2. 外语
  3. A number of foreign words still look like foreign words; these are often expressions which were originally used by people who wa

A number of foreign words still look like foreign words; these are often expressions which were originally used by people who wa

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问题      A number of foreign words still look like foreign words; these are often expressions which were originally used by people who wanted to sound particularly well educated. (61) It was the desire to be scholarly that brought about a wave of Latin terms which appeared in the 16th century when the Humanist movement brought new impetus to learning throughout Europe. Abbreviations such as e.g. (from the Latin meaning a voluntary example); PS (meaning "added after the letter has been written); a.m. and p.m. (meaning "before noon" and "after noon") came into the language at this time. 62) Nowadays they are so common that most people don’t even know what the letters actually stand for, and there’s certainly nothing learned about using them today!
     In addition to the words brought to English by foreigners, there are plenty of words which the British have collected from the countries they have settled in all over the world. 63) There are even a few Chinese words, which I’m sure a Chinese speaker would never recognize from the way we pronounce them: "typhoon" is a great wind; "to kow tow" is to bow down low; a "sampan" is a small wooden boat. Over 5,000 of the words in common use in English today are words of foreign origin. Some of them are clearly recognizable as foreign like "au pair" or "rendezvous"; others now look so English that only a language historian knows where they came from.
     So English is in a state of permanent development. Both in Britain and abroad it is gaining new words and expressions, and dropping and changing old ones. Words change their meaning, and they go in and out of fashion like hairstyles. 64) Nobody knows all the four million words that are said to exist; a well educated person probably uses under 200,000. 65) So don’t be surprised if you never encounter some of the expressions that still appear in school textbooks; and next time you hear somebody using a strange word you haven’t heard before, you can comfort yourself that there may well be a native speaker somewhere who doesn’t know it either.
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答案在16世纪的时候，人文主义运动促进了欧洲各国的学术运动，人们都想显示自己博学多才，从而出现了一股使用拉丁字词的潮流。
解析 此句是一个复合句，句子结构为：“It was the desire…that brought about…a wave of Latin terms which…the 16th century when…”。此句是一个强调句型，在这个句型里面，关系代词which引导定语从句，修饰a wave of Latin terms；关系副词when引导定语从句，修饰the 16th century。句中scholarly作“博学多才”讲；Humanist movement作“人文主义运动”讲；impetus作“动力”、“促进”讲。
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