专四专八考试

【单选题】It is nothing new thatEnglish use is on the rise around the world, especially in business circles. This also happens in France, the headquarters of the global battle againstAmerican cultural hegemony. If French guys are giving in toEnglish, something really big must be going on.And something big is going on.　　Partly, it’’s thatAmerican hegemony.DidierBenchimol,CEO of a French e-commerce software company, feels compelled to speakEnglish perfectly because the Internet software business is dominated byAmericans. He and other French businessmen also have to speakEnglish because they want to get their message out toAmerican investors, possessors of the world’’s deepest pockets.　　The triumph ofEnglish in France and elsewhere inEurope, however, may rest on something more enduring.As they become entwined with each other politically and economically,Europeans need a way to talk to one another and to the rest of the worlD、And for a number of reasons, they’’ve decided uponEnglish as their common tongue.　　So when German chemical and pharmaceutical company Hoechst merged with French competitor Rhone-Poulenc last year, the companies chose the vaguely LatinateAventis as the new company name ― and settled onEnglish as the company’’s common language. When monetary policymakers from aroundEurope began meeting at theEuropeanCentralBank in Frankfurt last year to set interest rates for the newEuroland, they held their deliberations inEnglish.Even theEuropeanCommission, with 11 official languages and a traditionally French-speaking bureaucracy, effectively switched over toEnglish as its working language last year.　　How did this happen One school attributesEnglish’’s great success to the sheer weight of its merit. It’’s a Germanic language, brought toBritain around the fifth century
A、D、During the four centuries of French-speaking rule that followed NormanConquest of 1066, the language morphed into something else entirely. French words were added wholesale, and most of the complications of Germanic grammar were shed while few of the complications of French were addeD、The result is a limguage with a huge vocabulary and a simple grammar that can express most things more efficiently than either of its parents. What’’s more,English has remained ungoverned and open. to change ― foreign words, coinages, and grammatical shifts ― in a way that French, ruled by the puristAcademie Francaise, had not.　　So it’’s a swell language, especially for business.But the rise ofEnglish over the past few centuries clearly owes at least as much to history and economies as to the language’’s ability to economically express the concept win-win. What happened is that the competition first Latin, then French, then briefly, German ― faded with the waning of the political, economic, and military fortunes of, respectively, theCatholicChurch, France, and Germany.All along,English was increasing in importance:Britain was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and London the world’’s most important financial centre, which madeEnglish a key language for business.England’’s colonies around the world also made it the language with the most global reach.And as that former colony the U.S. rose to the status of the world’’s preeminent political, economic, military, and cultural power,English became the obvious second language to learn.　　In the 1990s more and moreEuropeans found themselves forced to useEnglish. The last generation of business and government leaders who hadn’’t studiedEnglish in school was leaving the stage. TheEuropeanCommunity was adding new members and evolving from a paper-shuffling club into a serious regional government that would need a single common language if it were ever to get anything done. Meanwhile, economic barriers betweenEuropean nations have been disappearing, meaning that more and more companies are begining to look at the whole continent as their domestic market.And then the Internet ca
网考网参考答案：A
网考网解析：
此题为一般推理题。据第1段、第3段第1句、第5段第1句、第6段第2句等明显表 达可确定A。其余三个选择均不能涵盖全文内容。 possessors of the world’’s deepest pockets这里的pocket指钱袋。作者将美国投资商看作是世界上最富有的人。 entwine使紧密结合，使交织 morph本来表示语素变体。此处用作不及物动词，表示"改变"、"变化"。 So it’’s a swell language，especially for business．此处swell用作形容词，为俚语，常用来表示赞许，意思是“极好的”、“第一流的”。 the language’’s ability to economically express the concept win-win win-win为经济用语，常译 为“双赢”。所谓“双赢”，指竞争双方都可从竞争中获利。这里，作者说英语具有表达“双赢”概念的能力，是指英语的使用对英语国家及非英语国家都有好处。 paper-shuffling paper此处表示“文件”。shuffle此处的意思是“搞乱”、“弄混”。这里作者将过去的European Community比作一个由于语言不通而导致其文件混乱不堪的俱乐部。 hedging their bets hedge此处的意思时“避免直接回答(问题)。bet此处表示“选择”，尤其指“可能成功的事”。 ...the transition toEnglish as the language of European business hasn’’t been all that traumatic...此句中的that为程度副词，表示“那样地”。traumatic此处为口头语用法，表示“令人痛苦而难忘的”。 document.getElementById("warp").style.display="none"; document.getElementById("content").style.display="block"; 查看试题解析出处>>