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
16
管理
问题
______ in British and American English have diverged very much according to the speakers. [br]
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、in Britain and America people speak utterly different languages
B、there are few things identical in British and American English
C、British and American English are imcomprehensible to each other
D、British and American English are understandable between the two people
答案
D
解析
四个选项的内容并未直接提及,但根据整个谈话的内容、两位谈话者的语气,可以得出结论:不要过于夸大英式英语与美式英语的差异,二者大同小异,持这两种语言的人可以相互理解、沟通。因此,正确答案为D。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3877615.html
相关试题推荐
SimonFanshawepresentsdifferentpeople’sopinionsonBritishmannersbecause[
SimonFanshawepresentsdifferentpeople’sopinionsonBritishmannersbecause[
SimonFanshawepresentsdifferentpeople’sopinionsonBritishmannersbecause[
TheoriginalsofAmericanJazzareasinterestingasthemusicitself.originals
WhatisthecharacterofBritishlaborforce?A、homogeneousB、creativeC、imaginar
WhichofthefollowingisthemostsignificantAmericanpoemofthe20thcentury
WhichisINCORRECTaccordingtoJacobYountabouthisbusinessinChina?[br][
TheBritishEmpirewasoncehometothirdofthe【M1】______worl
TheBritishEmpirewasoncehometothirdofthe【M1】______worl
TheBritishEmpirewasoncehometothirdofthe【M1】______worl
随机试题
[originaltext]M:HiJane,pleasecomeinandtakeaseat.W:Well,youwouldl
功夫(Kungfu)是一种典型的中国传统文化,它是一项既活动肌肉又活动大脑的运动。同时,功夫不仅是一项体育运动,也是一种艺术形式。它被用来治病和自卫,
DepartingforLosAngelesisnoordinary【C1】______whereasforforeignstud
根据运输业的特殊性,运输成本分为固定设施成本、移动设备拥有成本和( )。A.运
设备安装与装饰工程中的施工顺序不正确的有()。A.先进行设备管线的安装,再进行
滞针有哪些表现?如何预防和处理?
下列关于租赁筹资的叙述,正确的是()。A.经营租赁的租期通常较长 B.融资租
外来人口的管理是社区组织的一项经常性工作,其具体工作内容包括( )。A.搞好宣
某患者,在施行右叶甲状腺腺瘤切除过程中,发现左叶有-1cm直径结节。冰冻切片诊为
最新回复
(
0
)