大學(xué)英語綜合教程第二冊 7

[00:00.00] Some languages resist the introduction of new words. Others,like English,seem to welcome them. [00:10.76]Robert MacNeil looks at the history of English and comes to the conclusion [00:18.13]that its tolerance for change represents deeply rooted ideas of freedom. [00:25.31]THE GLORIOUS MESSINESS OF ENGLISH by Robert MacNell [00:32.16]he story of our English language is typically one of massive stealing from other languages. [00:40.23]That is why English today has an estimated vocabulary of over one million words, [00:46.76]while other major languages have far fewer. [00:51.51]French, for example, has only about 75,000 words, and that includes English expressions like snack barand hit parade. [01:02.69]The French, however,do not like borrowing foreign words because they think it corrupts their language. [01:11.24]The government tries to ban words from English and declares that Walkman is not desirable; [01:19.23]so they invent a word, balladeur, which French kids are supposed to say instead but they don't. [01:27.75]Walkman is fascinating because it isn't even English. Strictly speaking, [01:35.14]it was invented by the Japanese manufacturers who put two simple English words together to name their product. [01:43.47]That doesn't bother us, but it does bother the French. Such is the glorious messiness of English. [01:52.51]That happy tolerance, that willingness to accept words from anywhere, [01:59.07]explains the richness of English and why it has become, to a very real extent, the first truly global language. [02:09.33]How did the language of a small island off the coast of Europe become the language of the planet [02:16.70]more widely spoken and written than any other has ever been? [02:22.71]The history of English is present in the first words a child learns about identity (I, me, you); [02:32.63]possession (mine, yours); the body(eye, nose, mouth); size (tall, short); and necessities (food, water). [02:48.78]These words all come from Old English or Anglo-Saxon English, the core of our language. [02:57.92]Usually short and direct, these are words we still use today for the things that really matter to us. [03:06.54]Great speakers often use Old English to arouse our emotions. For example, during World War II, [03:16.81]Winston Churchill made this speech, stirring the courage of his people [03:23.15]against Hitler's armies positioned to cross the English Channel: [03:28.74]"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, [03:35.04]we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender. [03:43.56]Virtually every one of those words came from Old English, [03:49.20]except the last-surrender, which came from Norman French. Churchill could have said, [03:57.53]"We shall never give in," but it is one of the lovely-and powerful-opportunities of English that a writer can mix, [04:04.85]for effect, different words from different backgrounds. [04:11.79]Yet there is something direct to the heart that speaks to us from the earliest words in our language. [04:19.29]When Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 B.C., English did not exist. The Celts, who inhabited the land, [04:30.11]spoke languages that survive today mainly as Welsh. [04:36.06]Where those languages came from is still a mystery, but there is a theory. [04:42.02]Two centuries ago an English judge in India [04:47.24]noticed that several words in Sanskrit closely resembled some words in Greek and Latin. A systematic study revealed [04:58.37]that many modem languages descended from a common parent language, lost to us because nothing was written down. [05:07.70]Identifying similar words,linguists have come up with what they call an Indo-European parent language, [05:16.40]spoken until 3500 to 2000 B.C.These people had common words for snow, bee and wolfbut no word for sea. [05:31.05]So some scholars assume they lived somewhere in north-central Europe,where it was cold. Traveling east, [05:41.05]some established the languages of India and Pakistan, and others drifted west toward the gentler climates of Europe. [05:51.09]Some who made the earliest move westward became known as the Celts, whom Caesar's armies found in Britain. [06:00.57]New words came with the Germanic tribes-the Angles,the Saxons, etc [06:07.60]that slipped across the North Sea to settle in Britain in the 52 century. [06:14.26]Together they formed what we call Anglo-Saxon society. [06:20.50]The Anglo-Saxons passed on to us their farming vocabulary, including sheep, ox, earth, wood, field and work. [06:31.76]They must have also enjoyed themselves because they gave us the word laughter. [06:38.71]The next big influence on English was Christianity. [06:44.14]It enriched