On New Year’s Day 2025, I saw the first sunrise of the year. It was so beautiful that I made a promise: I want to wake up early to see the sunrise every morning!
While watching the sunrise, I became very interested in the English word “rise.” I studied this word and found some amazing things:
The word “rise” comes from a very old language called Proto-Indo-European. In that language, the root word was “er,” which meant “to move.”
Some other English words come from this same old root:
“earnest” (when someone is ready to move and do something)
“origin” (the place where something starts to move from)
“Orient” (the East, where the sun moves up from)
“raise” (to make something move up)
I also learned something very interesting about English sounds:
The [i] sound in English often means “near to us,” while [e] and [a] sounds often mean “far from us.” Let me show you some examples:
“here” (near) vs. “there” (far)
“sit” vs. “set”
“sit” (intransitive verb – you do it yourself) has [i]
“set” (transitive verb – you do it to something else) has [e]
Two more interesting pairs of verbs:
“rise” and “raise”
“lie” and “lay”
In both pairs:
The intransitive verb (rise, lie) shows an action you do yourself
The transitive verb (raise, lay) shows an action you do to something else
A long time ago (14th-16th century), English had a big change in pronunciation called the Great Vowel Shift. Before this change, these words followed the same pattern of [i] for “near” actions and [a/e] for “far” actions.
At the start of this new year, even though the sunrise happens very far away in the sky, it felt very near to my heart!
私立学校に英語教師として勤務中、40代半ばに差し掛かったころ、荒れたクラスを立て直す策として、生徒に公言して英検1級に挑戦することを思い立つ。同様の挑戦を繰り返し、退職までに英検一級（検定連合会長賞）、TOEIC満点、国連英検SA級、フランス語一級、スペイン語一級（文科大臣賞）、ドイツ語一級、放送大学大学院修士号などの成果を得る。
アメリカで生徒への対応法を学ぶ為に研修（地銀の助成金）。最新の心理学に触れた。4都県での全発表、勤務校での教員への研修を英語で行う。現在も特別選抜クラスの授業を全て英語で行っている。「どうやって単語を覚えればいいですか？」という良くある質問に答える為、印欧祖語からの派生に基づく「生徒には見せたくない語源英単語集」を執筆中。完成間近。常日頃洋書の読破で様々な思考にふれているが、そうして得た発想の一つを生かして書いた論文がコロナ対策論文として最近入賞。賞品の牛肉に舌鼓をうっている。元英検面接委員