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  3. (1)I began learning German at the age of 13, and I’m still trying to explain

(1)I began learning German at the age of 13, and I’m still trying to explain

游客2024-11-14  1
问题     (1)I began learning German at the age of 13, and I’m still trying to explain to myself why it was love at first sound. The answer must surely be: the excellence of my teacher. At an English public school not famed for its cultural generosity, Mr. King was that rare thing: a kindly and intelligent man who, in the thick of the second world war, determinedly loved the Germany that he knew was still there somewhere. Rather than join the chorus of anti-German propaganda, he preferred, doggedly, to inspire his little class with the beauty of the language, and of its literature and culture. One day, he used to say, the real Germany will come back. And he was right. Because now it has.
    (2)Why was it love at first sound for me? Well, in those days not many language teachers played gramophone records to their class, but Mr. King did. They were old and very precious to him and us, and he kept them in brown paper bags in a satchel that he put in his bicycle basket when he rode to school. What did they contain, these precious records? The voices of classical German actors, reading romantic German poetry. The records were a bit cracked, but that was part of their beauty.
    (3)And I loved them. I learned to imitate, then recite them, crack and all. And I discovered that the language fitted me. It fitted my tongue. It pleased my Nordic ear. I also loved the idea that these poems and this language that I was learning were mine and no one else’s, because German wasn’t a popular subject and very few of my schoolmates knew a word of it beyond the Achtung! and Hande hoch! that they learned from propaganda war movies.
    (4)But thanks to Mr. King, I knew better. And when I decided I couldn’t stand my English public school for one more day, it was the German language that provided me with my bolt-hole. The year was 1948. I couldn’t go to Germany, so I went to Switzerland and at 16 enrolled myself at Bern University. So it’s no wonder that when later I went into the army for my national service, I was posted to Austria. Or that after the army I went on to study German at Oxford. And so to Eton, to teach it.
    (5)You can have a lot of fun with the German language, as we all know. You can tease it, play with it, send it up. You’ve probably heard the Mark Twain gag: " Some German words are so long they have a perspective. " You can make up crazy adjectives like "my-recently-by-my-parents-thrown-out-of-the-window PlayStation". And when you’re tired of floundering with nouns and participles strung together in a compound, you can turn for relief to the pristine poems of a Halderlin, or a Goethe, or a Heine, and remind yourself that the German language can attain heights of simplicity and beauty that make it, for many of us, a language of the gods. And for all its pretending, the German language loves the simple power of monosyllables.
    (6)The decision to learn a foreign language is to me an act of friendship. It is indeed a holding out of the hand. It’s not just a route to negotiation. It’s also to get to know you better, to draw closer to you and your culture, your social manners and your way of thinking.
    (7)And the decision to teach a foreign language is an act of commitment, generosity and mediation. It’s a promise to educate—yes—and to equip. But also to awaken: to kindle a flame that you hope will never go out: to guide your pupils towards insights, ideas and revelations that they would never have arrived at without your dedication, patience and skill. To quote Charlemagne: "To have another language is to possess a second soul. " He might have added that to teach another language is to implant a second soul.
    (8)Of course, the very business of reconciling these two souls at any serious level requires considerable mental agility. It compels us to be precise, to confront meaning, to think rationally and creatively and never to be satisfied until we’ve hit the equivalent word, or—which also happens—until we’ve recognised that there isn’t one, so hunt for a phrase or circumlocution that does the job.
    (9)No wonder then that the most conscientious editors of my novels are not those for whom English is their first language, but the foreign translators who bring their relentless eye to the tautological phrase or factual inaccuracy—of which there are far too many. My German translator is particularly infuriating.
    (10)In the extraordinary period we are living through—may it be short-lived—it’s impossible not to marvel at every contradictory or unintelligible utterance issuing from across the Atlantic. And in marvelling, we come face-to-face with the uses and abuses of language itself.
    (11)Clear language—lucid, rational language—to a man at war with both truth and reason, is an existential threat. Clear language to such a man is a direct assault on his obfuscations, contradictions and lies. To him, it is the voice of the enemy. To him, it is fake news. Because he knows, if only intuitively, what we know to our cost: that without clear language, there is no standard of truth.
    (12)And that’s what language means to a linguist. Those who teach language, those who cherish its accuracy and meaning and beauty, are the custodians of truth in a dangerous age. And if they teach German—and teach it in this my beleaguered country—they are quite particularly to be prized, all the more so because they are an endangered species. Every time I hear a British politician utter the fatal words, "Let me be very clear" , these days I reach for my revolver.
    (13)By teaching German, by spreading understanding of German culture and life, today’s honorands and their colleagues will be helping to balance the European argument, to make it decent, to keep it civilised. They will be speaking above all to this country’s most precious asset: its enlightened young, who—Brexit or no Brexit—see Europe as their natural home, Germany as their natural partner, and shared language as their natural bond. [br] According to the author, a respectable language educator should______.
选项 A、stick to the truth in the language
B、try to tolerate different cultures
C、never use inaccurate languages
D、fight against those who tell lies
答案 A
解析 细节题。根据题干定位至第十一段和第十二段。第十一段第一句指出，反对事实和真理的人害怕清晰的语言，最后一句指出，没有了清晰的语言就没有了事实的标准，作者在第十二段中进一步指出从事语言工作的人们是真理的托管人，可见作者认为，可敬的语言教育者应该坚守语言中所承载的真理，故[A]为答案。作者没有提到对语言背后的文化应该持怎样的态度，因此排除[B]“努力包容不同的文化”；作者在第八段只是提到努力寻找更为贴切的译法和表达，并没有说不能使用不准确的语言，故排除[C]；虽然作者讽刺了那些不说实话的政治家，但是并没有说语言工作者要与说谎者斗争，因此排除[D]。
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