全新版大学英语第二册培训资料.pptVIP

Unit 7; 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. Whats 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 welcome them. Robert MacNeil looks at the history of English and comes to the conclusion that its tolerance for change represents deeply rooted ideas of freedom. THE GLORIOUS MESSINESS OF ENGLISH Robert MacNeil 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 dont. ;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 those languages came from is still a mystery, but there is a theory. Two centuries ago an English judge in India noticed that several words in Sanskrit closely resembled some words in Greek and Latin. A systematic study revealed that many modern languages descended from a commonparent language, lost to us because nothing was written down. Identifying similar words, linguists have come up with