首页
登录
职称英语
(1)It is nothing new that English use is on the rise around the world, espec
(1)It is nothing new that English use is on the rise around the world, espec
游客
2023-12-03
55
管理
问题
(1)It is nothing new that English use is on the rise around the world, especially in business circles. This also happens in France, the headquarters of the global battle against American cultural hegemony. If French guys are giving in to English, something really big must be going on. And something big is going on.
(2)Partly, it’s that American hegemony. Didier Benchimol, CEO of a French ecommerce software company, feels compelled to speak English perfectly because the Internet software business is dominated by Americans. He and other French businessmen also have to speak English because they want to get their message out to American investors, possessors of the world’s deepest pockets.
(3)The triumph of English in France and elsewhere in Europe, however, may rest on something more enduring. As they become entwined with each other politically and economically, Europeans need a way to talk to one another and to the rest of the world. And for a number of reasons, they’ve decided upon English as their common tongue.
(4)So when German chemical and pharmaceutical company Hoechst merged with French competitor Rhone-Poulenc last year, the companies chose the vaguely Latinate Aventis as the new company name—-and settled on English as the company’s common language. When monetary policymakers from around Europe began meeting at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt last year to set interest rates for the new Euroland, they held their deliberations in English. Even the European Commission, with 11 official languages and a traditionally French-speaking bureaucracy, effectively switched over to English as its working language last year.
(5)How did this happen? One school attributes English’s great success to the sheer weight of its merit. It’s a Germanic language, brought to Britain around the fifth century A.D. During the four centuries of French-speaking rule that followed Norman Conquest of 1066, the language morphed into something else entirely. French words were added wholesale, and most of the complications of Germanic grammar were shed while few of the complications of French were added. The result is a language with a huge vocabulary and a simple grammar that can express most things more efficiently than either of its parents. What’s more, English has remained ungoverned and open to change—foreign words, coinages, and grammatical shifts—in a way that French, ruled by the purist Academie Francaise, has not.
(6)So it’s a swell language, especially for business. But the rise of English over the past few centuries clearly owes at least as much to history and economics as to the language’s ability to economically express the concept win-win. What happened is that the competition—first Latin, then French, then, briefly, German—faded with the waning of the political, economic, and military fortunes of, respectively, the Catholic Church, France, and Germany. All along, English was increasing in importance: Britain was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and London the world’s most important financial centre, which made English a key language for business. England’s colonies around the world also made it the language with the most global reach. And as that former colony the U.S. rose to the status of the world’s preeminent political, economic, military, and cultural power, English became the obvious second language to learn.
(7)In the 1990s more and more Europeans found themselves forced to use English. The last generation of business and government leaders who hadn’t studied English in school was leaving the stage. The European Community was adding new members and evolving from a paper-shuffling club into a serious regional government that would need a single common language if it were ever to get anything done. Meanwhile, economic barriers between European nations have been disappearing, meaning that more and more companies are beginning to look at the whole continent as their domestic market. And then the Internet came along.
(8)The Net had two big impacts. One was that it was an exciting, potentially lucrative new industry that had its roots in the U.S., so if you wanted to get in on it, you had to speak some English. The other was that by surfing the Web, Europeans who had previously encountered English only in school and in pop songs were now coming into contact with it daily.
(9)None of this means English has taken over European life. According to the European Union, 47% of Western Europeans(including the British and Irish)speak English well enough to carry on a conversation. That’s a lot more than those who can speak German(32%)or French(28%), but it still means more Europeans don’t speak the language. If you want to sell shampoo or cell phones, you have to do it in French or German or Spanish or Greek. Even me U.S. and British media companies that stand to benefit most from the spread of English have been hedging their bets—CNN broadcasts in Spanish; the Financial Times has recently launched a daily German-language edition.
(10)But just look at who speaks English: 77% of Western European college students, 69% of managers, and 65% of those aged 15 to 24. In the secondary schools of the European Union’s non-English-speaking countries, 91% of students study English, all of which means that the transition to English as the language of European business hasn’t been all that traumatic, and it’s only going to get easier in the future. [br] What does the author want to show by using the example of CNN broadcasting in Spanish?
选项
答案
The media cannot afford to ignore non-English speakers.
解析
倒数第2段首句说,“所有这一切并不意味着英语已经主宰着欧洲人的生活”,然后用数字表明,在欧洲,会说英语的人不到欧洲总人口的一半。“即使那些从英语传播中受益最多的英美传媒公司为争得受众也要多方下注”,并用CNN和《财经时报》为例,说明其他语言的作用,也就是说还是有大量人不说英语,以致这些传媒也不敢忽视非英语受众,故答案可表述为The media cannot afford to ignore non—English speakers。
转载请注明原文地址:http://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3240027.html
相关试题推荐
WhichofthefollowinglanguagesisNOTspokeninScotland?A、English.B、Scottish
WhatistheotherofficiallanguagebesidesEnglishinCanada?A、German.B、Japane
TheperiodofOldEnglishliteraturereferstoA、449—1066.B、14thcentury—mid17t
BlackEnglish,spokenmostlybyalargesectionofnon-middle-classAmericanBla
TheofficiallanguagesofNewZealandincludeA、EnglishandSpanish.B、Englishan
______compiled"TheDictionaryoftheEnglishLanguage"whichbecamethefounda
WhichofthefollowingisNOTaplosiveinEnglish?A、[f].B、[t].C、[g].D、[b].A
TheminimummeaningfulunitatthegrammaticallevelofEnglishisknownasA、wor
Whichofthefollowingisatypicaltonelanguage?A、Chinese.B、English.C、Japane
______iswrittenbyWaltWhitman.A、RepresentativeMenB、EnglishTraitsC、Nature
随机试题
Conversationalistswill,asarule,berelaxedandnotworrying【1】______ab
WesternNebraskagenerallyreceiveslesssnowthan______EasternNebraska.A、in
龈上牙石多见于A.全口牙邻面 B.全口牙颊舌面 C.上磨牙颊面和下前牙舌面
下列有关白喉外毒素特点描述错误的是A.可阻碍细胞蛋白质合成 B.毒力强 C.
男性,65岁,肠梗阻术后1周,大便后突然出现胸痛,呼吸困难。体检:心率130次/
属小肠络心的经脉是A.手阳明经B.足阳明经C.手太阴经D.足少阳经E.手太阳经
A.NBT还原试验B.炭粒廓清实验C.溶酶体活性测定D.促凝血活性测定E.滤膜小
(2018年真题)下列关于法律规则、法律原则和法律条文的说法,错误的是:A.法律
刷牙是预防牙周疾病的好方法,下面哪种提法更好些A.正确刷牙 B.早晚刷牙 C
材料供应商要对( )材料实施建筑节能材料备案登记。A.外墙外保温、外墙内保温
最新回复
(
0
)