首页
登录
职称英语
______ in British and American English have diverged very much according to the
______ in British and American English have diverged very much according to the
游客
2024-12-16
17
管理
问题
______ in British and American English have diverged very much according to the speakers.
British man: What is there about this English language of ours that makes it possible for the two of us --having grown up, perhaps, 4, 000 miles apart--to be able to communicate so easily?
American man: Welt, we might begin by recognizing that a language consists of sounds, words, inflections, and the arrangement of words into phrases and sentences.
B: Let’s begin with one of these: the inflectional forms--for example, the noun plurals and verb tenses. Surely, in this aspect, British and American English have not diverged very much, have they?
A: No, not at all. Thousands of nouns form their plurals in the regular fashion in the manner of "cat"--"cats"; "dog"--" dogs" "church"--"churches". Arid this is the same on both sides of the Atlantic. Would you say the same thing for the verbs?
B: Yes, I think I would. Here again the regular forms are so overwhelming in number, aren’t they? For most of the verbs, our two forms of language are pretty well identical.
A: Well, that depends on what you mean by identity. I can think, for example, of instances where our spellings are alike but the pronunciation is different. For example, the past of the verb "eat. "
B: Yes, the past tense is spelled in both forms of English "a--t--e". But I pronounce this as [εt ] to rhyme with "get" as do most of us in Britain, and I think that we would tend to regard the American pronunciation as a relatively uneducated one. Isn’t it true that most educated people in the U.S. would rhyme "ate" with "late" regard the British pronunciation as a bit odd?
A: More than a bit odd. I would say. Actually to us, [εt] seems countrified, even uneducated. We could supply other examples here, but I think we should go on to the order of words in phrases and sentences. After all, it is through word order, rather than inflectional forms, that so much of our grammatical meaning is conveyed.
B: Yes, and I suppose this is one of the reasons why we have so little difficulty in understanding each other. It’s hard to think of any place that you and I would have arranged the principal sentence elements in a different way.
A: You are right, of course. For example, the entire English - speaking world puts the subject before the verb and the object after it in making a sentence.
B: None of these grammatical differences add up to very much, do they? Let’s talk briefly now about pronunciation. Take the difference that is probably best known: the sounding or not sounding of [r] after vowels in words like "bird" and "hurt". It’s not just a matter of saying that Americans sound the [r]s and the Britishers don’t. After all, as you know, in Scotland, Lancashire, Ireland, and the whole of the western counties of England really, the [r]s are pronounced more or less as they are with you.
A: Yes, and in the States, on the other hand, you will find a rather large area in New England, almost all of the area around New York City, and various parts of the coastal south, where the Americans don’t sound the [r]s. And it’s equally difficult to generalize about the differences in pronunciation of words like "dance", which I pronounce with the vowel in cap [ae] and you pronounce with the vowel in "father" [a:]. In the United States we vary a good deal; for example, eastern New England has the [a] type of pronunciation.
B: As you know, we don’t have [a:] at all widely either. It occurs among educated speakers and in the South and in London, but in the northern counties of England people have a pronunciation similar to yours. So I think we should insist on people not exaggerating the differences between British and American English.
选项
A、Regular noun plural forms
B、Irregular noun plural forms
C、Verb tenses
D、None of the above items
答案
D
解析
根据谈话内容可知:规则变化、不规则变化的名词复数形式及动词的时态变化在美式英语和英 式英语中均无多大差别。即使听漏了材料,也可通过常识判断,正确答案为D。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3877611.html
相关试题推荐
SimonFanshawepresentsdifferentpeople’sopinionsonBritishmannersbecause[
SimonFanshawepresentsdifferentpeople’sopinionsonBritishmannersbecause[
WhichisINCORRECTaccordingtoJacobYountabouthisbusinessinChina?[br][
WhichisINCORRECTaccordingtoJacobYountabouthisbusinessinChina?[br][
WhichisINCORRECTaccordingtoJacobYountabouthisbusinessinChina?[br][
WhichisINCORRECTaccordingtoJacobYountabouthisbusinessinChina?[origin
TheBritishEmpirewasoncehometothirdofthe【M1】______worl
TheBritishEmpirewasoncehometothirdofthe【M1】______worl
TheBritishEmpirewasoncehometothirdofthe【M1】______worl
TheBritishEmpirewasoncehometothirdofthe【M1】______worl
随机试题
沥青混合料中用适量消石灰或水泥代替矿粉的做法是为了()。A.提高沥青混合料的高温
2016年,广东民营经济增加值突破四万亿元。经初步核算,全面实现民营经济增加值4
房地产经纪机构的激励机制包括( )。A、目标激励 B、经济激励 C、
根据《关于贯彻(关于深化改革严格土地管理的决定>的通知》规定,下列关于加强城乡规
人在每一瞬间,将心理活动选择了某些对象而忽略了另一些对象。这一特点指的是注意的(
如果用一个圆来表示概念所指称的对象的集合,那么以下哪项中两个概念之间的关系符合下
下列不属于造成优等和次等劳动力市场之间出现相对隔离原因的是( )。A.信息不对
(2015年真题)属于关税法定纳税义务人的是()。A.进口货物的收货人
卵巢上皮癌患者血清CA125检测值最具有特异意义的是A.内膜样癌 B.黏液性癌
(2019年真题)关于建筑企业资质证书的申请和延续的说法,正确的有( )。
最新回复
(
0
)