[00:11.49]Reading
[00:15.02]THE ROAD TO MODERN ENGLISH
[00:19.88]At the end of the 16th centruy,about five to seven million people spoke English.
[00:27.82]Nearly all of them lived in England.In the next century,
[00:34.35]people from England started moving to other parts of the world,
[00:39.81]so English began to be spoken in many other countries.
[00:45.48]Today,more people speak English as their first,
[00:51.64]second or foreign language than ever before.
[00:57.00]China may have the largest number of English speakers.
[01:02.64]Native English speakers can understand each other
[01:08.21]even if they don't speak the same kind of English.
[01:13.85]However,they may not be able to understand everything.
[01:20.01]For example,a British person may say to her friends,
[01:25.86]"Would you please come up to my flat for a visit?"
[01:30.62]One of her American friends may then ask her,"Come up where?"
[01:37.49]Her Canadian friend might explain,"She means we should come up to her apartment."
[01:45.82]So why has English changed over time?
[01:50.79]All languages change when cultures communicate with one another.
[01:57.03]The English spoken between about AD 450 and 1150
[02:04.40]was very different from the English spoken today.
[02:09.36]Actually,it was based more on German than present day English.
[02:16.44]Then from about 1150 to 1500 English changed even more.
[02:23.88]It became less like German,
[02:28.14]and more like French because those who ruled England at that time spoke French.
[02:35.51]It became closer to the language you are learning now.
[02:41.15]In the 1600's,Shakespeare made use of a wider vocabulary than ever before.
[02:49.51]One big change in English usage
[02:54.65]happened when Noah Webster wrote the American Dictionary
[03:00.43]of the English Language,giving American English its own identity.
[03:06.98]Later,when some British people went to Australia,
[03:13.15]English began to be spoken there.
[03:17.51]Now Australian English has its own identity.
[03:22.27]English is also spoken as a foreign or second language in South Asia.
[03:28.93]India has a very large number of English speakers.
[03:34.39]This is because Britain ruled India from 1765 to 1947.
[03:42.75]During that time English became the language for government and education.
[03:50.01]English is also spoken in many other countries in Africa and Asia,
[03:56.77]such as South Africa,Singapore and Malaysia.
[04:02.52]In China,English has been used in Hong Kong since about 1842.
[04:10.70]Today the number of people learning English in China is increasing rapidly.
[04:17.96]Will Chinese English become one of the world English?Only time will tell.
[04:26.11]Learning about Language
[04:35.88]Discovering useful words and expressions
[04:41.63]5.Listen to these dialogues.Mark the sentence stress and intonation.
[04:51.37]Then practise reading them in pairs.
[04:56.72]Find the British and American words which are different but have the same meaning.
[05:04.98]1.Hi,I'd like some sweets,please.
[05:13.23]No problem.All the candy we sell is sweet.
[05:19.58]I see,so you sell sweet sweets.
[05:26.06]2.Let's take the lorry for a trip into the countryside.
[05:34.39]Of course,I expect you to take me!
[05:38.83]Oh,I'm sorry,Lori,I meant my truck.
[05:46.20]3.What a lovely autumn day!
[05:52.97]Yes,it's a nice fall day,isn't it?
[05:58.14]Using Language
[06:06.60]Reading and talking
[06:11.04]STANDARD ENGLISH AND DIALECTS
[06:16.61]What is standard English?
[06:21.07]Is it spoken in Britain,the US,Canada,Australia,India and New Zealand?
[06:30.22]Believe it or not,there is no such a thing as standard English.
[06:37.66]Many people believe the English spoken on TV and the radio is standard English.
[06:45.92]This is because in the early days of radio,
[06:51.27]those who reported the news were expected to speak excellent English.
[06:58.04]However,even on TV and the radio you will hear differences in the way people speak
[07:06.50]When people use words and expressions different from "standard language",
[07:13.16]it is called a dialect.
[07:17.11]American English has many dialects,especially the midwestern,southern,
[07:24.87]African American and Spanish dialects.
[07:30.14]In some parts of the US,
[07:34.50]two people from neighbouring towns can have a little different dialect.
[07:41.58]American English has so many dialects
[07:46.63]because people have come from all over the world.
[07:51.30]Geography also plays a part in making dialects.
[07:57.26]Some people who live in the mountains of the eastern US
[08:03.00]speak with an older kind of English dialect.
