全新版大学英语第二册UNIT 7.doc

UNIT 7
Learning about English
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?
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
Text A
Some languages resist the introduction of new words. Others, like English, seem to e them. Robert eil looks at the history of English es to the conclusion that its tolerance for change represents deeply rooted ideas of freedom.
THE GLORIOUS MESSINESS OF ENGLISH
Robert eil
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 because 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 supposed to say instead — but they don't.
Walkman is fascinating because it isn't even English. Strictly speaking, it was invented by the Japanese 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 e, to a very real extent, the first truly globallanguage.
How did the language of a small island off the coast of Europe e the language of the —