声控英乐团 | Why is 'x' the unknown?

Why is 'x' the unknown?

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Terry Moore

        我们在数学中都学过X，知道它代表未知。在日常生活中我们也常运用这一符号来表示各种文化含义。可是，为什么是X 表示未知呢？这一表达方式从何而来？Terry Moore 为我们带来了解读。

I have the answer to a question that we've 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 it's everywhere in the culture -- The X prize, the X-Files, Project X. Where'd that come from?

我有一个我们共有疑问的答案。这个问题是，为什么字母X代表未知？我已经知道能从从数学中学习到它，但现在它在文化中无处不在 - X奖，X文件，项目X。他到底是来自哪里呢？

About six 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. That's one of the reasons so much of what we've 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.

大约六年前，我决定学习阿拉伯语，这是一个非常合乎逻辑的语言。用阿拉伯语写一个单词或一个短语或一个句子就像制作一个方程，因为每个部分都非常精确，并且带有很多信息。这是我们会思考到的几个问题的原因之一，即我们认为西方科学、数学和工程在头几个世纪是由波斯人，阿拉伯人和土耳其人真正发挥作用。

This includes the little system in Arabic called al-jebra. And al-jebr roughly translates to "the system for reconciling disparate parts." Al-jebr finally came into English as algebra. 

这包括在阿拉伯语称为al-jebra的小系统。和al-jebr大致翻译为“调和不同的部分的系统”。 Al-jebr终于以代数的方式进入英语。

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 this wisdom into a European language.

包含这种数学智慧的阿拉伯文本终于在11世纪和12世纪走向欧洲 -- 西班牙。当他们到达那里时，对它们极有兴趣的人将这种智慧翻译成欧洲语言。

But there were problems. One problem is there are some sounds in Arabic that just don't 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 European languages.

但他们遇到了一些问题。其中一个问题是，如果不能通过大量的练习，欧洲人无法发出一些阿拉伯语发音。这一点你们要相信我。此外，这些非常声音往往不能用欧洲语言中的字符表示。

Here's one of the culprits. This is the letter SHeen, and it makes the sound we think of as SH -- "sh." It's also the very first letter of the word shalan, which means "something" just like the the English word "something" -- some undefined, unknown thing.

这举例造成这种后果的罪魁祸首之一。这是字母SHeen，它发出的是我们认为SH -- “sh”的声音。它也是单词shalan的第一个字母，这意味着“东西”就像英语单词“something” -- 一些未定义的，未知的东西。

Now in Arabic, we can 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.

现在在阿拉伯语，我们可以通过添加定冠词“al。所以这是al-shalan -- 未知的事情。这是一个出现在早期数学中的词。

The problem for the Medieval Spanish scholars who were tasked with translating this material is that the letter SHeen and the word shalan can't be rendered into Spanish because Spanish doesn't have that sound "sh". So by convention, they created a rule in which they borrowed the  "ck"sound, from the classical Greek in the form of the letter Kai.

中世纪西班牙学者翻译这种材料的所遇到的问题是，字母SHeen和单词shalan不能在西班牙语中表现，因为西班牙语没有那个“sh”的声音。因此，按照惯例，他们创造了一个规则，他们借用“ck”声音，来源于古典希腊语的字母Kai的形式。

Later when this material was 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.

后来，当这种材料被翻译成一个通俗的欧洲语言，也就是拉丁语时，他们只是用拉丁语X替代了希腊语Kai。自从这种情况发生后，它几乎形成了数学教科书的基础，长达几乎600年。

But now we have the answer to our question. Why is it that X is the unknown? X is the unknown because you can't say "sh" in Spanish. 

现在我们有我们的问题的答案。为什么X是未知的？ X是未知的，是因为你不能在西班牙语中说“sh”。 

注：图片来源于网络

主播：李依凡

编辑：李依凡

责编：张    晗