スミス英会話布施校講師が書いた記事。 日本語のメインサイトはこちら
This week, I chose these wonderful yellow orchids Oncidium オンシジウムto decorate the Smith`s school of English in Fuse, Higashiosaka 東大阪布施. I love orchids オンシジューム for their intriguing form and their variety. The variety of the genus orchid is immense, with all kinds of colors and sizes. The bright yellow color of the orchid オンシジウム in our English conversation school 英会話教室 in Ajiro, Fuse 布施足代 fascinate our English conversation students 英会話生徒 when they enter the conversation school.
As the name of cyclamen シクラメン my wife gave me as a present two weeks ago, the Katakana name オンシジウム or オンシジューム originates from the Latin name of the orchid genus “Oncidium”. An interesting number of imported flower names in Japanese are actually taken from the scientific Latin name, which shows the great care and deep knowledge Japanese put in their field of interest.
In the English conversation lessons 英会話, I always like to use the flowers in the reception room to practice some detail of the English language. This week the conversation students 英会話生徒 could try to describe the orchids オンシジュームin detail. As 
can be seen in the picture, the flower is yellow, but it seems to have brown dots. So the students would say: “It`s a brown dotted yellow flower.” or “It`s a yellow flower with brown dots.” But if you look carefully, the flower is rather striped than dotted. So the students could correct themselves by saying: “It`s a brown striped yellow flower.” or “It`s a yellow flower with brown stripes.” Some students could use these new words in the English conversation lesson of that day by describing all sorts of dotted or striped bags, umbrellas and jackets.
If you want to know more about orchids, try the wikipedia page in English on Oncidium or on the family Orchidaceae, and the page in Japanese オンシジューム and ラン科.
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