2. 外语
  3. Now that our friend Nick has passed so many examinations and speaks English like a native he feels more at liberty to criticise

Now that our friend Nick has passed so many examinations and speaks English like a native he feels more at liberty to criticise

admin2010-01-15  51
问题      Now that our friend Nick has passed so many examinations and speaks English like a native he feels more at liberty to criticise the British. He has, believe it or not, been very scornful about a number of British ways of life. These have included the habit of drinking cups of tea at all times of the day ( Nick considers this a terrible waster of time), and the law about driving on the left.
     Just recently, though, he changed his tune. This was when he discovered that the former monetary system of pounds, shillings and pence had been replaced in February 1971 by a decimal system in which the pound is made up of a hundred new pence. Nick thought that this was a sensible idea. He would be the last to admit it but he had always had difficulty in getting used to the idea that there were twelve pennies in a shilling and twenty shillings in a pound. However it was not long before he began to find faults. He had three main criticisms. He rather pompously called them problems of nomenclature, pedagogy and economics. By nomenclature, Nick meant the names of the new coins. Knowing the British love of linguistic difficulties he was certain that there had to be subtle differences in meaning when people used the names for the new coins in speech. For example, he asked, did it mean the same to say a new halfpenny, a new half penny, and half a new penny? How long, he wondered, would this small coin last anyway.’? How should one express the larger sums such as 4.69--four pounds and sixty- nine new pence, four pounds sixty-nine, or four sixty nine?
     By pedagogy, Nick meant the increased number of difficulties foreign students would face when they used both old and new books, for both systems would have to be learned and taught. By economics, Nick meant the high cost of all the practical changes that had had to be made when pounds and new pence were adopted. He finally decided to include Britain’s monetary changes in his list of daily grumbles and was glad he had not been in the country on February 15th, 1971, the day the new systembegan.

In the former British monetary system, there were ______.
选项 A、twenty pence in a shilling
B、a hundred pence in a pound
C、twenty shillings in a pound
D、twelve pence and twenty shillings in a pound
答案C
解析 根据第二段可知英国旧的钱币系统是一镑有二十先令，一先令有12便士，因此选 C。
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