【话匣子英语】发邮件（1）

 苏珊和安德鲁今天讨论的话题是发邮件，当你的手机被一封封来信提示时，你是否会感到烦躁？

Suzanne: So, how are you today, Andrew?

 

Andrew: I’m pretty good, I’m pretty good. I’m excited to record this episode because we’re going to be talking about emailing.

 

Suzanne: Oh.

 

Andrew: Yeah, and the reason that I was inspired to talk about emailing today is because I have a really funny email story that happened to me recently.

 

Suzanne: OK, so you have to tell me because I am anxiously awaiting the story.

 

Andrew: You’re dying to know?

 

Suzanne: Yes.

 

Andrew: Well, maybe I should say it’s kind of interesting, it’s not super interesting. But have you ever signed up for an email list?

 

Suzanne: Yes, I have.

 

Andrew: So, you know, we know each other from going to university. And when I was in university I was a very good student and I signed up for mailing lists of some journals so that if new research came out, I would get an email and I would know right away what’s going on.

 

Suzanne: OK, like a notification?

 

Andrew: Exactly, a notification. So I’m on this mailing list for a journal called The Heritage Language Journal.

 

Suzanne: OK.

 

Andrew: And they send out a quarterly newsletter just updating their readers on what’s going on with them. And one person decided¹ that they didn’t want to be on the mailing list anymore and so they replied to that newsletter. And usually this would just go back to the webmaster. It wouldn’t go to everybody. So this person, they would reply to the email and it would go back to whoever sent the email, and the people that are on the list wouldn’t see it.

 

Suzanne: Right. Andrew: Right, that’s how they work. But something went wrong and everybody got this message of this one reader saying, “I don’t want to be on this list.” And so this just sparked an avalanche² of emails of people responding, saying, “Oh, you know what? I also don’t want to be on this list,” “I don’t want to be on this list,” “I don’t want to be on this list.” And it was just email after email after email coming to everybody on the list, and it was so distracting. I couldn’t get any work done this day because every 2 seconds my phone would buzz and the message would pop up on my computer. And it was hilarious³.

 

Then, as time went on, you had people saying, “Don’t reply to any more emails because everybody is getting the email,” and this started another conversation. I must have gotten about 200 emails that day.

 

Suzanne: Oh, my goodness. Wow.

 

Andrew: Yeah, it was crazy. And the funny thing was, it was all academics that are on the list. They’re doctors and librarians and professors, and they are people that work on their computer all day too, so they were being distracted by all these emails. And they were starting to get pretty angry by the end of the day, after they were getting all these emails. So it was hilarious to notice the shift in tone.

 

Suzanne: Yeah.

 

Andrew: From the start, people are very polite, and at the end of the day they’re really angry in their emails. But I thought it was hilarious to think of angry librarians and professors.

1 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

2 avalanche   

n.雪崩，大量涌来

参考例句：

• They were killed by an avalanche in the Swiss Alps.他们在瑞士阿尔卑斯山的一次雪崩中罹难。
• Higher still the snow was ready to avalanche.在更高处积雪随时都会崩塌。

3 hilarious   

adj.充满笑声的，欢闹的；[反]depressed

参考例句：

• The party got quite hilarious after they brought more wine.在他们又拿来更多的酒之后，派对变得更加热闹起来。
• We stop laughing because the show was so hilarious.我们笑个不停，因为那个节目太搞笑了。