英语听力精选进阶版 11229（在线收听）

Euro 

No named part of the world has introduced more new words 

into English than Europe. It's all happened of course in the last 10 

or 20 years, and it's this 'euro' prefix that's caused all the 

attention to be focussed upon the area of Europe.  

The euro of course is the most obvious thing: the actual unit of 

money which became so popular in Europe a few years ago. And 

now everybody talks about it. But, it's not just that. It's the prefix 

'euro' being used as a blend word along with all sorts of other 

things.  

I mean early on, for instance, people talked about 'euro-currency' 

and 'euro-money', and then the 'euro-fighter' came along, the 

Defence Establishment's development.  

And now, everything has a 'euro' possibility and so one of the commonest ways of 

creating new words in English these days is take a perfectly ordinary word and just 

shove 'euro' in front of it. So, you can have 'euro-butter' for regulations to do with 

butter and 'euro-eggs' and 'euro-chickens' and 'euro-fireworks' and 'euro - 

anything you like really!'