2014考研英語：閱讀理解基礎(chǔ)之練習(xí)題(十)_跨考網(wǎng)

　　2014考研英語：閱讀理解基礎(chǔ)之練習(xí)題(十)

　　Text 10

　　Why is English so difficult? It is often thought that the number of words in the English language is a major reason, but this is not the real answer. Certainly, there are over half million words in the Oxford English Dictionary, but only about 10,000 are in general everyday use. A much stronger reason is the rich variety of sources from which English comes—sources that are due to the different people who have conquered or settled in parts of the British Isles over the past 1,500 years—and knowing more about the way English has evolved over this period makes its difficulties easier to understand.

　　What do we mean by an “English” word? Many words are English in the sense that they can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons—Germanic tribes which settled in England from around the fifth century AD. They gave us many common words like book, house, cat and dog. Earlier still were the Celtic people whose speech survives in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, in Welsh, and in the local languages of two extremities of the British Isles, Manx and Cornish. There is practically no Celtic influence in English. This is because the Celts were forced back into the fringes of the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and there was little cultural interaction.

　　The next important influence on the main vocabulary of English came in the ninth and tenth centuries when much of the east side of England was in the hands of Danish invaders, and England as a whole had a Danish king Canute for a time. The Danes had much more contact with the Anglo-Saxons than did the Celts, and their short period of occupation has left its mark in the number of Scandinavian words taken into our language. Many of these are still in use, such as take and law, names of parts of the body such as leg and skull. Many more Scandinavian words are preserved in some dialects of the east side of England, in place-names and in street-names.

　　The last time that England was successfully invaded was in 1066 when William of Normandy defeated the English king Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The arrival of the Normans brought a further decisive influence on the language—French. French, together with Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, is known as a Romance language, and has its roots in Latin. For several centuries, French was the language of the aristocracy in England and a large number of French words came into the language. Many of these words are to do with government, like justice, council and tax, and many are abstract terms like liberty, charity and conflict.

　　Most of the words taken into the language over the years were adopted either because there was a basic need for them and they were useful or because they were preferable in some way to the words already in use. Often the old word disappeared altogether. In many cases, however, the new word and the old continued in use side by side on a roughly equal footing. This had produced pairs of words which are both in use today, like shut and close or buy and purchase, in which the second word of each pair is French in origin.

　　In the first years after the Norman Conquest many new words were used only by the ruling class and professionals associated with them, such as scribes and clerks. The language of the common people remained largely unaffected. It was the spread of literacy and the development of printing that brought the French words into more general use. Often these were technical words, or words with an official ring, such as commence and purchase. The result was a mixture of types of words. For many meanings we now have a choice of formal and informal words, the formal ones often being used only in very specific situations. (650 words)