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Unit 1 travel language
The Academie Francasie has for decades been the watchdog over the French language. A few years ago, French sensitivity to the influx of English words became so great that law for the purification of French was adopted. The law covers even technical applications. For example, in theory, it is now compuslory in France to refer to the Boeing 747 as a gros-porteur, leasing as credit-bail, etc. the list is very long and detailed and applies to all facets of life. Mr. Chirac, the French President, might well expand on this list and come up with some new French terms for words such as “internet” or “byte stream” just to name a couple. The mind boggles at what the world might face.
Unfortunately (or perhaps not), the English language is not so protected. Quite apart from the unforgivable deviations from the king’s English prevlent in America, where “honour” is commonly written as “honor” and “night” as “nite,” many well-tested has also been give new meanings, making communication somewhat difficult. For example, the boot of a car has become to be called a trunk – a word reserved in England for the main part of a tree. The bonnet is a hood, good old nappies are diapers, and a baby’s matinee jacket is a vest. It’s obvious that the two countries are indeed separated by what once was a common language! From an American point of view, of course, it could be argued that the British speak English with a speech deficiency.
Even worse English, however, is in use. Anyone who travels in foreign countries and observes it on menus and posters, in hotels, and indeed in everyday life can testify that what
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used to be the king’s lingo has become in these places but a poor relation thereof. Allow me to elaborate.
The travel writer Perrot Phillips has taken pains to highlight some of his experiences, which I feel should not be withheld from a wider readership. He refers to a Dutch bulb catalogue which promised customers “a speedy execution” and to an East Berlin cloakroom sign that requested guests to “please hung yourself here.” One hopes that nobody took the advice literally.
To these I can add some of my own experiences, encountered in long years of traveling the world. There was, for example, the observation in an Ostend novelty shop that “revolting new ideas” were being marketed, and the boast of some Bombay bakers that “we are No. 1 loafers, best values in whole town.”
I realized how far Christinanity had come when I read in Hong Kong the following call by a dentist: The teeth they are extracted here by the latest Methodists.
I fear it can not be answered with certainty whether these actually illustrate a progressive use of English or are simply reflections of local usages. I feel quite strongly, however, that the Haifa Medical Association should have prevented one of its members from claiming on his brass plate that he is a “Specialist in Women and Other Diseases.”
Hotels seem to revel in their multilingual signs. One supposes these signs were designed to facilitate the use of modern services in otherwise sterile and barely functional establishments. Nevertheless, the unsuspecting guests confronted in a Brussels hotel with the following
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instruction for the use of the life (elevator) might well prefer to walk: “To move the life, push button to wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should push number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by natural order. Button retaining pressed position shows received command for visiting station.” The less sophisticated notice in Istanbul (“To call room service, please to open door and call ROOM SERVICE”) at least does not confront the guest with electronics that might not always work. In Turkey, the delight in “straight talk” expresses itself in the by-now-famous Ankara brochure which advises, “Visit our restaurant where you can eat Middle East foods in an European Ambulance.” A note on a Swiss menu that “Our wines leave nothing to hope for” was equally inviting.
Eastern European courtesies have never left the once grand hotels of the former Austro-Hungarian empire. A notice in the hotel rooms that “the honoured guests are invited to take advantage of the chamber maids from 12-14 o’clock” might, however, result in some unplanned traffic jams. A recent Moscow exhibition’s announcement drew attention to “a showing of 300 paintings by Russian artists, most of whom were executed in the last ten years” – hardly a welcoming thought to the occasional visitor.
A Bangkok laundry’s advertisement to the visiting public (“Leaving your clothes here and enjoy yourself”) could also be seen as a invitation to extracurricular activities in that Far Eastern capital of fun.
In Rome, a laundry advertised a similar invitation: Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend
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the afternoon having a good time.
It should not surprise the traveller that nightspots advertise their wares in Europe in many and diverse language. The German preoccupation with Majorca led a Munich nightclub to copy a trilingual Palma announcement that dancing was going on in what is indeed a surprising way. The notice read, “Baile! Baile! Baile!” in Spanish, “Tanz! Tanz! Tanz!” in German, and “Balls! Balls! Balls!” in what was meant to be English. We are spared the upper Bavarian version of the activity.
The Black Forest Germans, on the other hand, are known to be rather prudish in their outlook, but is it really necessary to post a sign: “It is strictly forbidden on our Black Forest camping site that people of different sexes, for example men and women, live together in one tent unless they are married with each other for that purpose.”
I am told that for the otherwise unsuspecting tourist, the following sign proved a real crowd puller. Parrot Phillips claims it to be true that in an Austrian hotel room he found the sign: “If service required, give two strokes to the maid and three to the valet.”
There are undoubtedly more and varied versions of the use of English, unprotected as our language is from the interference of emerging and ambitious entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, I prefer seeing English develop as the lingua franca around the world rather than being suffocated for the sake of so-called purity by some ill-advised legislative process. Unit 2 Lies and Truth
What is truth? – and the opposite question that goes with it: what makes a lie?
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Philosophers, teachers, and religious leaders from all cultures and periods of history have offered many answers to these questions. Among Euro-North-American writers, there is general agreement on two points. The first is that what we call a “lie” must be told intentionally – that is, if someone tells an untruth but they believe it to be true, we don’t consider them a liar. The second point is that practically everyone lies, and lies frequently. But there the agreement ends.
One rather extreme point of view is that lying is always bad and that we should try to find ways avoid doing it. The reason is that lying hurts not only the listener, but also the liar. Each lie makes the next one easier to tell, and the liar comes not only to disrespect herself, but to mistrust others, whom she believes will lie as easily as she. In a society, where lying is common, trust becomes impossible, and without trust, cooperation can not exist. Furthermore, by lying to people, we remove their power to make important choices about how to spend money, what future career to take, what medical treatment to take.
Toward the opposite extreme is the position that although some lies are evil, many others are not – in fact, they are necessary to hold our society together. We lie in harmless ways to protect other’s feelings and to better our relationship. These are not lies that try to hurt others. We laugh at the boss’s joke which we have heard before and which she doesn’t tell very well; we pretend interest in a friend’s story of something uninteresting that happened to him. If someone asks us a question that is very personal and is none of their business, we may lie in response. Sometimes we lie to protect the reputation or even the life of another person.
研究生英语多维教学教程探索课本教学材料原文及课后题(11课)
