【英语时差8,16】英国人的外语能力-下

I also learned French at school, as well, but unfortunately I don't know any French now. Headmaster Stephen Winkley has strong criticism of British people's attitude to learning foreign languages. British people are terribly bad with languages, and this is because they used to own an empire and everywhere they went in the world, so long as they spoke¹ English and spoke it very loud, people would do what they wanted. As a result, there is a strong feeling in England that nobody needs to learn a foreign language. This is a disaster for our country and I'm very sad and embarrassed that it happens. Now let's hear from people who are learning a new foreign language. What difficulties have they experienced? I'm sometimes OK and sometimes not so good. I think my memory isn't great, so I tend to forget new words, and also I'm a little bit lazy. I'm a very lazy linguist². I like learning foreign languages, but I find it difficult to do out of context. So it's difficult to sit here in London and study Japanese when you don't actually have to use the language to communicate.

1 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

2 linguist   

n.语言学家；精通数种外国语言者

参考例句：

• I used to be a linguist till I become a writer.过去我是个语言学家，后来成了作家。
• Professor Cui has a high reputation as a linguist.崔教授作为语言学家名声很高。