【正文】 services. Ignoring geography and borders, the information revolution is redefining our world. In less than 20 years, information processing, once limited to the printed work, has given way to puters and the Internet. Computeraided munication is closing the gap between spoken and written English. It encourages more informal conversational language and a tolerance for diversity and individual style. 今天，信息時代已經(jīng)取代了工業(yè)時代，并縮短了時間和距離。日本經(jīng)理與斯堪的納維亞商人做生意時，雙方用英語談判。世界上各種電子檢索系統(tǒng)90%的信息用英語儲存。s population speaks some English. And at present one in five over one billion people are learning English. Over 70% of the world39。 Wondering whether all the time and effort spent learning English is worthwhile? Here are some good reasons why it is. 你懷疑費那么多時間和精力學(xué)英語是不是值得？本文列舉充分理由說明完全值得。丹麥學(xué)者奧托卡克斯頓在英國制造了一臺印刷機(jī)，由此掀起了一場信息傳播技術(shù)的革命。每一個類似的詞的增添都使英語更加豐富，更加多樣化。 11 The AngloSaxons passed on to us their farming vocabulary, including sheep, ox, earth, wood, field and work. They must have also enjoyed themselves because they gave us the word laughter. 盎格魯－薩克遜人將他們的農(nóng)耕詞匯留傳給我們，包括sheep, ox, earth, wood, field 和work等。 9 Identifying similar words, linguists have e up with what they call an IndoEuropean parent language, spoken until 3500 to 2000 . These people had mon words for snow, bee and wolf but no word for sea. So some scholars assume they lived somewhere in northcentral Europe, where it was cold. Traveling east, some established the languages of India and Pakistan, and others drifted west toward the gentler climates of Europe. Some who made the earliest move westward became known as the Celts, whom Caesar39。丘吉爾原本可以說：“We shall never give in,”但這正是英語迷人之處和活力所在，作家為了加強效果可以糅合來自不同背景的不同詞匯。這些詞都來自英語的核心部分古英語或盎格魯－薩克遜英語。這事兒我們不介意，法國人卻耿耿于懷。 so they invent a word, balladeur, which French kids are supposed to say instead but they don39。Some languages resist the introduction of new words. Others, like English, seem to wele them. Robert MacNeil looks at the history of English and es to the conclusion that its tolerance for change represents deeply rooted ideas of freedom. 有些語言拒絕引入新詞。 　2 French, for example, has only about 75,000 words, and that includes English expressions like snack bar and hit parade. The French, however, do not like borrowing foreign words because they think it corrupts their language. The government tries to ban words from English and declares that Walkman is not desirable。嚴(yán)格地說，該詞是由日本制造商發(fā)明的，他們把兩個簡單的英語單詞拼在一起來命名他們的產(chǎn)品。 and necessities (food, water). These words all e from Old English or AngloSaxon English, the core of our language. Usually short and direct, these are words we still use today for the things that really matter to us. 歐洲沿海一個彈丸小島的語言何以會成為地球上的通用語言，比歷史上任何一種其他語言都更為廣泛地被口頭和書面使用？英語的歷史體現(xiàn)在孩子最先學(xué)會用來表示身份（I, me, you）、所屬關(guān)系（mine, yours）、身體部位（eye, nose, mouth）、大小高矮（tall, short），以及生活必需品（food, water）的詞匯當(dāng)中?！?6 Virtually every one of those words came from Old English, except the last surrender, which came from Norman French. Churchill could have said, We shall never give in, but it is one of the lovely and powerful opportunities of English that a writer can mix, for effect, different words from different backgrounds. Yet there is something direct to the heart that speaks to us from the earliest words in our language. 這段文字中幾乎每個詞都來自古英語，只有最后一個詞——surrender 是個例外，來自諾曼法語。系統(tǒng)的研究顯示，許多現(xiàn)代語言起源于一個共同的母語，但由于沒有文字記載，該母語已經(jīng)失傳。他們共同形成了我們稱之為盎格魯－薩克遜的社會。其他留傳下來的這類同義詞組有：wish 和 want，craft 和 skill，hide 和 skin。 15 Around 1476 William Caxton set up a printing press in England and started a munications revolution. Printing brought into English the wealth of new thinking that sprang from the European Renaissance. Translations of Greek and Roman classics were poured onto the printed page, and with them