【正文】 People invent nonsense words by bining certain sounds that just seem to fit the things or actions they describe. Often we make up words for anything which is basically rather silly. Spoof was invented by an English edian some fifty years ago. It means to poke fun at. Hornswoggle was used a great deal in the United States during the nieenth century, and it means to cheat. If a dishonest politician wants to hornswoggle the taxpayers, he invents a boondoggle, which is a useless, expensive project which does nobody any good. Fairly recently someone invented the word gobbledygook. When people talk or write using long, fancy words that really mean nothing, we call it gobbledygook. Unfortunately, many people use gobbledygook because they want to seem more important than they are, or because they don39。 a person39。s take the word graph and build several different invented words with it by adding prefixes and suffixes to it or using it as a prefix or suffix. Graph by itself means anything which is shown to us in pictures or writing. For instance, your teacher might want to keep track of your reading progress by drawing a graph of your reading test scores, or a businessman might draw graphs which show the ups and downs of his pany39。 Andre M. Ampere, a French physicist。英語(yǔ)泛讀教程 3 (Unit 17 課文 ) ants05 1 Unit 1 1 Text Invented Words New words appear in English every day. Do you know how these words are born? Read the following passage to find various ways English words are invented. Scholars guess that English has about 600 000 words, but there are probably more. New words continue to e into the language at such a rate that no dictionary could possibly keep up with them. The old words which were born centuries ago in the AngloSaxon, Germanic and French languages make up four fifths of the English language. The other one fifth is made up partly of borrowed words and partly of three other kinds of words: words from the names of peoples and places。 Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist。s sales records. Now, by adding the prefixes and suffixes listed below to graph, we can make several new words. Notice that graph is part of a longer suffix as well as a suffix by itself. Prefixes Suffixes 英語(yǔ)泛讀教程 3 (Unit 17 課文 ) ants05 2 auto self graphy study of 。s name written in his or her handwriting biography － story of a person39。t really want people to understand what they mean or what they are doing. So, when the dishonest politician wants to hornswoggle the public with a boondoggle, he usually explains things in gobbledygook. 英語(yǔ)泛讀教程 3 (Unit 17 課文 ) ants05 3 When Lewis Carroll was writing his books the word gobbledygook had not been invented yet, but Carroll would have known exactly what it meant. Carroll loved to spoof or poke fun at people who used fancy, importantsounding words when simple language would have done better. In one part of Through the Looking Glass, Alice has a conversation with Humpty Dumpty in which Humpty Dumpty insists words can mean whatever he wants them to mean. Alice insists that this is impossible. If everyone did that no one would understand anyone else. The conversation goes like this: But 39。a nice knockdown argument39。你知道這些詞是怎么產(chǎn)生的嗎？閱讀下文你就能找到造英語(yǔ)單詞的各種方法。余下的五分之一，一部分由外來(lái)詞組成，另外的部分由其它三種詞組成，它們是：表示人名 、地名的專(zhuān)有名詞；象聲詞以及新造的詞。在英語(yǔ)中像這樣的詞有許多。 接下來(lái)是新造的詞。如果把 “玩耍 ”和 “物品 ”放在一起，我們就可以得到復(fù)合詞 “玩具 ”。例如，前綴 re意思為 “再 ”。后綴 ness 意思為 “…… 狀態(tài) ”。像 “unkindness”一詞的詞根是 “kind”。其它的詞也可以成為詞根、前綴或者后英語(yǔ)泛讀教程 3 (Unit 17 課文 ) ants05 4 綴，這取決于它們?cè)趩卧~里所處的位置。例如，你的老師可能想通過(guò)繪制一份閱讀測(cè)試分?jǐn)?shù)圖表來(lái)了解你的讀書(shū)過(guò)程，或者一個(gè)商人想通過(guò)繪制圖表來(lái)顯示他的公司銷(xiāo)售紀(jì)錄的變化。 “biology”意思為對(duì)生命的研究。 另一種新造 的詞沒(méi)有實(shí)際意義。一些日常用的現(xiàn)代詞，如：壞、大、少年、少女、聊天、工作和有趣，可能就是幾個(gè)世紀(jì)前從無(wú)實(shí)際意義的詞開(kāi)始的。沒(méi)人知道這個(gè)詞的出處是什么?？_爾告訴我們： Chortle 是吃吃地笑聲和噴鼻息兩個(gè)行為交叉在一起時(shí)發(fā)出的聲音。 某些聲音似乎與所描述的事物或行為相 吻合，人們將它們組合起來(lái)創(chuàng)造出無(wú)意義的詞。 Hornswoggle(隱瞞 )一詞十九世紀(jì)在美國(guó)被廣泛使用，表示 “欺騙 ”的意思。不幸的是，許多人使用官樣文章，是因?yàn)樗麄兿胱屪约猴@得比實(shí)際更重要，或者是因?yàn)樗⒄Z(yǔ)泛讀教程 3 (Unit 17 課文 ) ants05 5 們不想讓人們了解他們的真正意圖和他們的所作所為?！稅?ài)麗絲漫游鏡中世界》的一個(gè)章節(jié)中，愛(ài)麗絲有一段與矮座椅沙發(fā)的對(duì)話，其中矮座椅沙 發(fā)堅(jiān)持認(rèn)為：它想讓詞匯是什么意思 詞匯就是什么意思。 “我要用一個(gè)詞的時(shí)候， ” 矮座椅沙發(fā)用一種相當(dāng)輕蔑的口吻說(shuō)， “我想讓它是什么意思它就是什么意思 恰如其分。矮座椅沙發(fā)以一種奇怪的方式 來(lái)使用詞匯，這使它成為一個(gè) “官樣文章 ”大師，而不是語(yǔ)言大師。 ” 2 Home Reading History of English The English language we speak today went through three stages called Old English, Middle English and Modern English. But ages before even Old English came into being, many other languages had to arise and develop. The oldest of these, as far as we know, was the IndoEuropean family of languages, which were beginning to be spoken clear back during the Stone Age. During the Stone Age, some IndoEuropean people lived on the islands of Britain. The earliest known of these British IndoEuropeans split into two groups called the Scots and the Celts. There was another group, who were not IndoEuropean, called Picts. Together these three peoples are known as Britons. The Britons were a fierce, Stone Age people constantly making war on each other. They dressed in animal skins, lived in caves or rude wooden huts. These people had their own languages. At the same time that the Stone Age Britons were living their warlike life, the Greeks, far to the east of them, were building a great civilization in Europe. Many of our ideas of art, literature, science, philosophy and government today e from the genius of these ancient people. As the Greek civilization reached a high point, another great civilization was being built in Italy by the Romans, whose language was Latin. When the Romans conquered Greece and made it part of their empire, they found a culture much older and far superior to their own. So they borrowed it. After conquering all of Europe, Rome invaded Britain and made it part of the empire, in 43 . Romans brought their advanced culture to the Britons. Not only did they bring their art, literature, law and the Latin language, they established schools,