辛达托福代报考位:到2017年11月11日上午托福官网没有释放考位,在此提醒广大考生抓紧时间报名,注意自己的考试时间,如对托福报名有任何疑问,欢迎咨询在线客服
6 If you ask people to name the one person who had the greatest effect on the English language, you will get answers like “Shakespeare,” “Samuel Johnson,” and “Webster”, but none of these men had any effect at all compared to a man who didn’t even speak English ----William the Conqueror.
Before 1066, in the land we now call Great Britain lived peoples belonging to two major language groups. In the west-central region lived the Welsh, who spoke a Celtic language, and in the north lived the Scots, whose language , though not the same as Welsh, was also Celtic. In the rest of the country lived the Saxons , actually a mixture of Anglos, Saxons, and other Germanic and Nordic peoples, who spoke what we now call Anglo-Saxon (or Old English ), a Germanic language. If this state of affairs had lasted, English today would be close to German.
But this state of affairs
did not last. In 1066 the Normans led by William defeated the Saxons and began their rule over England. For about a century, French became the official language of England while Old English became the language of peasants. As a result, English words of politics and the law come from French rather than German. In some cases, ,modern English even shows a distinction () between upper-class French and lower-class Anglo-Saxon in its words. We even have different words for some foods, meat in particular, depending on whether it is still out in the field or at ready to be cooked, which shows the fact that the Saxon peasants were doing the farming, while the upper-class Normans were doing most of the eating.
When Americans visit Europe for the first time, they usually find Germany more “foreign” than France because the German they see on signs and advertisements seems much more different from English language is actually Germanic in its beginning and that the French influences are all the result of one man’s ambition. NMET2001 D
What is the subject discussed in the text?
a. The history of Great Britain. b. The similarity between English and French.
c. The rule of England by William the conqueror d. The French influences on the English language.
大家在进行托福备考的同时,如果对考位方面也比较紧张,可联系辛达代报为您服务
☆转载声明: 各位同行和网友们,欢迎转载或引用在本站的文章,敬请标注原文出自辛达托福代报网!
其他文章推荐
辛达代报名网站编辑部