综合教程2Unit7_A课文The Glorious Messiness of English(Para.1-2)

国际学院 大学英语教学部 大一”三个五千工程“ 背诵

The story of our English language istypically one of massive stealing from other languages. That is why Englishtoday has an estimated vocabulary of over one million words, while other majorlanguages have far fewer. French, for example, has only about 75,000 words, andthat includes English expressions like snack bar and hit parade. The French,however, do not like borrowing foreign words because they think it corruptstheir language. The government tries to ban words from English and declaresthat Walkman is not desirable; so they invent a word, balladeur, which Frenchkids are supposed to say instead -- but they don't. (From Para.1-2. TextA, Unit7 Book 2The Glorious Messiness ofEnglish)

我们的英语的历史是典型的大量窃取其它语言的历史。正因为如此，今日英语的词汇量据估计超过一百万，而其它主要语言的词汇量都要小得多。例如，法语只有约75,000个单词，其中还包括像snack bar（快餐店）和 hit parade（流行唱片目录）这样的英语词汇。但法国人不喜欢借用外来词，因为他们认为这样会损害法语的纯洁性。法国政府试图逐出英语词汇，宣称Walkman（随身听）一词有伤大雅，因此他们造了个新词“balladeer”让法国儿童用——可他们就是不用。