Лекции по "Английскому языку"

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 1

Read the following extract and give more examples illustrating the same group of Americanisms. What do we call this group? In this book two prominent scholars, an American and an Englishman, discuss the differences between the American and British varieties of English.

M: — Well, now, homely is a very good word to illustrate Anglo-American misunderstanding. At any rate, many funny stories depend on it, like the one about the British lecturer visiting the United States; he faces his American audience and very innocently tells them how nice it is to see so many homely faces out in the audience.

Homely in Britain means, of course, something rather pleasant, but in American English 'not very good looking'. This older sense is preserved in some British dialects.

(From A Common Language by A. H. Marckwardt and R. Quirk)

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 2

Read the following extract. What are the three possible ways of creating names for new species of plants and animals and new features of the landscape? Give more examples of the same. What do we call this group of Americanisms?

Q: ... I think that this time we ought to give some attention to those parts of the language where the differences in the vocabulary are much more noticeable.

M: Yes, we should. First, there are what we might call the 'realia' — the real things — the actual things we refer to in the two varieties of the language. For example, the flora and fauna — that is to say the plants and animals of England and of the United States are by no means the same, nor is the landscape, the topography.

Q: All this must have created a big problem for those early settlers, mustn't it?

M: It surely did. From the very moment they set foot on American soil, they had to supply names for these new species of plants and animals, the new features of landscape that they encountered. At times they made up new words such as mockingbird, rattlesnake, eggplant. And then occasionally they used perfectly familiar terms but to refer to different things. In the United States, for example, the robin is a rather large bird, a type of thrush.

Q: Yes, whereas with us it is a tiny little red-breasted bird.

M: And a warbler, isn't it?

Q: Yes.

M: It sings. Corn is what you call maize. We never use it for grain in general, or for wheat in particular.

Q: Or oats. Well, wouldn't foreign borrowings also be important in a situation like this?

M: Oh, they were indeed. A good many words, for example, were adopted from the American Indian languages — hickory, a kind of tree, squash, a vegetable; moccasin, a kind of footwear. We got caribou and prairie from the early French settlers. The Spanish gave us canyon and bronco.

(From A Common Language by A. H. Marckwardt and R. Quirk)

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 3

Read the following passage. Draw up a list of terms denoting the University teaching staff in Great Britain and in the USA. What are the corresponding Russian terms?

Q: But speaking of universities, we've also got a different set of labels for the teaching staff, haven't we?

M: Yes, in the United States, for example, our full time faculty, which we call staff incidentally — is arranged in a series of steps which goes from instructor through ranks of assistant professor, associate professor to that of professor. But I wish you'd straighten me out on the English system. Don for example, is a completely mysterious word and I'm never sure of the difference, say, between a lecturer and a reader.

Q: Well, readers say that lecturers should lecture and readers should read! But seriously, I think there's more similarity here than one would imagine. Let me say, first of all, that this word don is a very informal word and that it is common really only in Oxford and Cambridge. But corresponding to your instructor we've got the rank of assistant lecturer, usually a beginner's post. The assistant lecturer who is successful is promoted, like your instructor and he becomes a lecturer and this lecturer grade is the main teaching grade throughout the university world. Above lecturer a man may be promoted to senior lecturer or reader, and both of these — there's little difference between them — correspond closely to your associate professor. And then finally he may get a chair, as we say — that is a professorship, or, as you would say, a full professorship. It's pretty much a difference of labels rather than of organization, it seems to me.

(From A Common Language by A. H. Marckwardt and R. Quirk)

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 4

Give the British equivalents for the following Americanism.

Apartment, store, baggage, street car, full, truck, elevator, candy, corn.

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 5

Explain the differences in the meanings of the following words in American and British English.

Corn, apartment, homely, guess, lunch.

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 6

Identify the etymology of the following words.

Ohio, ranch, squash, mosquito, banjo, toboggan, pickaninny, Mississippi, sombrero, prairie, wigwam.

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 7

Comment on the formation of the following words.

Rattlesnake, foxberry, auto, Americanism, Colonist, addressee, ad, copperhead, pipe of peace, fire-water.

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 8

Translate the following words giving both the British and American variant.

Каникулы, бензин, осень, консервная банка, радио, трамвай.

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 9

Give the synonyms for the following American shortenings. Describe the words from the stylistic point of view.

Gym, mo, circs, auto, perm, cert, n. g., b. f., g. m., dorm.

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 10

In the following sentences find the examples of words which are characteristic of American English. State whether they belong to the group of a) historical Americanisms; b) proper Americanisms; c) American shortenings; d) American borrowings. Take note of their spelling peculiarities.

1. As the elevator carried Brett downward, Hank Kreisel closed and locked the apartment door from inside. 2. A raw fall wind swirled leaves and dust in small tornadoes and sent pedestrians scurrying for indoor warmth. 3. Over amid the bungalows a repair crew was coping with a leaky water main. 4. We have also built, ourselves, experimental trucks and cars which are electric powered. 5. In a plant bad news travelled like burning gasoline. 6. May Lou wasn't in; she had probably gone to a movie. 7. The bank was about equal in size to a neighbourhood drugstore, brightly lighted and pleasantly designed. 8. Nolan Wainwright walked towards the apartment building, a three-storey structure probably forty years old and showing signs of disrepair. He guessed it contained two dozen or so apartments. Inside a vestibule Nolan Wainwright could see an array of mail boxes and call buttons. 9. He's a barber and one of our bird dogs. We had twenty or so regular bird dogs, Smokey revealed, including service station operators, a druggist, a beauty parlor operator, and an undertaker. 10. Barbara put a hand to her hair — chestnut brown and luxuriant, like her Polish Mother's; it also grew annoyingly fast so she had to spend more time than she liked in beauty salons. 11. He hadn't had an engineering degree to start, having been a high school dropout before World War II. 12. Auto companies regularly invited design school students in, treating them like VIP's, while the students saw for themselves the kind of aura they might work in later.

