A World We Live In - Unit2

UNIT II

Language

Born in Paris, William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was the son of a solicitor at the British Embassy. He was educated at the King’s School, Canterbury and Heidelberg Uintraining at St.Thomas’s Hospital in London, but though he qualified he never practised. The success of his first novel Liza of Lambeth (1897) won him over to letters. The novel based on his own life, Of Human Bondage (1915) showed the hardship and difficulties of his own life. But The Moon and Sixpence (1919), which used the life-story of the French artist Gauguin (who left his ordinary life in France and went to live and paint on an island in the South Seas) presents a new figure as hero, the artist who is fighting against conventional society. Cakes and Ale (1930) is a satire on the English social and literary life of the first part of the century, and has a warmth not found in all his work. He is perhaps best known for his short stories: for example, the collection, published in 1928 under the title Ashenden.

Maugham is a sharp observer of people, and is amused by them, but does not want to get closely involved with them. He makes no attempt to explain human nature, but only to expound its weaknesses.

W. Somerset Maugham

Presently I was qualified. I had already published a novel and it had had an unexpected success. I thought my fortune was made, and, abandoning medicine to become a writer, I went to Spain. I was then twenty-three. I was more ignorant than are, it seems to me, young men of that age at the present day. I settled down in Seville. I grew a moustache, smoked Filipino cigars, learnt the guitar, bought a broad-brimmed hat with a flat crown, in which I swaggered down the Sierpes, and hankered for a flowing cape, lined with green and red velvet. But on account of the expense I did not buy it. I rode the countryside on a horse lent me by a friend. Life was too pleasant to allow me to give an undivided attention to literature. My plan was to spend a year there till I had learnt Spanish, then go to Rome which I knew only as a tripper and perfect my superficial knowledge of Italian, follow that up with a journey to Greece where I intended to learn the vernacular as an approach to ancient Greek, and finally go to Cairo and learn Arabic. It was an ambitious programme, but I am glad that I did not carry it out. I duly went to Rome (where I wrote my first play) but then I went back to Spain; for something had occurred that I had not anticipated. I fell in love with Seville and the life one led there and incidentally with a young thing with green eyes and a gay smile (but I got over that) and I could not resist its lure. It was heavenly to live in Seville in the flower of one's youth. I postponed my education to a more convenient moment. The result is that I have read the Odyssey but in English and I have never achieved my ambition to read A Thousand Nights and a Night in Arabic.

When the intelligentsia took up Russia I, remembering that Cato had begun to learn Greek when he was eighty, set about learning Russian, but I had by then lost my youthful enthusiasm; I never got farther than being able to read the plays of Chekhov and have long since forgotten the little I knew. I think now that these schemes of mine were a trifle nonsensical. Words are not important, but their meanings, and it is of no spiritual advantage that I can see to know half-a-dozen languages. I have met polyglots; I have not noticed that they were wiser than the rest of us. It is convenient if you are travelling in a country to have a sufficient smattering of its speech to find your way about and get what you want to eat; and if it has a considerable literature it is pleasant to be able to read it. But such a knowledge as this

can be acquired easily. To attempt to learn more is futile. Unless you devote your whole life to it, you will never learn to speak the language of another country to perfection; you will never know its people and its literature with complete intimacy. For they, and the literature which is their expression, are wrought, not only of the actions they perform and the words they use, neither of which offer great difficulty, but of ancestral instincts, shades of feeling that they have absorbed with their mothers' milk, and innate attitudes which the foreigner can never quite seize. It is hard enough for us to know our own people; we deceive ourselves, we English especially, if we think we can know those of other lands. For the sea-girt isle sets us apart and the link that a common religion gave, which once mitigated our insularity, was snapped with the Reformation. It seems hardly worth while to take much trouble to acquire a knowledge that can never be more than superficial. I think that it is merely waste of time to learn more than a smattering of foreign tongues.