[08:07.97]When Americans moved from one place to another,they took their dialects with them.
[08:15.33]So people from the mountains in the southeastern US
[08:21.50]speak with almost the same dialect as people in the northwestern US.
[08:28.34]The US is a large country in which many different dialects are spoken.
[08:35.89]Although many Americans move a lot,they still recognize each other's dialects.
[08:44.15]Lisitening
[08:56.29]Imagine that you are in Houston,Texas,a city in the American South.
[09:06.56]Listen carefully to the way the boy is talking.
[09:12.02]He is speaking with one kind of Southern dialect and accent.
[09:18.89]Hey,y'all,this here is Buford.
[09:24.14]I come from a big oil town in Taxas.
[09:29.18]Now,y'all need to understand that we ain't really a state,
[09:34.93]but a whole'nother country.
[09:39.08]Now let me tell ya a story'bout when I was just a pup.
[09:44.86]One hot summer's day I was swimmin'with my cousins Little Lester and Big Billy Bob
[09:54.00]We was jumpin'in the water and feelin'good.
[09:59.95]Then along comes this catfish'bout the size of a house.
[10:07.40]Well,alright,maybe a little smaller than that.
[10:13.56]Little Lester starts to thinkin'it's goin'to eat him sure'nough.
[10:19.73]Man,you shoulda seen him.
[10:24.59]He got outta the water fast as lightning and climbed up a tree.
[10:30.75]Big Billy Bob and I just laughed and laughed.
[10:36.68]To this day,Lester won't go near that place.
[10:42.04]Workbook
[10:51.10]LISTENING
[10:54.65]1.Listen to the tape.The speakers are using both British and American English.
[11:04.50]Write the American English words from the dialogue that have the same meanings
[11:11.56]as the British words listed below.
[12:27.02]2.Listen to the second conversation and answer the following questions.
[14:03.28]LISTENING TASK
[14:11.54]3.As you listen to the tape with your partner,
[14:18.38]try to guess the name of each student's country.
[17:23.02]READING TASK
[17:31.06]THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY
[17:35.82]You may think that English dictionaries have been used for many,many centuries.
[17:43.55]The spelling of English has always been a problem
[17:49.48]but it was more of a problem in the days before a dictionary.
[17:55.54]Then people could spell words in different ways which you might find interesting.
[18:04.00]But it made reading English much more difficult.
[18:09.67]So dictionaries were invented to encourage everybody to spell the same.
[18:17.40]In fact,an English dictionary like the kind you use today
[18:24.46]wsan't made until the time of the Qing Dynasty.
[18:29.92]Three men did most of the important early work on dictionaries:
[18:37.28]Samuel Johnson,Noah Webster,and James Murray.
[18:44.65]These men spent nearly all of their lives
[18:50.29]trying to collect words for their dictionaries.
[18:55.65]For them,it wasn't only a job;it was a wonderful journey.
[19:03.51]The largest dictionary in the world is the Oxford English Dictionary,
[19:11.56]or OED for short.
[19:16.41]The idea for this dictionary came from an important meeting in Britain in 1857.
[19:25.66]Twenty-two years later,
[19:29.79]Oxford University asked James Murray to be the editor of its new dictionary.
[19:38.57]Murray had never been to college.
[19:42.93]At the age of fourteen,
[19:47.19]he left his village school in Scotland and taught himself while wording in a bank.
[19:55.34]Later he became a great teacher.
[19:59.99]After Oxford gave him the job,
[20:04.95]Murray had a place built in the garden behind his house to do his work
[20:11.61]Part of it was one metre underground.
[20:16.86]In winter it felt like a barn,
[20:22.03]he had to wear a heavy coat and put his feet in a box to keep warm.
[20:28.98]Every morning,Murray got out of bed at five o'clock
[20:35.23]and worded several hours before breakfast.
[20:40.27]Often he would work by candle light into the evening.
[20:47.11]Murray hoped to finish the new dictionary in ten years.
[20:54.48]But after five years,he was still adding words for the letter A!
[21:01.74]Then others went to work with Murray,including his two daughters.
[21:09.21]He worked on the dictionary until he was very old.
[21:15.66]Forty-four years later,in 1928,other editors finished it.
[21:24.21]It included more than 15,000 words in twelve books.
[21:32.25]And you thought your English dictionary was big! |