时间:2019-01-22 作者:英语课 分类:英语时差8,16


英语课

 Don: Oh, Yael, I just read the most beautiful poem. No wonder our ancestors developed writing--they probably wanted to treasure poetry for posterity 1.


Yael: Actually Don, writing was developed to keep track of more mundane 2 things, like money. For example, early empires like Sumer, in what is now Iraq, invented scripts so they could keep records for tax purposes.
D: That figures! So what were these ancient scripts like? Did Sumerians draw a cow to represent a cow, and so on? Or did they have an actual alphabet?
Y: Well, writing started out as concrete symbols that represented actual objects, but many of the things people wanted to record were difficult to draw. For example, the Sumerian word "ti" means "to give life to." But how do you draw that? So ancient scribes turned to puns. By coincidence, the Sumerian word for "arrow" also sounds like "ti," and so scribes used the arrow symbol to represent the phrase "to give life to." So written symbols became associated with syllables 3.
D: So how did we end up with the alphabet?
Y: For languages like English, symbols that represent individual sounds are much more economical than symbols that represent whole syllables. With our 26 letters, which represent individual sounds, we can write any word in English. To do the same thing with symbols that represent syllables, we'd need about eight thousand signs.
D: I see your point.
Y: So here's a neat fact. The ancient Egyptian language, which was written with hieroglyphs 4 representing whole words or syllables, also had an alphabet of 26 letters. Although their alphabet looks different, most authorities believe that our alphabet descends 5 from this Egyptian invention.

n.后裔,子孙,后代
  • Few of his works will go down to posterity.他的作品没有几件会流传到后世。
  • The names of those who died are recorded for posterity on a tablet at the back of the church.死者姓名都刻在教堂后面的一块石匾上以便后人铭记。
adj.平凡的;尘世的;宇宙的
  • I hope I can get an interesting job and not something mundane.我希望我可以得到的是一份有趣的工作,而不是一份平凡无奇的。
  • I find it humorous sometimes that even the most mundane occurrences can have an impact on our awareness.我发现生活有时挺诙谐的,即使是最平凡的事情也能影响我们的感知。
n.音节( syllable的名词复数 )
  • a word with two syllables 双音节单词
  • 'No. But I'll swear it was a name of two syllables.' “想不起。不过我可以发誓,它有两个音节。” 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
n.象形字(如古埃及等所用的)( hieroglyph的名词复数 );秘密的或另有含意的书写符号
  • Hieroglyphs are carved into the walls of the temple. 寺庙的墙壁上刻着象形文字。 来自辞典例句
  • This paper discusses the fundamental distinctions between the hieroglyphs andforerunner of writing. 英汉象形文字的比较是建立在象形文字具体内涵的基础上。 来自互联网
v.下来( descend的第三人称单数 );下去;下降;下斜
  • This festival descends from a religious rite. 这个节日起源于宗教仪式。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • The path descends steeply to the village. 小路陡直而下直到村子。 来自《简明英汉词典》
学英语单词
administrative intervention
agricultural ladder
air power
Akūbū
aminoethyl nitrate
Anmagundo
Anna potatoes
arafura seas
Asclepiadean
automatic direction finding(adf)
bend reduction factor
benzyl phenylacetate
cano colorado
carbanillide
centi-stoke
central control device
chitty
cleansing
cloverfield
coccygeal vertebrae
conquest
cultivator
diacylglycerol
Diessen
dimethane sulfonoxybutane
dip calculation
drive sprocket
electrolytic tough pitch
face mounting
First-pass regression
flame front area
foldablest
frequency modulation method
genus otarias
gist of action
grape crusher
grotis
gunns
hemorrhagic plague
horizontal baric gradient
in plain terms
Inisa
jablonica p.
kabrits
lamina dextra et sinistra
lapidicolous animal
lifting disk
litmus testpaper
lose colour
LSONG
Madeira sauce
marine ecosystems
Marnier
maximum output of the power station
melanoregulin
minor ninth
Moycullen
N. W. T.
new-
on-line debugging
organism theory
paraffin block
Pat Malone
pinus eduliss
pitch feedback mechanism
points in the paint
preemptive multitasking
professional athletes
Qelt
reservoir temperature
resin flow of prepreg
resubmittable
save ... from
Sciameter
set points
Sevilla la Nueva
siderazot
skillington
Solaris
space blanket
special build-up welding
spin forming machine
spiral welded pipe
sputter ion pump
St-Claud
stave church
stercoral
strength of sink
subcarrier countdown
subdecibel
swarp
Taraxacum luridum
temperature shock
the first among equals
three-banded armadillo
tousers
two can play that game
typoes
vortex eliminator
written clause
zephyr gingham