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
考研
For my proposed journey, the first priority was clearly to start learning Arabic. I have never been a linguist. Though I had tra
For my proposed journey, the first priority was clearly to start learning Arabic. I have never been a linguist. Though I had tra
admin
2013-06-10
62
问题
For my proposed journey, the first priority was clearly to start learning Arabic. I have never been a linguist. Though I had traveled widely as a journalist, I had never managed to pick up more than a smattering of phrases in any tongue other than French, and even my French, was laborious for want of lengthy practice. The prospect of tackling one of the notoriously difficult languages at the age of forty, and trying to speak it well, both deterred and excited me. It was perhaps expecting a little too much of a curiously unreceptive part of myself, yet the possibility that I might gain access to a completely alien culture and tradition by this means was enormously pleasing.
I enrolled as a pupil in a small school in the center of the city. It was run by a Mr Beheit, of dapper appearance and explosive temperament, who assured me that after three months of his special treatment I would speak Arabic fluently. Whereupon he drew from his desk a postcard which an old pupil had sent him from somewhere in the Middle East, expressing great gratitude and reporting the astonishment of local Arabs that he could converse with them like a native. It was written in English. Mr Beheit himself spent most of his time coaching businessmen in French, and through the thin, partitioned walls of his school one could hear him bellowing in exasperation at some confused entrepreneur: "Non, M. Jones. Jane suis pas francais. Pas, Pas, Pas!" (No Mr. Jones, I’m NOT French, I’m not, not, NOT!). I was gratified that my own tutor, whose name was Ahmed, was infinitely softer and less public in approach.
For a couple of hours every morning we would face each other across a small table, while we discussed in meticulous detail the colour scheme of the tiny cubicle, the events in the street below and, once a week, the hair-raising progress of a window-cleaner across the wall of the building opposite. In between, hearing in mind the particular interest I had in acquiring Arabic, I would inquire the way to some imaginary oasis, anxiously demand fodder and water for my camels, wonder politely whether the sheikh was prepared to grant me audience now. It was all hard going. I frequently despaired of ever becoming anything like a fluent speaker, though Ahmed assured me that my pronunciation was above average for a Westemer. This, I suspected, was partly flattery, for there are a couple of Arabic sounds which not even a gift for mimicry allowed me to grasp for ages. There were, moreover, vast distinctions of meaning conveyed by subtle sound shifts rarely employed in English. And for me the problem was increased by the need to assimilate a vocabulary, that would vary from place to place across five essentially Arabic-speaking countries that practiced vernaculars of their own: so that the word for "people", for instance, might be nais, sah ’ab or sooken.
Each day I was mentally exhausted by the strain of a morning in school, followed by an afternoon struggling at home with a tape recorder. Yet there was relief in the most elementary forms of understanding and progress. When merely got the drift of a torrent which Ahmed had just released, I was childishly elated. When I managed to roll a complete sentence off my tongue without apparently thinking what I was saying, and it came out right, I beamed like an idiot. And the enjoyment of reading and writing the flowing Arabic script was something that did not leave me once I had mastered it. By the end of June, no-one could have described me as anything like a fluent speaker of Arabic. I was approximately in the position of a fifteen-year old who, equipped with a modicum of schoolroom French, nervously awaits his first trip to Paris. But this was something I could reprove upon in my own time. I bade farewell to Mr Beheit, still struggling to drive the French negative into the still confused mind of Mr Jones.
The word "modicum" in the last paragraph can be replaced by______.
选项
A、competence
B、excellence
C、mimicry
D、smattering
答案
D
解析
modicum少量,一点点;competence能力;excellence优秀,卓越;mimicry模仿;smattering略知,少数。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/fed4777K
0
考研英语一
相关试题推荐
Whichofthefollowingrecordshasbeenasourceofinformationinherinvestigation?Accordingtothepassage,whichofthefo
TheauthorseemstobelievethattheSupremeCourt’sdecisionTheauthorwritesthispassagemainlytoshowthat
Itisthestaffofdreamsandnightmares.WhereTonyBlair’sattemptstomakeBritainlovetheeurohavefallenondeafears,it
About40percentofAmericansthinkofthemselvesasshy,whileonly20percentsaytheyhaveneversufferedfromshynessatsom
ReadthefollowingtextcarefullyandthentranslatetheunderlinessegmentsintoChinese.Yourtranslationshouldbewrittencl
Thefollowingparagraphsaregiveninawrongorder.ForQuestions41-45,youarerequiredtoreorganizetheseparagraphsintoa
Oncewethoughtofpollution【C1】______meaningsimplysmog—thechoking,stinging,dirtyairthathoversovercities.Butairpoll
Weakdollarorno,$46,000-thepriceforasingleyearofundergraduateinstructionamidtheredbrickofHarvardYard-is【1】But
MillionsofpeoplepassthroughthegatesofDisney’sentertainmentparksinCalifornia,FloridaandJapaneachyear.Whatmakes
随机试题
由于各种外界的原因使正在运行的进程被打断,把它称为_______中断。
从文学角度看,《吕氏春秋》的最大成就是创作了丰富多彩的()。
能准确、直观的提供瘤体立体影像,对制定手术方案有指导意义且适宜急诊完善的影像学检查是()
下列片剂中可避免肝脏的首过作用的是()
商业银行接受客户委托进行投资操作和资产管理等个人理财业务,应与客户反复口头确认以确保获得客户的充分授权。()
甲乙丙是A国(与我国签有税收协定)W大学的3名教师。2006年3月1日甲乙两人应我国H大学邀请入境讲学,2005年11月1日,丙根据我国大专院校的国际交流项目来我国H大学工作。W大学每月支付给三人的工资标准折合为人民币分别为:甲40000元,在A国应纳个
《一条安达鲁狗》
复韵母ao没有韵头。(北京师范大学2015)
Expressingwants表示需求
A、Inaneighboringtown.B、Inthecitygarage.C、AttheGreenvillecenter.D、Atapublicparkinglot.B
最新回复
(
0
)