时间:2019-02-14 作者:英语课 分类:英语单词大师-Word Master


英语课

 AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- getting hyper about correctness.


RS: English once had a system where nouns took different forms depending on whether they were the subject or the object of a sentence. We've lost most of that.
AA: But this system survives in pronouns -- words like "I" and "me" and "she" and "her." And, as English Professor Jack 1 Lynch at Rutgers University explains, these can be confusing, and lead to common errors known as hypercorrections.
JACK LYNCH: "Hypercorrection is not simply being fussy 2 or a nitpicker or a pedant 3. The 'hyper' part, from Greek, means 'too much.' It means working so hard to avoid one potential problem that you end up falling into another one."RS: "Can you give us an example?"JACK LYNCH: "Sure. We're taught as children, and beginning language learners are told, you don't say 'me and you went to the movies.' It should be 'you and I.' And a lot of people, therefore, internalize the rule that 'you and I' is somehow more proper, and they end up using it in places where they shouldn't -- such as 'he gave it to you and I' when it should be 'he gave it to you and me.'"RS: "But we're not hearing that in common, spoken American English."AA: "What you're hearing is someone would say, let's say, 'He took Rosanne and I to the movies -- '"JACK LYNCH: "Exactly."AA: " -- where it should be 'he took Rosanne and me to the movies.' How did this happen? Why are people doing this?"JACK LYNCH: "It tends to come from areas where people are aware that there's something a little tricky 4 in the language. Now it doesn't often happen if the preposition -- words like 'to' and 'for' and 'with' -- comes before one of these tricky pronouns. You would never say 'he gave it to she and I.' 'To she' just sounds wrong to us immediately. But 'to you' is right because 'you' has the same form whether it's the subject or the object."RS: "So that's a piece of cake there."JACK LYNCH: "There are other areas where we make these mistakes; the word 'whom,' for instance."RS: "And 'who.'"JACK LYNCH: "Yes, 'who' and 'whom.' Many people know there's this word 'whom' out there and they have a sense it's associated with 'proper' usage. But they end up using it wrong, such as 'whom should I say is calling?' It should, in fact, be 'who should I say is calling?' because 'who is calling' -- it functions as a subject."RS: "So this is a subject/object thing again."JACK LYNCH: "Yes. You wouldn't say 'him is calling.' You would say 'he is calling.'"RS: "So what's an easy way to remember this?"JACK LYNCH: "Well, whenever you're considering using 'who' or 'whom,' try converting it into 'he' and 'him.' If your ear tells you that you want a 'he' there, you probably want 'who.' If your ear tells you [that] you want a 'him' there, you probably want 'whom.' And the 'm' at the end is a good way to keep them straight."RS: "Now what about speakers of English as a foreign language, that's another group entirely 5."JACK LYNCH: "Sure, and they'll make many of these same kinds of errors, especially with these forms where the language has been changing over a long time, and even native speakers can get confused in them. If you're not really confident in the rules, stick with what you do understand, rather than trying out the things that you don't quite get. Honest errors always sound better than hypercorrections, which run the risk of sounding pompous 6."RS: "We talked about pronouns. We've talked about who/whom. Are there any other features that ...
AA: "There's one more. How about 'feeling badly.'"JACK LYNCH: "Yes, 'feeling badly' is a common problem. Again, we're taught growing up, or we're taught as we're first learning language, that we have to use adverbs with verbs. We don't say 'he did it good,' we say 'he did it well.' We don't say 'he ran quick.' We say 'he ran quickly.' But there is a whole class of verbs, verbs of being, which can include verbs related to sense, that do properly take the adjective. So 'I'm feeling badly' is in fact a hypercorrection."RS: "So 'I'm feeling badly' is you're not really feeling some thing well."JACK LYNCH: "Exactly. 'Feeling badly,' what that would mean is something like I'm not doing it correctly, or I'm not touching 7 something very sensitively, something like that. But if you mean feel in the sense of feeling good or bad in yourself, then it should be 'I feel bad' or 'I feel good.'"AA: Jack Lynch is an English professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey 8. He says that as language continually changes, today's hypercorrection will probably become another generation's correct usage.
RS: And that's Wordmaster for this week. Send e-mail to word@voanews.com. And we've got all our segments at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

n.插座,千斤顶,男人;v.抬起,提醒,扛举;n.(Jake)杰克
  • I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
  • He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。
adj.为琐事担忧的,过分装饰的,爱挑剔的
  • He is fussy about the way his food's cooked.他过分计较食物的烹调。
  • The little girl dislikes her fussy parents.小女孩讨厌她那过分操心的父母。
n.迂儒;卖弄学问的人
  • He's a bit of a pedant.这人有点迂。
  • A man of talent is one thing,and a pedant another.有才能的人和卖弄学问的人是不一样的。
adj.狡猾的,奸诈的;(工作等)棘手的,微妙的
  • I'm in a rather tricky position.Can you help me out?我的处境很棘手,你能帮我吗?
  • He avoided this tricky question and talked in generalities.他回避了这个非常微妙的问题,只做了个笼统的表述。
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地
  • The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
  • His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。
adj.傲慢的,自大的;夸大的;豪华的
  • He was somewhat pompous and had a high opinion of his own capabilities.他有点自大,自视甚高。
  • He is a good man underneath his pompous appearance. 他的外表虽傲慢,其实是个好人。
adj.动人的,使人感伤的
  • It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
  • His letter was touching.他的信很感人。
n.运动衫
  • He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
  • They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致,都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。
学英语单词
agricultural program
almondy
analog circuits
angle accuracy
baseliner
batching scale
bilateral exponential
biocharacteristics
boten
branched off
breastplate microphone
cabbage patch
cambered ways
carbon pick-up
cargo density
cathode luminance
cheilanthes tenuifolia
cirsotrema edgari
combustion velocity
counterilluminate
criosphinxes
dc prediction
dextroduction
dimethyl arsine trichloride
directory report
disconnection syndrome
drawnout
emphasizings
emunct
false beachdrops
false triggering
first language
glass fiber lightguide
glazed transparent paper
grammole
great gneissose complex
ground object identification
halfbrothers
handling problem
hen feather
hintonia candens
Holmgrene's test
Holomitrium
in-boxed
information logic machine
infuse into
Ingrams
inositolophosphate
Ito formula
julain day
kook
Langeais
leuctrids
Linea supracondylaris medialis
lingua francas
liquid hydrogen loading microcomputer station
location constancy
magnetic blowout arc-chute
Manihot esculenta
market transformation
markopoulos
mean trigonometric deviation
melting bath
midheavens
musculus levator bulbi
Mycobacterium avium
namzi
night parrot
nominated member
od-
one-nighter
over-bright
Oxaloacetate-decarboxylating
pairs distribution method
period of relexation
perminvar
poeumono-
polynomial acceleration
Poverty Bay
predictor corrector method
press ahead with
Privolzhsk
qualifying ratio
range scanning
reformings
rotary flow
Rubus paucidentatus
Sadabad
San Marco Basilica
sarcoma of vagina
Shullsburg
sirupy
splash-proof
stack heel
suburethoral
suppress the rebellion
supra-class
surface-mine
toll administration
unalloy steel plate
vampiness
vanadium bronze