2. 职称英语
  3. (1) It’s no secret that Brits love to talk about the weather. It’s essential

(1) It’s no secret that Brits love to talk about the weather. It’s essential

游客2024-09-09  9
问题     (1) It’s no secret that Brits love to talk about the weather. It’s essentially a national pastime. This is a country, for instance, where the Shipping Forecast is a beloved institution, even among the vast majority of Brits whose livelihoods don’t depend on the sea.
    (2) All of this talk about weather has led to a number of words that enliven British English. Take "Northern nanny", which describes cold hail and windstorm coming from the north, or "moor-gallop", a sudden squall on a moor. Lexicographer Susan Rennie says that English dialects are "rich in weather words and I love ’dinderex’, a Devon term for a bolt of lightning which literally means ’thunder-axe’."
    (3) As the U.K. is marked by a high density of regional accents and dialects, many of these words are very local. It’s clear that there are geographically specific patterns to the use of weather words. One example comes from the BBC’s Voices project, which in 2005 aimed to map current patterns in language use. This showed that the UK’s 10 favorite words to describe a light rain included ’picking’, although this is mainly used in a few parts of Wales.
    (4) "It is not surprising that there are far more words for bad weather in both English and Scots than for good weather," says Rennie. "Partly this is because, over the centuries, our ancestors have encountered more distinct types of rain, wind and snow than sunshine. But it also reflects the potential dangers posed by bad weather and the need for exact and unambiguous communication."
    (5) Weather words aren’t just many and diverse—they also show a whimsical attitude towards language. After all, Brits love wordplay. This fascination with language games extends to the way Brits talk about the weather. Describing a storm as a "hurly-burly" is one example. The onomatopoeia of "feefle", a Scots word for snow swirling around a corner, is another.
    (6) Weather is compared to food, as with "custard wind" (cold, easterly winds on England’s northeast coast). It’s likened to animals, for instance a "cat’s nose" (cool north-westerly wind), or "raining cats and dogs" (the exact etymology is contested, but the phrase has English origins).
    (7) Whimsical weather words aren’t the sole purview of the British. Other variants of English also have plenty. There’s "sugar weather" in Canada, to describe the cold weather that gets maple syrup running, and "toad-strangler" (very heavy rain) along the Gulf Coast of the U.S.
    (8) But many of these colourful words aren’t used very often these days. It is noted that when it comes to regionally specific terms, like Nottingham’s "goose fair morning" to describe a bright but cool daybreak, many have probably fallen out of common usage as people have become detached from or less dependent on the weather for their fortunes.
    (9) Clifford Sofield, senior assistant editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, says that three types of weather-related words tend to sound comical to the ears of English speakers. Firstly, "words that sound peculiar to a person are ones that they’re not familiar with or words that they have heard but haven’t used themselves." These include terms that were once used more widely, but now have become regionalisms. For example, "airish" (for cool weather) is now mainly used in Scotland—and the southern U.S.
    (10) Secondly, words and usages that have become obsolete strike us as odd. Shakespeare used "naughty" to describe the weather in King Lear; a University of Liverpool research project which is examining historical records of U.K. weather events has uncovered examples of the weather being described as mischievous or misbehaving. But it would be eccentric to refer to a naughty wind today.
    (11) Finally, Sofield says, there are weather words that are new or sound like they’re new. "Mizzling" might seem like a neologism combining mist and drizzling, but it actually derives from the Dutch "miezelen" (drizzle) — which itself may stem from words for "urinate".
    (12) Creativity—when it comes to creating weather expressions—is unlikely to stop any time soon. One example, from the last 20 or 30 years, is the term "lumps of rain" to describe heavy, thick rainfall. So if centuries of linguistic history (or U.K. weather) have shown us anything, it’s that the future of British English will continue to include many words for "letty" , "stoating" or "specking"—that is, many words for rain. [br] Which of the following is true of British weather words?
选项 A、They are only used in limited areas.
B、Most are used to describe bad weather.
C、They are barriers to clear communication.
D、They reflect Brits’ attitude towards life.
答案 D
解析 作者在开篇第一、二句就指出英国人喜欢谈论天气，甚至成为一种全民的消遣，而第五段第一句说到英国的天气词汇众多而且十分丰富，显示出一种对语言的古怪态度，可见这些天气词汇显示出英国人对生活的态度，故D项为答案。A项“它们只是在有限的地区使用”是对第三段首句的曲解，原文的意思是很多天气词汇是带有地方色彩的，各地有自己的特殊语汇，而天气词汇作为一个整体，并非只在有限的地方使用，故排除A项；第四段第一句说到描述坏天气的词汇比描述好天气的要多，但是不能由此判断大多数天气词汇都是描述坏天气的，故排除B项；第四段最后一句说到这些天气词汇的创造，恰恰是为了达到准确不含糊交流的效果，故排除C项。
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