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, TEDx. Where'd that come from?
Imam odgovor na pitanje koje smo svi postavljali. Pitanje je: zašto je slovo X odabrano da predstavlja nepoznatu? Znam da smo svi mi učili to na časovima matematike, ali sada je njegova upotreba proširena u celoj kulturi - X Nagrada, Dosije-X Projekat X, TEDx. Odakle je to poteklo?
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.
Pre oko šest godina odlučio sam da naučim arapski, koji se ispostavio da je krajnje logičan jezik. Napisati reč ili frazu ili rečenicu na arapskom je kao kreiranje jednačine, zato što je svaki deo izuzetno precizan i nosi dosta informacija. To je jedan od razloga zašto su toliko toga što smatramo "zapadnom" naukom, matematikom i inženjerstvom, zapravo u prvim vekovima nove ere smislili Persijanci, Arapi i Turci.
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. One example among many.
Pod ovim se podrazumeva i mali sistem u arapskom poznat po nazivu "al-gebr". A "al-gebr" se grubo prevodi kao "sistem za usaglašavanje različitih delova". "Al-gebr" je na kraju došao u ostale jezike pod nazivom "algebra". Jedan primer od mnogih.
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.
Arapski tekstovi koji sadrže ovu matematičku mudrost su konačno pronašli svoj put do Evrope - to jest, Španije - u XI i XII veku. Kada su stigli postojalo je veliko interesovanje za prevođenje ove mudrosti u evropske jezike.
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.
Ali bilo je problema. Jedan problem je što postoje neki zvuci u arapskom jeziku koji se jednostavno ne mogu predstaviti evropskim ekvivalentnim zvukom bez dosta vežbanja. Verujte mi na reč. Takođe, isti ti zvukovi se najčešće ne mogu predstaviti karakterima koji su dostupni u evropskim jezicima.
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 shayun, which means "something" just like the the English word "something" -- some undefined, unknown thing.
Evo jednog primera. Ovo je slovo "Šiin", i ono proizvodi zvuk koji mi zovemo "Š". To je takođe prvo slovo reči "šei-on", što znači "nešto" kao što u srpskom reč "nešto" znači - nešto nedefinisano, nepoznata stvar.
Now in Arabic, we can make this definite by adding the definite article "al." So this is al-shayun -- the unknown thing. And this is a word that appears throughout early mathematics, such as this 10th-century derivation of roots.
U arapskom, mi ovo možemo da napravimo u nešto određeno dodavanjem člana "al". Tako da ovo postaje "al-šaion" - neka određena, ali nepoznata stvar. I ovo je reč koja se pojavljuje kroz celu ranu matematiku, kao što je ovo korenovanje iz X veka.
The problem for the Medieval Spanish scholars who were tasked with translating this material is that the letter sheen and the word shayun can't be rendered into Spanish because Spanish doesn't have that SH, that "sh" sound. So by convention, they created a rule in which they borrowed the CK sound, "ck" sound, from the classical Greek in the form of the letter Kai.
Problem za srednjevekovne španske učenjake, koji su dobili zadatak da prevedu ovaj materijal je taj da slovo "Šiin" i reč "šeion" ne može da se prevede na španski zato što španski nema to slovo "Š", taj "š" zvuk. Tako, po konvenciji, napravili su pravilo u kome su pozajmili CK zvuk, "K" zvuk, iz klasičnog grčkog u formi slova Kai.
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.
Kasnije, kada je ovaj materijal preveden u standardne evropske jezike, što će reći, latinski, jednostavno su zamenili grčko "Kai" sa latinskim X. Jednom kada se to desilo, kada je ovaj materijal bio na latinskom, formirao je osnovu za matematičke udžbenike skoro 600 godina.
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. (Laughter) And I thought that was worth sharing.
Sada mi imamo odgovor na naše pitanje. Zašto je baš X nepoznata? X je nepoznata zato što ne možete da kažete "Š" na španskom. (smeh) I smatrao sam da ova informacija zaslužuje da je podelim sa vama.
(Applause)
(aplauz)