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 11

Read the following joke and find examples of words which are characteristic of American English.

The Bishop of London, speaking at a meeting recently, said that when he was in America he had learned to say to his chauffeur, "Step on the gas, George," but so far he had not summoned sufficient courage to say to the Archbishop of Canterbury, "O. K., Chief."

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 12

Read the following extract. Explain the difference in the meanings of the italicized words in American and British English.

In America just as in English, you see the same shops with the same boards and windows in every town and village.

Shopping, however, is an art of its own and you have to learn slowly where to buy various things. If you are hungry, you go to the chemist's. A chemist's shop is called a drugstore in the United States. In the larger drugstores you may be able to get drugs, too, but their main business consists in selling stationery, candy, toys, braces, belts, fountain pens, furniture and imitation jewellery. You must be extremely careful concerning the names of certain articles. If you ask for suspenders in a man's shop, you receive a pair of braces, if you ask for a pair of pants, you receive a pair of trousers and should you ask for a pair of braces, you receive a queer look.

I should like to mention that although a lift is called an elevator in the United States, when hitch-hiking you do not ask for an elevator, you ask for a lift. There's some confusion about the word flat. A flat in America is called an apartment', what they call a flat is a puncture in your tyre (or as they spell it, tire). Consequently the notice: 'Flats Fixed' does not indicate an estate agent where they are going to fix you up with a flat, but a garage where they are equipped to mend a puncture.

(From How to Scrape Skies by G. Mikes)

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 13

Read the following passage. Do you share Professor Quirk's opinion about neutralizing the differences between the two forms of English? If so, give your own examples to prove it.

M: ... and finally I notice that although we used to think that baggage was somehow an American term and luggage an English term, we have now come to adopt luggage much more, especially in connection with air travel.

Q: Well, I think it is equally true that we in Britain have more and more to adopt the word baggage. I have certainly noticed that on shipping lines, perhaps chiefly those that are connected with the American trade. But this blending of our usage in connection with the luggage and baggage would seem to me to be rather typical of this trend that we've got in the twentieth century towards neutralizing the differences between our two forms of English.

(From A Common Language by A. H. Marckwardt and R. Quirk)

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 14

Look through the following list of words and state what spelling norms are accepted in the USA and Great Britain so far as the given words are concerned.

1. favour — favor

honour — honor

colour — color

3. centre — center

metre — meter

fibre — fiber

5. to enfold — to infold

to encrust — to incrust

to empanel — to impanel

2. defence — defense

practice — practise

offence — offense

4. marvellous — marvelous

woollen — woolen

jewellery — jewelry

6. cheque — check

catalogue-catalog

programme — program

7. Judgement — judgment

abridgement — abridgment

acknowledgement — acknowledgment

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 15

Write the following words according to the British norms of spelling.

Judgment, practise, instill, color, flavor, check, program, woolen, humor, theater.

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 16

Write the following words according to the American norms of spelling.

Honour, labour, centre, metre, defence, offence, catalogue, abridgement, gramm, enfold, marvellous.

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 17

Read the following passage. Give some more examples illustrating the differences in grammar between the two varieties of English.

Q: I thought Americans always said gotten when they used the verb get as a full verb. But you did say I've got your point, didn't you?

M: Yes, I did. You know, it's a common English belief — almost a superstition — about American usage, but it does turn out on examination, as many other things do, that we are closer together than appears on the surface. Actually, we, Americans, use gotten only when our meaning is "to acquire" or "to obtain". We've gotten a new car since you were here last. Now, when we use get to mean "possess" or "to be obliged to" we have exactly the same forms as you do. I've got a pen in my pocket. I've got to write a letter.

(From A Common Language by A. H. Marckwardt and R. Quirk)

 

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 18

Read the following extract. What is a citizen of the USA called? Analyse the suggested variants of names from the point of view of word-building.

It is embarrassing that the citizens of the United States do not have a satisfactory name. In the Declaration of Independence the British colonists called their country the United States of America, thus creating a difficulty. What should the inhabitant of a country with such a long name be called?

For more than 150 years those living in the country have searched in vain for a suitable name for themselves. In 1803, a prominent American physician, Dr. Samuel Mitchill, suggested that the entire country should be called Fredonia or Fredon. He had taken the English word freedom and the Latin colonia and from them coined Fredonia or Fredon. Dr. Mitchill thought that with this word as the name for the country as a whole, the derivative Fredish would follow naturally, corresponding to British, etc. In the same way, he thought, Frede, would be a good name for the inhabitant of Fredonia. But his fellow-citizens laughed at the doctor's names.

Such citizen names as United Statesian, shortened to Unisian and United Statian were proposed but quickly forgotten. No better success has greeted Usona (United States of North America) as a name for the country and Usonian — for a citizen.

Usage overwhelmingly favours American, as a name for an inhabitant of the USA, though all Americans realize it covers far too much territory.

(From American Words by M. Mathews)