(From “The Summing Up”)

COMMENTARY

1 Cato, 234-149 B.C. - a Roman writer. Consul in 195. The irreconcilable enemy of Carthaghen, champion of the old Roman morals.

2 Reformationthe religious movement in Europe in the 16th century leading to the establishment of the Protestant church, a part of the Christian church that separated from the Roman Catholic Church.

3. W. S. Maugham emphasises the fact that the British are separated from Europeans not only geographically, but culturally; the British don't look upon themselves as Europeans. That is why they can never understand foreigners.

to achieve one's ambition; to be of (no) advantage; to be waste of time; to carry out; to deceive oneself; to follow something up; to find one's way about; to get over something; to give an undivided attention to something; on account of something; to set about doing something; to set somebody apart; to speak a language to perfection; to take up much trouble to do something; to take up

Exercises to the Text

I. Explain and expand on the following:

1)I thought my fortune was made, and, abandoning medicine to become a writer, I went to Spain.

2)My plan was to spend a year there till I had learnt Spanish, then go to Rome which I

knew only as a tripper and perfect my superficial knowledge of Italian...

3)It was an ambitious programme, but I am glad that I did not carry it out.

4)I duly went to Rome (where I wrote my first play) but then I went back to Spain; for something had occurred that I had not anticipated.

5)When the intelligentsia took up Russia, I remembering that Cato had begun to learn Greek when he was eighty, set about learning Russian. But I had by then lost my youthful enthusiasm...

6)I postponed my education to a more convenient moment.

7)I think now that these schemes of mine were a trifle nonsensical.

II. Support or challenge:

1)Words are not important, but their meanings, and it is of no spiritual advantage that I can see to know half a dozen languages. I have met polyglots; I have not noticed that they were wiser than the rest of us.

2)It is convenient if you are travelling in a country to have a sufficient smattering of its speech to find your way about and get what you want to eat; and if it has a considerable literature it is pleasant to be able to read it. But such a knowledge as this can be acquired easily. To attempt to learn more is futile.

3)Unless you devote your whole life to it, you will never learn to speak the language of another country to perfection; you will never know its people and its literature with complete intimacy.

4)For them (people), and the literature which is their expression, are wrought, not only of the actions they perform and the words they use, neither of which offer great difficulty, but ancestral instincts, shades of feeling that they have absorbed with their mothers' milk and innate attitudes which the foreigner can never quite seize.

5)It seems hardly worth while to take much trouble to acquire a knowledge that can never be more than superficial.

6)I think ... it is merely waste of time to learn more than a smattering of foreign

tongues.

III. Quote the text to prove that:

a)the author knew only one method of learning a foreign language - to go to the country where the language is spoken (the relevant country);

b)the author didn't manage to carry out an ambitious programme of learning foreign languages;

c)the author thought it was easy to acquire a sufficient knowledge of a foreign language to feel comfortable while travelling;

d)the author believed that it was impossible to speak a foreign language to perfection.

Vocabulary Exercises

I. Give Russian equivalents for the following:

I was qualified; abandoning medicine to become a writer; I was much more ignorant; a broad-brimmed hat; on account of the expense; which I knew only as a tripper; it was an ambitious programme; when the intelligentsia took up Russia; set about learning Russian; a trifle nonsensical; it is of no spiritual advantage; to have a sufficient smattering; ancestral instincts; innate attitudes; which the foreigner can never quite seize; the sea-girt isle sets us apart; which once mitigated our insularity; it seems hardly worth while; it is merely a waste of time.

II. Give English equivalents for the following:

будущее мое обеспечено; усовершенствоваться в итальянском; произошло нечто непредвиденное; юное создание; изумительно; в цвете молодости; честолюбивый замысел; увлеклась; занялся русским; духовный мир не станет шире; спросить дорогу; в совершенстве; чужая страна; из унаследованных инстинктов; впитать с молоком матери; которые иностранцу никогда не постичь до конца; соотечественники; изолированность; пустая трата времени; поддержать разговор на любую тему.

