英国风情

英国风情

【专题介绍】

英国风土人情成为高考阅读理解热点话题的理由有以下几点：

1. 英国是英语的发源地，英国英语一直被认为是纯正、正统的英语。

2. 英国历史悠久，其文化源远流长,对世界文化做出了重要贡献。

3. 英国作为一个老牌资本主义国家，曾在科教文化、工业技术等领域引领世界达300多年，且在当今世界范围内仍具有强大的政治、经济、文化影响力。

【应考策略】

1. 熟悉英国的地理概况和气候特点以及英国人的性格特点。

2. 了解英国的绅士文化（绅士风度是英国文化的精髓,是英国人的价值取向和努力方向。深受这种文化熏陶的英国人,在生活、工作、为人处事等方面都以此为标准）以及一些独特的历史传统和风俗。

3. 掌握一些重要的历史名词的含义，如:工业革命、维多利亚价值观和英联邦等。 The Queen?s English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen?s Christmas broadcasts has found. Researchers have studied each of her messages to the Commonwealth countries since 1952 to find out the change in her pronunciation from the noble Upper Received to the Standard Received.

Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany?s University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent (口音) changes recorded over the past half century would take place within one person. “As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records,” he said.

He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels (元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years. “Her accent sounds slightly less noble than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very small and slow changes that we don?t notice from year to year.”

“We may be able to relate it to changes in the social classes,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper. “In 1952 she would have been heard saying ?thet men in the bleck het?. Now it would be ?that man in the black hat?. Similarly she would have spoken of ?the citay? and ?dutay?, rather than ?citee? and ?dutee?, and ?hame? rather than ?home?. In the 1950s she would have been ?lorst?, but by the 1970s ?lost?.” The Queen?s broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth countries. Each Christmas, the

10-minute broadcast is put on TV at 3 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch (传统火鸡午餐).

The results were published (发表) in the Journal of Phonetics.

1. The Queen?s broadcasts were chosen for the study mainly because ______.

A. she has been Queen for many years

B. she has a less upper-class accent now

C. her speeches are familiar to many people

D. her speeches have been recorded for 50 years

2. Which of the following is an example of a less noble accent in English?

A. “dutay” B. “citee” C. “hame” D. “lorst”

3. We may infer from the text that the Journal of Phonetics is a magazine on ______.

A. speech sounds B. Christmas customs

C. TV broadcasting D. personal messages

4. What is the text mainly about?

A. The relationship between accents and social classes.

B. The Queen?s Christmas speeches on TV.

C. The changes in a person?s accent.

D. The recent development of the English language.

【阅读赏析】

这篇文章中隐含着很多英国文化背景知识，如英联邦国家（Commonwealth countries）。英联邦国家是由英国和已经独立的前英国殖民地或附属国组成的联合体。英王是英联邦的元首。英国女王伊丽莎白二世自登基以来, 每年都要通过广播向英联邦国家发表圣诞感言致辞。然而，近来研究人员从她的圣诞感言中听出了变化：她那世人皆知的“贵族式发音”如今已少了些“贵族”的味道。这个现象折射出一个社会现实，那就是过去在英国贵族英语和平民英语是有区别的，当然，这种区别的存在有其历史渊源。但是随着社会的发展，这种差异越来越小，女王“贵族式发音”的平民化就是一个典型例子。由此表明英语语言发展的平民化倾向明显，贵族英语和平民英语正在进一步融合。

【答案解析】

1. D。推理判断题。文章的第二段对把握全文含义尤为重要。此段内容提到Jonathan Harrington想要研究一个人有记录的语音在半个世纪内的变化，而就他所知，这样的广播记录只有女王的。因此英国女王是作为研究对象的唯一人选，故选D。

2. B。细节理解题。第三、四段提到，女王的口音变化体现在元音音素的发音发生变化，而且是从贵族式发音向平民式转变。因此她在70年代使用的发音肯定是相对less noble的，如citee , dutee, home, lost。故选B。

3. A。细节理解题。最后一段提到这项关于女王的pronunciation和accent的研究结果发表在了Journal of Phonetics上，据此可推断出这个杂志是有关语音学的。

4. C。主旨大意题。根据全文大意尤其是第二段段意可知。