2. 外语
  3. 1 It is nothing new that English use is on the rise around the world, especially in business circles. This also happens in F

1 It is nothing new that English use is on the rise around the world, especially in business circles. This also happens in F

admin2013-04-13  44
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 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.
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 limguage 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, had 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 economies 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 begining 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 the 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 had 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 tran sition 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.
选项 A、Americ an dominance in the Internet software business.
B、a prae tical need for effective communication among Europeans.
C、Europe ans’ eagerness to do business with American businessmen.
D、there cent trend for foreign companies to merge with each other.
答案B
解析 <1>possessors of the world’s deepest pockets这里的pocket指钱袋。作者将美国投资商看作是世界上最富有的人。
<2>entwine使紧密结合，使交织
<3>morph本来表示语素变体。此处用作不及物动词，表示“改变”、“变化”。
<4>So it’s a swell language，especially for business．此处swell用作形容词，为俚语，常 用来表示赞许，意思是“极好的”、“第一流的”。
<5>the language’s ability to economically express the concept win-win win-win为经济用语，常译为“双赢”。所谓“双赢”，指竞争双方都可从竞争中获利。这里，作者说英语具有表达“双赢”概念的能力，是指英语的使用对英语国家及非英语国家都有好处。
<6>paper-shuffling paper此处表示“文件”。shuffle此处的意思是“搞乱”、“弄混”。这里作者将过去的European Community比作一个由于语言不通而导致其文件混乱不堪的俱乐部。
<6>hedging their bets hedge此处的意思时“避免直接回答(问题)。bet此处表示“选择”，尤其指“可能成功的事”。
<7>...the transition toEnglish as the language of European business hasn’tbeen all that  traumatic...此句中的that为程度副词，表示“那样地”。traumatic此处为口头语用法，表示“令人痛苦而难忘的”。
此题为细节理解题。据第3段可知，由于欧洲诸国在政治和经济上密不可分，他们需要一种可以用来进行彼此之间的对话乃至与世界上其他国家之间进行交流的共同语言，最终他们确定英语为这种共同语言。A、C、D都与英语的地位提升有关，但不是最根本的因素。
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