III. Compare the following English and Russian words:

IV. a) Write out from the text all verbs that describe different ways of walking. Give their definition using an English-English dictionary. Add their synonyms.

b) In the left-hand list you will see various types of people. In the right hand list, various verbs of walking. Find the most suitable verb from the right hand list for the types of

c) Which of the verbs of walking are most suitable for use in these sentences? Use the past tense in each case.

1 The soldiers ... down the street.

2 He fell over, hurt his ankle, and ... home.

3 I didn’t want to wake anyone up, so I ... into the house.

4 He was so ill that he ... all over the room. 5 The old man ... very slowly down the road.

6 After lunch we ... through the town and looked at the shop windows.

Nick McIver

From BBC “Modern English”

V. Arrange the following words and word combinations in pairs of synonyms and explain the difference in their usage and meaning. Use them in sentences of your own.

abandon, ignorant, resist, perfect, a trifle, superficial, occur, anticipate, return, postpone, silent, achieve, acquire, sufficient, considerable, attempt, give up, illiterate,

endeavour, noteworthy, enough, get, reach, delay, quiet, come back, expect, happen, shallow, a bit, stroll, withstand, improve, innate, natural

VI. Arrange the following words and word combinations in pairs of antonyms and use them in sentences of your own.

acquire, ambition, ignorant, abandon, lose, indifference, pursue, knowing, intimacy, resist, disclosure, allow, success, prohibit, failure, difficulty, absorb, knowledge, facility, exclude, ignorance

VII. Compare the meanings added by the suffixes to the same stems:

a) ambition, ambitious; ignorant, ignorance; ancestral, ancestor, ancestry; futile, futility; intimacy, intimate; occur, occurrence; perform, performance, performer; resist, resistance, resistant, resistor; superficial, superficiality; important, importance; spirit, spiritual; perfect, perfection;

b) create-creation-creature-creative-creativity; mean-meaning-meaningful-meaningfully-meaningfullness-meaningless-meaninglessly-meani nglessness.

VIII. Give nouns to go with the following adjectives: ancestral, futile, ignorant, superficial, worth-while

IX. a) Read the sentences. b) Define the grammar structure and its function. c) Read the text again and find sentences with the same grammar pattern. d) Use the structure in sentences of your own.

1.It is hard enough for us to know our own people.

2.It seems hardly worth-while to take much trouble to acquire a knowledge that can never be more than superficial.

3.It is merely waste of time to learn more than a smattering of foreign tongues.

4.It is convenient if you are travelling in a country to have a sufficient smattering of its speech to find your way about and get what you want to eat.

5.It is very well to be able to read French as easily as if it were your native tongue.

6.It is good to be on your guard against an Englishman who speaks French perfectly.

X. Replace the italicized parts of the sentences by equivalents from the text.

1.The prospectors of 1849 were drawn to California by the bait of gold.

2.He had an in born sense of humour.

I don’t anything know about their plans.

4.He yearned for her return.

5.All my attempts to unlock the door had no effect, because I was using the wrong

key.

6.The taxi that he had ordered arrived in proper time, and we drove off.

7.Don’t waste time! We’ve got much to do.

8.He has a strong desire for fame.

9.This film deserves being watched.

10.He turned out to be a shallow thinker whose opinions aren’t worth much.

11.He walked round the room with an air of self-confidence.

12.The manager was furious when the new trainee walked lazily into work two hours

late.

13.The branch broke under the weight of the snow.

14.The dog was trying to bite my ankles.

15.His limited knowledge of English could hardly help him in his work.

16.This word has several nuances.

17.I can’t force myself not to accept chocolate mints.

18.We’re moving our holiday to some later time.

19.This car works well on hills.

20.The experiment was carried out successfully.

21.The magician showed some astonishing tricks.

22.When the fire got out of control, the captain told the sailors to leave ship.

23.The bad weather forced them to give up their search.

