赖世雄高级美国英语教程Unit 37 The Germanic Languages
hi, everyone, welcome again to Radio English on Sunday. This is Bruce,
/ and this is Peter.
/ Today on page three hundred and fourteen, we take a look at unit thirty seven, the Germanic Languages. "Germanic" is the adjective of "German", it is one of the adjectives, "German" is also an adjective as well as a noun, but (from) we refer to the many languages which are a part of a large language family, we say the Germanic Languages. We'll introduce this languages to you today, and explain why they are so important in this modern world.
/ 如果说成German language, 指的是德语，但这里Germanic Languages, 指的是日耳曼语系。
Let's begin. I'll read the first paragraph, on page three hundred fourteen, if you just joined our program.
Most people have heard of the Tower of Babel story in the Bible. According to the story, long ago, all people speak the same language. Later, however, they were punished by speaking a great number of different tongues. Today, there're literally thousands of different languages, defined as mutually unintelligible tongues around the world, though many are related to one another. Indeed, the two largest languages families, the Indo-European, the language family with the largest number of speakers, and Sino-Tibetan, containing the Chinese languages, Thai, Vietnamese, and Tibetan, include hundreds of languages with over half the world's population.
Here we take a look at the big picture and the biggest picture is that humans all speak languages and we speak different tongues. Here we are using "tongue" to mean "language", the same meaning. There is one huge super family of languages called Indo-European family. "Indo" refers to "印度", India, especially Northern India. Northwest, North, and Northeast. The speakers of those languages in India, are related linguistically to speakers all the way over to England and Iceland and Ireland, those who speak English in Ireland. That one huge family. Another big big family is here in Asia, the Sino-Tibetan family of languages, which besides the Chinese languages includes Thai, and Vietnamese, this is another very large family. It doesn't have so many languages but it has so many speakers. So, the people to whom I am talking right now in China are speakers in the Sino-Tibetan family, here listening to English which is one of the many languages in the Indo-European family of languages.
/ Sino-Tibetan, 中藏语系，
Sino为什么指的是中国呢？ Sin, it's a sin to leave your family, once you get married, you do not take care of your family, you leave then it's a sin. The "sin" doesn't equal "crime". 可能是因为"秦”是翻译成Sin的。
Sinology,
/ Sinology, the study of China and things of Chinese. 汉学。
Sinologist. I am not a sinologist, I don't know that much, but I love China.
Ok, let's continue.
Because there're so many languages within the above two super categories of language families, linguist have further divided these linguistically rich and geographically diverse families into subgroups, one of which, the Germanic Language Group, has the second largest number of speakers. Chinese being first. Within this group of over five hundred million speakers is the world's foremost international language, English. Foremost in terms of its geographic spread and number of second language users. German, spoken by just over one hundred million people, is one of the world's ten largest languages in terms of population. As English and German speakers constitude the majorities in serval of the world's most economically, militarily and technologically developped countries,
it is important to be familiar with this particular language grouping.
In the first paragraph we looked at the big picture or the biggest picture, the Indo-European family of languages and Sino-Tibetan family. By the way, "sino" [ai] is sometimes pronounced [i]. Most Americans will say [ai]. In the second paragraph, looking under the Indo-European super family languages, we are now looking at the Germanic groups or the Germanic language group, with half a billion speakers, most of them English, a hundred million of them German, and in a moment, we'll introduce some of the many smaller languages within this group.
But the reason this particular group, although it's not the largest group with the largest number of speakers, that belongs to the Chinese group, it is, when you think of countries like Germany, Australia, Switzerland, the US, Candada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, when these countries are added up, we have a large number of speakers and a lot of political, economic, military and technological power, so many people in the world want to learn either German or English to communicate with people in those countries, to improve their own situation.
/ Right. In other words, you know, this paragraph justify the necessity that we, everyone of us, speak, or learn to speak English.
"Justify, ...证明...是对的，
It justifies the necessity that we (should), everyone (should) learn to speak English.
Let's go ahead, we are on the next page, the third of all pargraphs.
Linguists further divide the Germanic languages into three groups, two extant and one extinct. East German languages are no longer spoken. Garphic is an exmaple of this small and historic grouping. Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Slimish, and German are the most important languages within the west Germanic grouping. The Scandinavian languages of Danish, Lcelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish comprise the North Germanic grouping. Though these languages cannot be easily understood among their different speakers, the similarities in vocabulary are striking.
Linguist, a person who studies 语言学， linguistics, is a linguist. Popularly, many people 以为，they think that a person who can speak a lot of languages is a linguist. Actually this is incorrect. Poeple like Peter, we would call a polyglot. "Poly" means many, glot is short for "glotics", which is part of our throat, which refers to the ability to speak. If you can speak many languages, we should use the word "polyglot", but popularly, many people use the word "linguist", however, a linguist is actually a person who studies linguistics. Many linguists can speak only one language; many linguists are not polyglots.
