中石油2016通用英语选读课文22TheGermanicLanguages日耳曼语系.docVIP

22The Germanic Languages 日耳曼语系 1. Most people have heard of the Tower of Babel巴别塔 story in the Bible圣经. According to this story, long ago all people spoke the same language. Later, however, they were punished惩罚，处罚 by speaking a great number of different tongues语言. Today, there are literally照字面意义，逐字地 thousands of different languages (defined as mutually相互地 unintelligible难解的 tongues) around the world, though many are related to one another. Indeed, the two largest language families, the Indo-European (the language family with the largest number of speakers) and Sino-Tibetan (containing the Chinese languages, Thai, Vietnamese, and Tibetan) include hundreds of languages with over half the worlds population. 1. 大多数的人都听过圣经中巴别塔的故事。故事称很久以前，人们说的是同一种语言。但是，后来人们遭受惩罚，而开始说各种不同的语言。今天，全世界真是有好几千种不同的语言（此处指的是彼此无法相通的语言），虽然其中语言彼此都有所关联。的确，这两个最大的语系，印欧语系（最多人使用的语系）和汉藏语系（包括华语、泰语、越语和西藏语），涵盖了几百种不同的语言，使用者也超过了全世界半数的人口。 2. Because there are so many languages within the above two super-categories种类，类别 of language families, linguists语言学家 have further divided these linguistically语言上地，语言学上地 rich and geographically地理上地 diverse不同的 families into sub-groups次级语系, one of which, the Germanic language group, has the second-largest number of speakers (Chinese being first). Within this group of over 500,000,000 speakers is the worlds foremost最重要的 international language, English, foremost in terms of根据，就…而言 its geographic spread and number of second-language users. German, spoken by just over 100,000,000 people, is one of the worlds ten-largest languages in terms of population. As English and German speakers constitute构成 the majorities in several of the worlds most economically, militarily, and technologically developed countries, it is important to be familiar with熟悉 this particular language grouping. 2.就因为有太多的语言涵盖于上述的两个超级语系，语言学家就进一步的把这两种语言丰富、地理涵盖范围非常广的语系再区分为几种不同的次级语系，其中的一个就是日耳曼语系，使用这个语系的人数在所有语系中排名第二位（第一位为华语）。在这个有5亿多人口使用的语系中，包括了世界最重要的国际语言，那就是英语。英语之所以称得上是最重要的语言乃因使用的地区很广，且把英语当作第二种语言使用的人口亦很多。有1亿多人说德语，故就人口而言，德语是