24.The judge said that nothing could lessen the cruelty with which the mother had treated her child.

25.The company has recently come to process new offices in central London.

26.The tragedy happened only minutes after take off.

27.That sound doesn’t exist in his language so it’s difficult for him to pronounce.

XI. Fill in the articles where necessary and be prepared to explain their usage:

I do not blame other Americans for dabbling in French, since I myself am ... worst of dabblers. But I see no reason why any of us should pretend that it is anything more than dabbling .... ... usual way of reading French does not lead even to ... acquaintance with French literature. Everybody knows that words in ... living language, in order to be understood have to be lived with. They are not felt as ... to be part of ... living literature, when you see them pressed out and labelled in ... glossary, but only when you hear them fly about. ... word is not

... definite thing susceptible of ... dictionary explanation. It is ... cluster of associations,

human being has ever confided in me so abundantly as she did. No human being has ever so sternly repressed any answering confidences ... my own.

Thrown ... the world ... no power ... conversing ... any other subject than the members

... the Carnet family, I resolved to take no more lessons but to hunt ... French people and make them talk. I fell in with M. Bernou, the commissioner who was over here buying guns, and whose English and my French were so much alike that we agreed to interchange them. We met daily ... two weeks and walked ... an hour ... the park, each tearing ... the other’s language.

(From “Confessions of a Gallomaniac” by F. M. Colby)

XIII. Translate into English. Paraphrase the marked sections of the following sentences with particular care for the marked words and phrases.

1.Они отказались от попытки увидеться с ним.

2.Отец был поглощен работой и не слышал , как я вошел.

3.Естественно, что некоторые слова со временем приобретают новые значения.

4.Его честолюбивым мечтам не суждено было сбыться.

5.Я не знаю их планов.

6.У ребенка врожденное чувство языка, которое помогает ему в освоении речи.

7.Он оправился от огорчения.

8.Приняв во внимание смягчающие обстоятельства, суд изменил приговор.

9.Он прибыл, как ожидалось, в полдень.

10.Все мои попытки объясниться с руководством были тщетны.

11.Я мечтаю о чашке чая.

12.Мне и в голову не пришло пригласить их.

13.Сегодня оркестр исполняет новую симфонию.

14.Заседание перенесли на десятое июня.

15.Она не удержалась и съела еще одно пироженое.

16.Картины молодого художника поражают многообразием оттенков.

17.Я знаю по-китайски два-три слова.

18.Приятно было прогуливаться по пляжу в час заката.

19.Он расхаживал по пляжу с важным видом.

20.Поверхностного знания иностранного языка недостаточно, чтобы стать исполнительным директором нашей фирмы.

21.Для него сто фунтов - сущий пустяк.

22.Нелегко организовать стоящее дело.

Discussion Exercises

I. Read the following proverbs and sayings. Do they describe the process of language learning? Give situations to illustrate them from the books you are reading or from your own experience.

1.An ounce of practice is worth a pound of precept.

2.Practice makes perfect.

3.Learn young, learn fair.

4.A bad workman usually blames his tools.

5.Practice is the best master.

6.No man is his craft's master the first day.

7.What we do willingly is easy.

8.Ninety per cent of inspiration is perspiration.

9.The tongue is not steel, yet it cuts.

10.A bird is known by his note, and a man by his talk.

11.Think today and speak tomorrow.

12.Better the foot slip than the tongue.

13.Brevity is the soul of wit.

14.The pen is mightier than the sword.

15.Many a true word is spoken in jest.

II. Tick any of the statements below which seem to describe how you feel about learning a language. Then discuss your thoughts with others in your group.

1.It is extremely difficult to learn a language when you get older.

2.You forget a language if you don't use it.

3.People seem to take on a different personality when they speak another language.

4.Some people have a natural gift for learning languages.

5.It is possible to learn a language without a teacher.

6.Memorizing is an important part of learning.