/ striking, struck, stricken,
they went on strike, 罢工，
Strike while the iron is hot.
这个字还有一个用法， 我突然想到， 用struck,
It struck me that ...
It struck me that because tomorrow is Bruce's birthday I should buy any expensive gift for him.
striking, adj,
There's a striking difference between A and B, 显著的，显然的，明显的，obvious,
/ Right. By the way, I should also mention, here on line two of this paragraph, "extant" is the opposite of " extinct", during our last lesson on the panda, we worried that maybe someday the panda would become extinct, no more. If something is still existing, it is extant. And in the German languages, again, there're three groups, the Garthic group, or Eastern languages group, is extinct; nobody speaks those languages any more. But at the west Germanic languages group, that, the most speakers are English and German, for example, but this is also a North Germanic group, ...but they are very very close, that is, people speak Danish, can figure out what Switish are saying, the North ..can figure out what the Icelanders. People from Iceland can pretty well figure out what Norigions are saying ..because their writen languages are very very similar.
Ok, let's give you some specific exmaples up this striking vocabulary similarities in our next paragraph.
1355
Take for example the two largest languages with this group, English and German. The word "house" in German is house in English, with nearly the same pronunciation. Some names of German family members are instantly recognizable to English listeners and readers. (Muter, Pruter, and Aunko, 一些狗屁人名?), for the English mother, brother and uncle. All German nouns are capitalized in print. Other German family members are easily learned. (Fatier, Chestier, and Tondier) for the English father, sister and aunt. Thus, those who know English and want to study German find their first year of learning vocabulary to be relatively easy. The same is true, of course, for those who want to learn Dutch or Danish, from an English or German background. These many similarities are due to the single common parent language of all the Germanic tongues. Even though this grandfather language no longer exsits.
This paragraph explains why all of these different languages are actually quite similar to one another, unless you are really a bad language learner and you just don't get it when you try to study a second language, you will find, if you know English and you want to learn German, or any of these other Germanic languages, at least for the first year, you shouldn't have much trouble with vocabulary, because the words look so similar, sometimes they are almost exactly the same; sometimes you can figure them out; they are pretty close. So, if you want to figure up (out?) a third language, if your second language is English, and you want to try German, you will find that, mmm, at least for the first year, oh, this isn't so bad.
/ Wagon is car, (Vox) is in English the same pronunciation, but different spelling.
/...better than Americans.
/ I suppose that, in fact, Dutch are famous because they are such a small country, Holand is a small country, they have been treating, they have been very good treaters for about five hundred years. And, big learns that, people are not going to learn Dutch, they must learn English, French, German..
/ ..language.
/ Exactly. And they do so, they learn from 小学一年级。 And almost everybody in Holand can speak conversational English, and people who go onto college, most of them speak English fluently.
Ok, let's take a look at our last page here,
Speakers and writers of the Germanic Languages account for a great deal of the world's output in everything from economics to literature, to military, to science and technology. Hardly an aspect of modern life does not benefit from the contributions made by those using these languages. As in the Internet, Hollywood entertainment, Dutch, Phillips, and Scandinavian consumer goods design (Ericsson,即爱立信 maker of cellular phones, is a Swedish company, as are Volvo and Saab), and even the Nobel Prices, awarded by both Norwedian and Switish instituts, more than one third of the world's economic production originates in these countries, too.
From the last sentence, we can really feel the importance of the Germanic languages, and those countries whose majority of speakers are either German, as in Germany, Australia and Switzerland, or in English speaking countries like Canada, the UK, Australia, the US, New Zealand, those great influence on the rest of the world, from countries whose speakers and writers belong to this large group, the Germanic Language group. So, if you are learning English with us, I think you are making a great choice.
/ benefit,
You can benefit a lot from learning English.
但这个字也可以作名词解，好处，for the benefit of, 为。。。利益着想。You should do things for the benefit of your society. ...当如果是为了公益的着想时，也可以说for the good of...or in the interest of...这个interest这里也是说利益，前面要用in.
Ok, let's look at our concluding paragraph.
For any speaker of a language outside of the Germanic Language group, preparing to choose a useful second language for the future, English is probably the best bet. German, too, is very useful in the fields of medicine, economics, military and science and technology. Being able to communicate with other in this far reaching linguistic group, will offer the user immeasurable benefits.
We remind all of you, of course, you are probably learning English with us, and you've had English student background at some point, or perhaps some of you have also taken a time to learn a little German, we feel that because of the influence of those countries, using these languages, you will find great benefit if you can communicate with either in writing or speaking and listening, and certainly reading. All these new information which comes out first in English or German, it's an immeasurable benefit to you because you are connected to some of the world's most important production, whether you are talking about arts, science, politics, military and so on, much of the world's new information and new products come out in English and German.
