receipt「レシート」のｐは何のため？

今年、桜の開花宣言は３月中旬でしたが、朝晩の花冷えで桜満開期間が長かった様な気がします。先日、大阪在住の友人（B社採点時総務をお願いしていたK君）から６日現在、大阪市の桜は８分咲きとのメールを頂きました。４月に入り、朝晩の冷えで風邪を引きました。皆さんは体調等崩していませんか？

今回は英会話の生徒の質問に答えたいと思います。Receipt（レシート）のPは何の為ですか？と生徒から質問されました。これは何のためでもありません。ただの飾りです。この種の語にはReceipt（受領｛書｝）の他に、debt(デッｔ負債）、doubt（ダウｔ）、island（アイランｄ）、rhythm(リズム）があり、それぞれのp,b,s,hは読みません。読まないからといって驚いてはいけませんよ。もともと無かった文字なのです。元々無かった文字がどうしてこんな所に？と不思議に思っている方がいる事と思います。実は、これは単なる見栄からなのです。

１４～１６世紀にヨーロッパでは古典芸術や文化などの復興運動が起こりました。ギリシャの栄光とローマの威風をもう一度、世に言うルネッサンスです。言語の世界とて例外ではありませんでした。日本人にとっての古典と言えば、奈良平安朝の文学ですが、当時のイギリス人やフランス人にとっての古典はラテン語でした。

日本語と漢語の関係に似て、英語もラテン語の援助に負う所が大きく、綴りの似た単語が沢山ありました。receiptの古い語形はreceytで、ｐは有りませんでした。所が同意のラテン語にreceptaがあるのに気づいた文化人が「ラテン語の方が格好いい。やっぱり、風格があるんだなあ～」とか言って、無理やりｐをreceytに入れてしまったのです。これがreceipt誕生の秘話です。debt,doubtのb、islandのs、rhythmのhもみなラテン語を手本に造られた飾り綴りです。発音上読みにくい場合は黙字になりました。　日本語にも、「和泉（いずみ）｝という変則的な綴りが有ります。和泉式部日記や大阪府和泉市でお馴染みの「和泉」です。「和」は無くとも「いずみ」とは読めるのですが、何となく「和」があった方が古風で雅やかな印象を与えるのは事実ですね。




Culture Shock in Japan
Knockand the door will opened to you. I was never a paricularly attentive Sunday school student, but there are some traditional injuntions that you can't help but absorb when growing up in a particular culture. To a large degree, Westerners are encouraged from childhood to seek solutions to problems. Difficulties big and small should not be endured but resolved.

Which is why it can be so whiplash-inducing to live in Japan and see how people quietly tolerate situations that I think would be so easy to improve. My most recent esample took place at the sports club I infrequently frequent. Seated on a stationary bicycle, there's nowwhere else for me to look but at the three TV monitors directly ahead, each displaying a different local station. On this day, one showed the news, another a talk show, and the thired was a drama which at this moment showed a junior high-schooler being raped by a much older man (no clothes came off, but one got the ge3neral idea.)

I looked around rhe room. It was about two in teh afternoon. There were half a dozen other people on bikes and Stairmasters, and they were all facing the same direction as I was. Did no one else object to seeing this? Regard less, I called one of the club trainers over and told him I wasn't happy with the TV channel.
"Which one?" he asked.

I was stunned that I had to explain. "Does everyone here like watching that dram?" He finally got the idea, but he was obligated to ask whether anyone minded if he changed the channe. Only one other person could even be bothered to respond: a grandfatherly sort who shook his head in solemn disgust. The channel was changed; the problem was solved.

Yet time and again I have seen problems-at least I thought they were problems - - left hanging because people couldn't be bothered to lift a finger,or lend a helping hand, or even offer a simple opinion. Moare than onece I have gotten on the train or a bus on a hot day, only to find that someone had opened a window and left it open, letting the AC gush out of the vehicle. Was it so hard for anyone to close the window? Or take the person in the wheelchair patienly waiting for the elevator (which, incidentally, was clearly marked as having PRIORITY for people in wheelchairs), only to see the door open and the elevator crammed with people with two healthy legs was it so hard to suffest(as I did) that someone ought to get out and take the escalator located four meters away?

MY "favorite"incident occurred while waiting in a throung of commuters on a platform for the morning train. Like everyone else I was just thinking about getting wo work, when I did a double take and looked at the man standing on the opposite platform a man with his pants wide oopen who was happily playing with himself for all to see.

I could't believe my own eyes, so I looked up and down at eh people on my patform, wondering who else was shocked to see this. The answer; nobody. By a singular coincidence, everyone was lookin in ever other possible direction. They looked at the arriving train, at their newspapers, at the sky - anywhere except at the man. I got the sneaking suspicion that everyone was studiously avoiding gawkig, because to acknowlege the problem meant having to do something about it.

I couldn't restrain myself any longer. "PUT YOUR PANTS ON!" I bellowed . My students later complimented me on how brave I was to shout at a man on another platform. "He could have had a knife," they said. I don't doubt that some nuts out there do, but this guy wasn't one of them: He panicked, zipped his trousers and bolted.

I'm not trying to be a saint or anything. I'm just saying that I believe many things around us can be improved with just the barest minimum of effort. If an individual thinks something is a problem, I feel it is perfectly acceptable to question it, challenge it, and resposibly act upon it. Even the smallest of reforms is worthwhile. One of my tiny goals in life is to find out why some stores in Japan will have entrances with four doors, but two of them will be locked. Wouldn't it be safer for everyone if all of the doors were unlocked? Wouldn't it be sensible to change things?

But I guess that's why people in Japan so seldom knock upon the door. They figure that the damn door is locked anyway.