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New College English 02/4/20 新编大学英语电子教案 北方交通大学人文学院王云彤 New College English Book Two Unit 5 Language Part One I. An Introduction (1) Language The term language normally refers to human speech, spoken or written. Language forms the basis of communication between all human beings, About 95% of the worlds population speak one of the 100 most widely used languages. English and French both have more second-language speakers than native-speakers as a result of the imperial expansion of Britain and France. Partly due to the British and American pop culture, English is fast becoming the universal foreign language of Europeans. An Introduction (2) Like all languages, English has many dialects which reflect social changes and settlement patterns that have occurred over many centuries. Although specialists disagree on the exact meaning of dialect, generally it refers to a socially or regionally restricted variety of a language. A dialect usually has its own distinctive grammatical (grammar, syntax), lexical (vocabulary) and phonetic (accent) features. In many cases, it is impossible for people speaking different dialects to understand each other. Someone speaking Cockney (English spoken in a certain area of London) might have great difficulty in understanding the English spoken by intercity Afro-Americans in Chicago, for example. An accent is the distinctive manner of pronunciation and intonation typical of a given region or a social group. There are many different accents in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. Accents in the southern hemisphere (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) are close to British accents and are all rather similar because they emerged less than 200 years ago and are predominantly a blend of accents from southeastern England. The accents in the United States and Canada are much older and more different from British accents. An Introduction (3) An accent shows where a person comes from and, to an extent, what class he