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大学英语综合教程2第七单元课文Print still Kin
Part I Pre-Reading Task
Listen to the recording two or three times and then think over the following questions:
1. What is the passage about?
2. What's your impression of the English language?
毫秒英文西安课外辅导3. Can you give one or two examples to illustrate(说明)the messiness of the English language?
4. Can you guess what the texts in this unit are going to be about?
The following words in the recording may be new to you:
eggplant
n. 茄⼦
pineapple
n. 菠萝
hamburger
n. 汉堡⽜⾁饼，汉堡包
Part II
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Text
chocolateSome languages resist the introduction of new words. Others, like English, em to welcome them. Robert MacNeil looks at the history of English and comes to the conclusion that its tolerance for change reprents deeply rooted ideas of freedom.
THE GLORIOUS MESSINESS OF ENGLISH
Robert MacNeil
英语a级试题
The story of our English language is typically one of massive stealing from other languages. That is why English today has an estimated vocabulary of over one million words, while other major languages have far fewer.
French, for example, has only about 75,000 words, and that includes English expressions like snack bar and hit parade. The French, however, do not like borrowing foreign words becau they think it corrupts their language. The government tries to ban words from English and declares that walkman is not desirable; so they invent a word, balladeur, which French kids are suppod to say instead — but they don't.
Walkman is fascinating becau it isn't even English. Strictly speaking, it was invented by the Japane manufacturers who put two simple English words together to name their product. That doesn't bother us, but it does bother the French. Such is the glorious messiness of English. That happy tolerance, that willingness to accept words from anywhere, explains the richness of English and why it has become, to a very real extent, the first truly globallanguage.
spentHow did the language of a small island off the coast of Europe become the language of the planet — more widely spoken and written than any other has ever been? The history of English is prent in the first words a child learns about identity (I, me, you); posssion (mine, yours); the body (eye, no, mouth); size (tall, short); and necessities (food, water). The words all come from Old English or Anglo-Saxon English, the core of our language. Usually short and direct, the are words we still u today for the things that really matter to us.
Great speakers often u Old English to arou our emotions. For example, during World War II, Winston Churchill made this speech, stirring the courage of his people against Hitler's armies positioned to cross the English Channel: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender."
manna
Virtually every one of tho words came from Old English, except the last — surrender, which came from Norman French. Churchill could have said, "We shall never give in," but
it is one of the lovely — and powerful — opportunities of English that a writer can mix, for effect, different words from different backgrounds. Yet there is something direct to the heart that speaks to us from the earliest words in our language.
When Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 B.C., English did not exist. The Celts, who inhabited the land, spoke languages that survive today mainly as Welsh. Where tho languages came from is still a mystery, but there is a theory.
Two centuries ago an English judge in India noticed that veral words in Sanskrit cloly rembled some words in Greek and Latin. A systematic study revealed that many modern languages descended from a commonparent language, lost to us becau nothing was written down.workon
Identifying similar words, linguists have come up with what they call an Indo-European parent language, spoken until 3500 to 2000 B.C. The people had common words for snow, bee and wolf but no word for a. So some scholars assume they lived somewhere in north-central Europe, where it was cold. Traveling east, some established the language
s of India and Pakistan, and others drifted west toward the gentler climates of Europe, Some who made the earliest move westward became known as the Celts, whom Caesar's armies found in Britain.
New words came with the Germanic tribes — the Angles, the Saxons, etc. — that slipped across the North Sea to ttle in Britain in the 5th century. Together they formed what we call Anglo-Saxon society.
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The Anglo-Saxons pasd on to us their farming vocabulary, including sheep, ox, earth, wood, field and work. They must have also enjoyed themlves becau they gave us the word laughter.
