首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
(1)It is nothing new that English use is on the rise around the world, especially in business circles. This also happens in Fran
(1)It is nothing new that English use is on the rise around the world, especially in business circles. This also happens in Fran
admin
2016-11-03
114
问题
(1)It is nothing new that English use is on the rise around the world, especially in business circles. This also happens in France, the headquarters of the global battle against American cultural hegemony. If French guys are giving in to English, something really big must be going on. And something big is going on.
(2)Partly, it’s that American hegemony. Didier Benchimol, CEO of a French ecommerce software company, feels compelled to speak English perfectly because the Internet software business is dominated by Americans. He and other French businessmen also have to speak English because they want to get their message out to American investors, possessors of the world’s deepest pockets.
(3)The triumph of English in France and elsewhere in Europe, however, may rest on something more enduring. As they become entwined with each other politically and economically, Europeans need a way to talk to one another and to the rest of the world. And for a number of reasons, they’ve decided upon English as their common tongue.
(4)So when German chemical and pharmaceutical company Hoechst merged with French competitor Rhone-Poulenc last year, the companies chose the vaguely Latinate Aventis as the new company name—-and settled on English as the company’s common language. When monetary policymakers from around Europe began meeting at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt last year to set interest rates for the new Euroland, they held their deliberations in English. Even the European Commission, with 11 official languages and a traditionally French-speaking bureaucracy, effectively switched over to English as its working language last year.
(5)How did this happen? One school attributes English’s great success to the sheer weight of its merit. It’s a Germanic language, brought to Britain around the fifth century A.D. During the four centuries of French-speaking rule that followed Norman Conquest of 1066, the language morphed into something else entirely. French words were added wholesale, and most of the complications of Germanic grammar were shed while few of the complications of French were added. The result is a language with a huge vocabulary and a simple grammar that can express most things more efficiently than either of its parents. What’s more, English has remained ungoverned and open to change—foreign words, coinages, and grammatical shifts—in a way that French, ruled by the purist Academie Francaise, has not.
(6)So it’s a swell language, especially for business. But the rise of English over the past few centuries clearly owes at least as much to history and economics as to the language’s ability to economically express the concept win-win. What happened is that the competition—first Latin, then French, then, briefly, German—faded with the waning of the political, economic, and military fortunes of, respectively, the Catholic Church, France, and Germany. All along, English was increasing in importance: Britain was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and London the world’s most important financial centre, which made English a key language for business. England’s colonies around the world also made it the language with the most global reach. And as that former colony the U.S. rose to the status of the world’s preeminent political, economic, military, and cultural power, English became the obvious second language to learn.
(7)In the 1990s more and more Europeans found themselves forced to use English. The last generation of business and government leaders who hadn’t studied English in school was leaving the stage. The European Community was adding new members and evolving from a paper-shuffling club into a serious regional government that would need a single common language if it were ever to get anything done. Meanwhile, economic barriers between European nations have been disappearing, meaning that more and more companies are beginning to look at the whole continent as their domestic market. And then the Internet came along.
(8)The Net had two big impacts. One was that it was an exciting, potentially lucrative new industry that had its roots in the U.S., so if you wanted to get in on it, you had to speak some English. The other was that by surfing the Web, Europeans who had previously encountered English only in school and in pop songs were now coming into contact with it daily.
(9)None of this means English has taken over European life. According to the European Union, 47% of Western Europeans(including the British and Irish)speak English well enough to carry on a conversation. That’s a lot more than those who can speak German(32%)or French(28%), but it still means more Europeans don’t speak the language. If you want to sell shampoo or cell phones, you have to do it in French or German or Spanish or Greek. Even me U.S. and British media companies that stand to benefit most from the spread of English have been hedging their bets—CNN broadcasts in Spanish; the Financial Times has recently launched a daily German-language edition.
(10)But just look at who speaks English: 77% of Western European college students, 69% of managers, and 65% of those aged 15 to 24. In the secondary schools of the European Union’s non-English-speaking countries, 91% of students study English, all of which means that the transition to English as the language of European business hasn’t been all that traumatic, and it’s only going to get easier in the future.
In the author’s opinion, what really underlies the rising status of English in France and Europe?
选项
答案
A practical need for effective communication among Europeans.
解析
第3段指出,除了美国的霸主地位之外,还有更持久(more enduring)的原因促使欧洲人使用英语:因为这些国家在政治、经济上紧密融合。欧洲人需要一种方式在相互之间以及与世界上其他国家交流。基于各种原因,他们选定英语作为通用语。也就是说,欧洲需要一种语言互相交流以及同世界交流,所以答案可表述为Apractical need for effective communication among Europeans。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/a07O777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
TheSeattleTimesCompanyisonenewspaperfirmthathasrecognizedtheneedforchangeanddonesomethingaboutit.Inthene
Theactthatthespeakerorwriteruseslinguisticformstoenablealistenerorreadertoidentifysomethingiscalled
TheminimummeaningfulunitatthegrammaticallevelofEnglishisknownas
Thebasicdistinctionbetweenachievementandproficiencytestsistobefoundinthedifferentpurposesforwhichthetwokinds
Thebasicdistinctionbetweenachievementandproficiencytestsistobefoundinthedifferentpurposesforwhichthetwokinds
WhoisconsideredtobethegreatestEnglishdramatistsinceShakespeare?
Accordingtothenewsitem,peoplecangetthefollowinghelpfromtheHIV/AIDScampsEXCEPT
Parentsandgrandparentswithmoneytosparearenolongerwaitinguntildeathtopassontheirwealth.Instead,they’reincreas
______isconcernedwiththesocialsignificanceoflanguagevariationandlanguageuseindifferentspeechcommunities.
PASSAGETHREEWhatdoeslifemeantotheauthor?
随机试题
土方路基边线与边坡不应出现单向累计长度超过()的弯折。
依照《环境影响评价法》的规定,下列环评文件应由环境保护部审批的是()。
下列各项不属于顾客关系管理与顾客满意度持续改进的共同思想基础的是()。
在白酒中,酱香型酒为数最多,以贵州茅台酒为代表。()
漏税:指纳税人并非故意未缴或者少缴税款的行为。对漏税者税务机关应当令其限期照章补缴所漏税款;逾期未缴的,从漏税之日起,按日加收税款滞纳金。根据上述定义,下列情况中属于漏税行为的是( )。
“学问之法,不惟无才,难以距师,核道实意,证实是非也”观点的提出者是()。
设X1,X2,X3,X4是取自正态总体N(0,22)的简单随机样本,Y=a(X1—2X2)2+b(3X3—4X4)2,则当a=_______,b=_______时,统计量服从χ2分布,自由度为_______。
在VisualFoxPro6.0中修改数据库、表单、报表等的可视化工具是()。
要在设计视图中创建查询,查找平均分在85分以上的女生,并显示姓名和平均分,正确设置查询条件的方法是
ThehotelTerrystayedatcanbedescribedas______.
最新回复
(
0
)