III. Read the joke and explain its idea:

A Frenchman's Last Wish

A Frenchman was sent to prison for committing a crime. He was sentenced to death for committing a murder.

The fatal hour arrived. The prisoner's head was shaved. The priest, the lawyers and the warden had come to visit the prisoner in his cell.

"Do you want anything?" the lawyer asked the prisoner. "A glass of wine, perhaps?" "No, thank you."

"Would you like a cigarette?" "No."

"It is customary to grant the prisoner's last wish," the lawyer explained. ''Your last wish will be granted. What is it?"

"I want to study English," the condemned man said.

IV. English has always borrowed words from other languages. Below is an article about the words which have become part of the English language by now. Read the article and say from what languages the words came from? Can you think of any words in Russian which derive from English? Do you accept these or do you think that languages should be kept

‘pure’?

Some Words About Words

With about 200,000 words in current usage, English is generally regarded as the richest of the world's languages. Few other languages can match this word power. Chinese comes close. German has a vocabulary of only 184,000 words, and French has fewer than 100,000 words.

English owes its exceptionally large vocabulary to its ability to borrow and absorb words from outside. Atomic, jeans, khaki, sputnik, perestroika, glasnost are just a few of the many words that have come into use during the century. They have been taken or adopted from Italian, Hindi, Greek and Russian.

The process of borrowing words from other languages has been going on for more than 1,000 years. When the Normans crossed over from France to conquer England in 1066, most of the English people spoke Old English, or Anglo-Saxon - a language of about 30,000 words. The Normans spoke a language that was a mixture of Latin and French. It took about three centuries for the languages to blend into one that is the ancestor of the English we speak today. The Normans bestowed on us words such as duchess, city, mansion and palace. The Anglo-Saxon gave us ring and town.

Latin and Greek have been a fruitful source of vocabulary since the 16th century. The Latin word mini, its converse maxi and the Greek word micro have become popular adjectives to describe everything from bikes to fashion.

From "Triple Takes"

* * *

V. What made the English language so widely popular in the world? Read the article and do the exercises coming after it.

A Modern Tower of Babel

Foreign-language instruction is a growth industry in Europe these days. With customs barriers soon to come down throughout the European Community, the push is on to bring down ancient language barriers with them. Businessmen and bureaucrats have begun to worry in earnest about how to deal with their counterparts in other countries. Already, schools in many of the EC's 12 member nations make study of a second language a compulsory part of the curriculum: some even require a third. And from Ireland to Italy, language schools are proliferating. "The 'Eurocrat' of 1992 will be like a Swiss," predicts Wolfgang Wiedeler, director of the Berlitz Language Centres in West Germany, Switzerland and Austria. "He will speak at least three languages: his mother tongue, English and a third European language of his choice."

One way to prevent the EC from becoming a modern tower of Babel would be to make English the Community's sole official language. English is already the language of choice among Europeans of different nationalities. It is the language of commerce, banking, science, technology, advertising and public relations. Many European companies whose stock is quoted on Wall Street publish their annual reports in English as a matter of course. In Copenhagen or Amsterdam, English is probably spoken with greater fluency than on the streets of New York. English has become the principal language of international conferences, large or small. "Put a Greek, a Dane and a Frenchman together and they will speak English," says Jean-Pierre Jallade, assistant director of the European Institute of Education and Social Policies in Paris.

In deference to feelings of national pride among even the smallest of its members, the EC claims no fewer than nine official languages. They are English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch and Greek. In practice, the EC conducts its business in three working languages: English, French and German. That may simplify communications within the EC bureaucracy, but elsewhere there are compelling reasons for executives and salesmen to become multilingual. However widely English, French or German may be spoken in Europe's major cities, an importer in some small town in Spain, Portugal or Greece, say, may be at home only in his native tongue. David Coyne, a top administrator at the EC Commission in Brussels, puts it this way: "In a business deal, a German who speaks English has a distinct edge over an Englishman who does not speak German." The British - convinced for so long that there was simply no need to learn anyone else's language - have begun to hear the message. "Most business people with any kind of export dealings in Europe know that they have to learn a foreign language," says Karina Mellinger, marketing manager for the Linguaphone Institute in London. "One senses panic in their voices. They know they have to do something about it." Executives in non-English-speaking countries also feel the pressure. "I get some really tough cases," says Michael Harris, founder of English Business Unit, a language school in Barcelona. "I get self-made men in their 40s and 50s who have never studied a foreign language and are desperate."

