Lesson 3
Pub Talk and the King’s English
Henry Fairlie
1Conversation is the most sociable of all human activities. And it is an activity only of humans. However intricate the ways in which animals communicate with each other, they do not indulge in anything that derves the name of conversation.
2The charm2011红白歌会 of conversation is that it does not really start from anywhere, and no one has any idea where it will go as it meanders or leaps and sparkles or just glows. The enemy of good conversation is the person who has “英语在现翻译something to say.” Conversation is not for making a point. Argument may often be a part of it, but the purpo of the argument is not to convince. There is kokano winning in conversation. In fact, the best conversationalists are tho who are prepared to lo. Suddenly they e the moment for one of their best anecdotes, but in a flash the conversation has moved on and the 祭祀怎么读opportunity is lost. They are ready to let it go.
3Perhaps it is becau of my up-bringing in English pubs that I think bar conversation has a charm of its own. Bar friends are not deeply involved in each other’s lives. They are 电子版圣经companions, not intimates. The fact that their marriages may be on the rocks, or that their love affairs have been broken or even that they got out of bed on the wrong side is simply not a concern. They are like the musketeers of Dumas who, although they lived side by side with each other, did not delve into each other’s lives or the recess of their thoughts and feelings.
4It was 托福口语机经on such an occasion the other evening, as the conversation moved desultorily here and there, from the most commonplace to thoughts of Jupiter, without any focus and with no need for one, that suddenly the alchemy of conversation took place, and all at once there was a focus. I do not remember what made one of our companions say it ---she clearly had not come into the bar to say it, it was not something that was pressing on her mind ---- but her remark fell quite naturally intohowold the talk.
5“Someone told me the other day that the phra, “the King’s English,’ was a term of criticism, that it means language which one should not properly u.”firm
6The glow of the conversation burst into flames. There were affirmations and protests and denials, and of cour the promi, made in all such conversation, that we would look it up on the morning. That would ttle it; but conversation does not need to be ttled; it could still go ignorantly on.
7It was an Australian who had given her such a definition of “the King’s English,” which produced some rather tart remarks about what one could expect from the descendants of convicts. We had traveled in five minutes to Australia. Of cour, there would be resistance to the King’s English in such a society. There is always resistance in the lower class to any attempt by an upper class to lay down rules for “English as it should be spoken.”
two months8Look at the language barrier between the Saxon churls and their Norman conquerors. The conversation had swung from Australian convicts of the 19th century to the English peasants of the 12th century. Who was right, who was wrong, did not matter. The conversation was on wings.
9Someone took one of the best-known of examples, which is still always worth the reconsidering. When we talk of meat on our tables, we u French words; when we speak of the animals from which the meat comes we u Anglo Saxon words. It is a pig in its sty; it is pork( porc ) on the table. They are cattle in the fields, but we sit down to beef (boeuf). Chickens become poultryisle of man (poulet ), and a calf becomes veal (veau ). Even if our menus were not written in French out of snobbery, the English we ud in them would still be Norman English. What all this tells us is of a deep class rift in the culture of England after the Norman conquest.
10The Saxon peasants who tilled the land and reared the animals could not afford the meat, which went to Norman tables. The peasants were allowed to eat the rabbits that scampered over their fields and, since that meat was cheap, the Norman lords of cour tuned up their nos at it. So rabbit is still rabbit on our tables, and not changed into some rendering of lapin.
11As we listen today to the arguments about bilingual education, we ought to think ourl
ves back into the shoes of the Saxon peasant. The new ruling class had built a cultural 初一暑假英语日记barrier against him by building their French against his own language. They must have been a great deal of cultural humiliation felt by the English when they revolted under Saxon leaders like Hereward the Wake. “The King’s English” ---- if the term had existed then--- had become French. And here in America now, 900 years later, we are still the heirs to it.
