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
It is nothing new that English use is on the rise around the world, especially in business circles. This also happens in France,
It is nothing new that English use is on the rise around the world, especially in business circles. This also happens in France,
admin
2010-03-25
51
问题
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.
Partly, it’s that American hegemony. Didier Benchimol, CEO of a French e-commerce 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.
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.
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.
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 Academic Francaise, has not.
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 US rose to the status of the world’s preeminent political, economic, military, and cultural power, English became the obvious second language to learn.
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.
The Net had two big impacts. One was that it was an exciting, potentially lucrative new industry that had its roots in the US, 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.
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 the US 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.
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.
The passage has discussed the rise in English use on the Continent from the following perspectives EXCEPT
选项
A、economics.
B、national security.
C、the emergence of the Internet.
D、the changing functions of the European Community.
答案
B
解析
本题是一道主要细节概括题,问文章从哪几个方面讨论了英语在欧洲大陆的崛起。 A、C、D都提到了,只有选项B国家安全未提及。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/fXqO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Extract1ThereareelevenotherchildreninGrania’sclass.Eightofthemknowsignlanguage.Graniasoonlearnsthateven
A、Ifinditdifficulttocontinueourprivateconversationinsuchabigcrowd.B、Onewaytocompetewithourrivalsistokeep
Afteradecades-longsearchforamanageablebalancebetweenmotherhoodandcareer,agroupofAmericanwomenhavefoundworkin
Afteradecades-longsearchforamanageablebalancebetweenmotherhoodandcareer,agroupofAmericanwomenhavefoundworkin
ManypeoplearesurprisedtolearnthatAntarcticaisnearlytwicethesizeoftheUnitedStates.ThenameAntarcticawascoined
OlderAmericansarelesshealthythantheirEnglishcounterparts,buttheyliveaslongasorevenlongerthantheirEnglishpee
Weholdcertainprofessionstoahigherstandardwhenitcomestothementalhealthoftheirworkers,andforgoodreason.Docto
A、Shehadtoflyonthefollowingday.B、Shewasluckyenoughtohaveanunoccupiedseat.C、Shepaidextramoneyforherflight.
Whattodonow?SchoolofficialsaroundthecountryareaskingthatquestionfollowingaSupremeCourtdecisionrejectingracial
随机试题
下列关于测量标准的描述中,正确的有____________。
简述人的本质的三种属性的含义。
具有齿枕(垫)的家畜是
患儿,男,8个月,夜间常哭闹、多汗、睡眠不安。查体见方颅、肋骨串珠。下列护理措施中错误的是()
不属于《GB/T19000:2008质量管理体系》国家标准规定的质量管理基本原则的是()。
关于双代号时标网络计划的表述,正确的有()。
日本震后国民镇定自若,人车有序。积极自救。一片井井有条的现象,你对此有什么看法?
COP19
在数据库中,数据模型包括数据结构、数据操作和
Inasense,thenewprotectionismisnotprotectionismatall,atleastnotinthetraditionalsenseoftheterm.Theoldprotec
最新回复
(
0
)