Harrison, a language expert at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, didn’t know much about Matukar Panau, either. No one had ever recorded or even studied its words and rules. With so few speakers, the language risked vanishing without a blip. It was endangered.
第3段落、3文目の、so few speakers の so は、「ほとんど~ない」という意の few を、単に強調しているだけですか。
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【回答】
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ご質問の so は、「それほど ~ の」という意味の「程度」を表す「副詞」で、so few, so little, so many, so much などのように、主に数量を強調するために使われます。英米人は、very beautiful, very exciting と言えば十分なところでも、so beautiful, so exciting と言う癖があり、中には、so very exciting などと強調することがります。
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