Н.Э. Шарабарина, Л.В. Кулик - English for Junior Students of the Humanities - UNIT 1 (1109869), страница 7
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The latePresident Pompidou of France recommended a return to totally unpolluted French with anabolition of all anglicisms. In official documents "fast food" and ''jumbo jet" were to bereferred to by French expressions instead. But it would be difficult to eradicate the use ofsuch familiar "French" terms as "le weekend", "le sandwich", or "le parking". French isnot the only "polluted" language. In German we find "der Babysitter","der Bestseller" and "der Teenager". "II weekend" turns up again in Italian, where we canalso find "Ia pop art" and "il popcorn". "Jeans" is found in both Italian and Spanish, andin Spanish we also have "pancakes", and "sueter"(sweater).
Russian young people like towear the latest trainer-style ''shoozy", while Japanese young people like to eat"eisucurimu"(ice cream). But this invasion is not one-sided. Other languages have quietlybeen getting their own back for a long time. Native English speakers may think they arespeaking "pure" English when they talk about the alphabet, the traffic, a mosquito, a sofa,a garage, their pyjamas or their boss, but Greek, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, French, Hindiand Dutch speakers know better!(from David Foil & Anne Kelly, First Certificate Avenues,Cambridge University, I 996)b ) Find the answers to these questions in text A.Choose the correct answer from the list A-EI. How many countries use English as official or semi-officiallanguage?2.
In how many countries is English important?3. How many of all scientific papers are first published in English?4. How much of the world's mail is in English?5. How much of all information stored in electronic retrievalsystem is inEnglish?EXERCISE 4A. twothirds;B. 70%;C. over 70;D. 80%;E. over 90/\...Discuss these questions:I . In what fields is English used in your country?232. How often do you come across English in your daily life?3. Can you think of any examples of:\a) English words which have become part of your language?b) Words from your language which have become part of English?EXERCISE 5Consider your own language(~).
any regional varieties, and featureswhich distinguish one social or regional group from another. Comparethe situation in your country with any other societies which you arefamiliar with. Briefly note common features and variablesEXERCISE 6Read the text and answer the question: Why is RP the accent generallypreferred for teaching English as a foreign language?The prestige accent, known as Received Pronunciation (RP), had its historical originsin a dialect of English associated paQ:icularly with the region stretching south-east fromthe Midlands down towards London, but including the historic university cities ofCambridge and Oxford.
It survived because of its association with centres of power andinfluence. It was spoken by the merchant classes of London in the fourteenth century, forexample, and would have been familiar to students attending the universities of Oxfordand Cambridge in the Middle Ages. Its status as an important dialect was enhanced by itsuse in government and official documents from about 1430 onwards. More recently, itsassociation since the nineteenth century with public schools helped to achieve special preeminence for its distinctive patterns of pronunciation. Consequently, it is for instance, thepreferred form of pronunciation for reading BBC news bulletins and for teaching Englishas a foreign and second language: and this for the simple reason that, having lost itsformer regional affiliations, it is now the most widely understood and spoken of all theaccents within the British Isles. Its widespread and typical use by members of the middleand upper classes guarantee it a prestige and status denied to the more regionally markedaccents.
These latter forms have survived amongst those groups historically less mobile,with less access to higher education and to jobs that entail permanent moves away fromtheir place of origin. Hence the conical nature of accent distribution: the 'higher' up tin.'social scale, the more likely one is to find the single accent- RP: the 'lower' down thesocial scale, the more likely one is to find regional variation.EXERCISE 7 Read the text and make up a list of all possible questions to it anddiscuss them with your groupmatesDr. Honey, socio-linguist and teacher of English at Kimomoto University, Japan, andAuthor of Does Accent Matter?, boldly uses the word' class' when he talks about accent.In his book he describes research in which people are played tapes ·of the same messagesbeing read in various ways, then asked to award attributes to the voices they have heard.The stereotypes are consistently confirmed: people ascribe competence, efficiency andeven cleanliness and good looks to voices which speak in ' Received Pronunciation'.Speakers of RP are thought likely to be lawyers and bank managers.Regional accents persistently fall into a hierarchy with Yorkshire, West County and,anomalously , Geordie (Newcastle) near the top.
Lodged at the bottom are the five24accents of the working-class industrial c1ttes - Cockney (London), Liverpool,Birmingham, Glasgow and Belfast. People still imagine the owners of these accents to bemanual workers; on television there are the accents of comics and villains.John Honey has no scruples about telling people they should jettison their workingclass accents; he thinks they are a huge barrier to progress towards equality. " We have tochoose between the museum approach, which keeps these accents on in glass cases eventhough they are rotting the chances of the people who use them, or we recognise that ·theworld would be a drearier but a fairer place if we got rid of them."And how we do that? In schools, of course, where much more attention should be paidto English language - grammar as well as clear, intelligible speech.
But to Dr. Honey'sdisappointment, the new National Curriculum contains no requirement to teach ReceivedPronunciation. Brian Cox, who advised the Government on its development, sympathizeswith Honey's ideas but says they are impracticable. Consequently, the curriculumrequires only that children be taught " to speak Standard English in an accent which isclear and comprehensible."EXERCISE 8 Read the text and answer the questions after itHow many people in the world speak English as a first or native language? Exactinformation on this point is not available, but an estimate of 230 million cannot be verywide of the mark. Of these, 145 million live in the United States, a little less than 55million in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and something like 30 million in the Britishdominions and colonial possessions.
It is even more difficult to arrive at a figurerepresenting those who speak English as a second or auxiliary language. A reasonablyconservative conclusion thus place the total number of speakers of English between 300million and 325 million, about one-seventh of the world's population .Some authorities place Chinese, the various Indic languages and Russian ahead ofEnglish; others only Chinese.
Both Chinese and Indic , however, are terms covering alarge number of mutually unintelligible dialects, and though the numbers of speakers ofthese languages may seem impressive ,communication within the languages is much morerestricted than in English. Total numbers, moreover, constitute but one phase of thematter. The factor of the geographical distribution is equally, possibly even moresignificant. English is spoken as a first or native language on at least four continents ofthe world; Russian on two, Chinese and the Indic languages on one.
English. is withoutquestion the closest approach to a world language today.It goes without saying that no two persons ever have an identical command of theircommon language. Certainly they have not precisely the same vocabulary. There are atleast minor differences in pronunciation; indeed the same individual will not pronouncehis vowels and consonants in absolutely identical fashion every he utters them. Everyonepossesses in addition certain traits of grammatical form and syntactical order, constitutingthat peculiar and personal quality of language which we term style.
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