the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary with some 400 to 500 words from Greek and Latin, [06:52.53]including angel, disciple and martyr [06:57.99]Then into this relatively peaceful land came the Vikings from Scandinavia. [07:05.17]They also brought to English many words that begin withsk, like sky and skirt. [07:13.32]But Old Norse and English both survived, and so you can rear a child (English) or raise a child (Norse). [07:24.34]Other such pairs survive: wish and want, craft and skill, hide and skin. [07:33.80]Each such addition gave English more richness, more variety. [07:40.85]Another flood of new vocabulary occurred in 1066, when the Normans conquered England. [07:48.79]The country now had three languages: French for the nobles, Latin for the churches and English for the common people. [07:59.11]With three languages competing, there were sometimes different terms for the same thing. [08:05.96]For example, Anglo-Saxons had the word kingly, but after the Normans, [08:13.61]royal and sovereign entered the language as alternatives. The extraordinary thing was that French did not replace English. [08:23.59]Over three centuries English gradually swallowed French, [08:29.78]and by the end of the 15th century what had developed was amodified, [08:36.39]greatly enriched language-Middle English-with about 10,000 "borrowed" French words. [08:44.85]Around1476 William Caxton set up a printing press in England and started acommunications revolution. [08:54.83]Printing brought into English the wealth of new thinking that sprang from the European Renaissance. [09:02.25]Translations of Greek and Roman classics were poured onto the printed page, [09:08.55]and with them thousands of Latin words likecapsule andhabitual, and Greek words like catastrophe and thermometer. [09:18.52]Today we still borrow from Latin and Greek to name new inventions, like video, television and cyberspace. [09:28.74]As settlers landed in North America and established the United States,English found itself with two sources-American and British [09:39.60]Scholars in Britain worried that the language was out of control, [09:45.27]and some wanted to set up an academy to decide [09:51.46]which words were proper and which were not. Fortunately their idea has never been put into practice. [09:59.01]That tolerance for change also represents deeply rooted ideas of freedom. [10:05.86]Danish scholar Otto Jespersen wrote in 1905, "The English language would not have been what it is [10:14.77]if the English had not been for centuries great respecters of the liberties of each individual [10:22.39]and if everybody had not been free to strike out new paths for himself." [10:28.69]I like that idea. Consider that the same cultural soil producing the English language [10:36.66]also nourished the great principles of freedom and fights of man in the modem world. The first shoots sprang up in England, [10:46.53]and they grew stronger in America. [10:50.53]The English-speaking peoples have defeated all efforts to build fences around their language. [10:57.82]Indeed, the English language is not the special preserve of grammarians,language police, teachers, [11:05.44]writers or the intellectual elite. English is, and always has been, the tongue of the common man. [11:14.51]Language Sense Enhancement [11:17.72]2 Read aloud the following poem [11:21.74]Languages Carl Sandbury [11:26.73]There are no handles upon a language Where by men take hold of it And mark it with signs for its remembrance [11:37.21]It is a river,this language,Once in a thousand years Breaking a new course Changing its way to the ocean. [11:47.27]It is a mountain effluvia Moving to valleys And from nation to nation Crossing borders and mixing. [11:58.16]3 Read the following quotation.Learn them by heart if you can. You might need to look up new words in a dictionary. [12:08.82]The English language is the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. Ralph Waldo Emerson [12:20.65]Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers Georqe Orwell [12:32.14]England and America are two countries separated by the same language. Georqe Bernard Shaw [12:43.06]4. Read the following joke and see if you can tell what caused the misunderstanding of the technician's words by the woman. [12:54.32]You might need to look up new words in a dictionary. [12:59.81]An office technician got a call from o user. The user told the technician that her computer was not workling. [13:09.11]She described the problem and the technician concluded that the computer needed to be brought in and serviced. [13:17.62]He told her to "Unplug the power cord and bring it up here and I will fix it”

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