Well, let's go back and review as we always do on this program. I'll reread the whole article for you this time without stopping, I'll read all the way through, so please use this time now as a chance to improve your listening comprehension. 2150
That's it for today's lesson.
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Unit 37 The Germanic Languages 日耳曼语系
Most people have heard of the Tower of Babel story in the Bible. According to this story, long ago all people spoke the same language. Later, however, they were punished by speaking a great number of different tongues. Today, there are literally thousands of different languages (defined as mutually unintelligible tongues) around the world, though many are related to one another. Indeed, the two largest language families, the Indo-European (the language family with the largest number of speakers) and Sino-Tibetan (containing the Chinese languages, Thai, Vietnamese, and Tibetan) include hundreds of languages with over half the world's population.
Because there are so many languages within the above two super-categories of language families, linguists have further divided these linguistically rich and geographically diverse families into subgroups, one of which, the Germanic language group, has the second-largest number of speakers (Chinese being first). Within this groups of over 500,000,000 speakers is the world's foremost international language, English, foremost in terms of its geographic spread and number of second-language users. German, spoken by just over 100,000,000, people, is one of the world's ten-largest languages in terms of population. As English and German speakers constitute the majorities in several of the world's most economically, militarily, and technologically developed countries, it is important to be familiar with this particular language grouping.
Linguists further divide the Germanic languages into three groups, two extant and one extinct. East Germanic languages are no longer spoken; Gothic is an example of this small and historic grouping. Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Flemish, and German are the more important languages within the West germanic grouping. The Scandinavian languages of Danish, Lcelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish comprise the North Germanic grouping. Though these languages cannot be easily understood among their different speakers, the similarities in vocabulary are striking.
Take for example the two largest languages with this group, English and German. The word Haus in German is house in English, with nearly the same pronunciation. Some names of German family members are instantly recognizable to English listerners and readers: Mutter, Bruder, and Onkel for the English mother, brother, and uncle (all German nouns are capitalized in print). Other German family members are easily learned: Vater, Schwester, and Tante for the English father, sister, and aunt. Thus, those who know English and want to study German find their first year of learning vocabulary to be relatively easy. The same is true, of course, for those who want to learn Dutch or Danish from an English or German background; these many similarities are due to the single common parent language of all the Germanic tongues, even though this "grandfather" languages no longer exists.
Speakers and writers of the Germanic languages account for a great deal of the world's output in everything from economics to literature to military to science and technology. Hardly an aspect of modern life does not benefit from the contributions made by those using these languages, as in the Internet, Hollywood entertainment, Dutch (Phillips) and Scandinavian consumer goods design (Ericsson, maker of cellular phones, is a Swedish company, as are Volvo and Saab), and even the Nobel prizes (awarded by both Norwegian and Swedish Institutes). More than one-third of the world's economic production originates in these countries, too.
For any speaker of a language outside the Germanic language group preparing to choose a useful second language for the future, English is probably the best bet. German, too, is very useful in the fields of medicine, economics, military, and science and technology. Being able to communicate with others in this far-reaching linguistic group will offer the user immeasurable benefits.
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literally, 之一，确实地，不夸大地，
A conscientious reporter should write any news story literally as it happened.
有良知的记者应确实根据事实发生的原委写新闻。
unintelligible, adj, 口齿不清的，听不懂的，－－＞intelligible, 相反词
The little boy burst out crying after murmuring something unintelligible.
category, n, 种类，类别
People may fall into three categories: introverts, extroverts, and ambiverts.
Divide ...into...
It is a good method to divide a class into groups when you teach English conversation.
diverse, adj, 不同的，多样的，
A great many diverse opinions were expressed at the meeting.
in terms of...就...而言
Cakes and pies are delicious, but in terms of health, they are not very good for us.
constitute, v, 构成 = make up, form,
His action constituted a breach of the law. 他的行为构成犯法
extant, adj, 现存的， ＝ still existing,
The cockroach is the oldest extant winged insect, dating back more than 300 million years.
蟑螂是现存最久的有翼昆虫，已有3亿年的历史了。
extinct, adj, 绝迹的，
The dinosaur is an extinct animal, and so is the dodo, a clumsy bird native to the Island of Mauritius, which became extinct in the 1600s.
similarity---similar的名词。好象经常用复数。注意发音。
Though they are twins, they have no similarities in terms of personality.
striking, adj, 醒目的，明显的，
________Arresting the attention and producing a vivid impression on the sight or the mind.
惹人注目的吸引注意力的和在视觉或脑海中产生深刻印象的
See: noticeable
The cover of this book is striking, but its contents are only platitudes.
far-reaching, adj, (影响）深远的，
There is no denying that the influence of computers on modern life is far-reaching.
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