So the rush is on, and it promises boom times for languag e schools. Berlitz - a name long synonymous with language instruction - has doubled its lesson load in Europe in the past five years, according to Manuel Fernandez, the firm's European director. English lessons accounted for 56 per cent of the total. Four new Berlitz schools have opened in France alone.

In West Germany, Berlitz language lessons have increased by 39 per cent among company employees and by 13 per cent among private individuals. Barcelona's English Business Unit has grown in two years from a one-man operation to a company of 11 employees with 22 companies among its clients. And in Rome the Yellow Pages of the telephone directory include no fewer than 16 pages of listings and advertisements for language schools.

The EC itself seeks to encourage the study of languages as a matter of policy. The EC Commission has proposed an affirmative-action programme - called Lingua - that would make learning at least one foreign language compulsory in schools throughout the Community and encourage the study of an additional language beyond that. The EC would allocate some $300 million over a five-year period toward teaching aids and teacher training. At the university level, Lingua would supplement other European educational programmes by helping students spend a year living in the country whose language they want to learn. While the Lingua programme seeks to remove language barriers within the community, there may also be an ulterior motive: to prevent English from becoming too dominant a language in Europe. "The danger is not English but English as the only language," says Jallade of the European Institute of Education and Social Policies.

Most of those now trying to learn their neighbours' language are doing so for practical rather than purely cultural reasons, and this creates special teaching requirements. "Businessmen want 'chemical' German," says Coyne. "The needs of sales people differ from those of technicians, backup people from those of administrators." In Barcelona, English Business Unit offers courses such as how to conduct a meeting dealing with imports and exports. Berlitz also tailors courses to particular needs: the legal profession, computer specialists, secretaries, the interpretation of charts and graphs, or proper telephone etiquette. "In management positions, everybody is multilingual; you cannot survive without at least one foreign language such as English or French," says Hermann Schmidt of the Federal Institute for Professional Education in Bonn. In small countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands, people in all walks of life have to learn an additional language or two - English being by far the most common - simply to deal with tourists, officials and businessmen from countries where almost no one speaks Danish or Dutch. (Tiny Luxemburg has three languages, all compulsory starting in kindergarten: French, German and English.)

Cherished insularity: The British have always been the linguistic laggards, and to an extent they still are. Britain is one of the few EC countries in which learning a second language was not compulsory until recently. A study by the Confederation of British Industry revealed that only one in 14 British companies was offering its employees language training. And a study of 200 top British companies conducted by the Ambrosetti Consulting Group showed that only 18 per cent of British corporate executives speak any foreign language. But the advent of 1992, along with the construction of the Channel tunnel, appears to be eroding Britain's cherished insularity. "Learning a foreign language is absolutely paramount," insists John Owens, CBI's deputy directorgeneral.

Whether Europe's languages will flourish or fade under the impact of 1992 is a matter of debate. Some foresee the day when a Europeanized form of English - perhaps known as "Eurolish" - will become the common language. Lesser language could fall by the wayside. Claude Truchot, a professor of English at the University of Social Sciences in Strasbourg, sees a danger of a "regionalization of European languages and cultures," with some languages no longer being spoken except in rural pockets. Others believe that by maintaining nine official languages the EC may have checked the decline of some lesser-known tongues. "Danish has never been spoken more than now," claims Christophe Thierry, director of the Paris-based Higher Institute of Interpretation and Translation.

Europe has always been a continent of linguists. There is every prospect that it will be even more so.