高中英语 Module 1《British and American English-cultural corner and task》学案2 外研版必修5

用心 爱心 专心1 PeriodPeriod 5 5 CULTURALCULTURAL CORNERCORNER TheThe ManMan WhoWho MadeMade SpellingSpelling SimpleSimple ObjectivesObjectives ToTo readread toto knowknow moremore aboutabout languagelanguage ToTo readread moremore aboutabout spellingspelling inin EnglishEnglish ProceduresProcedures BeforeBefore youyou readread Please go over the word list for this module paying attention to the pronunciation of the word the relationship between its pronunciation and its spelling While While youyou readread Cut the sentences into thought groups blackenblacken the predicates underline the useful expressions and darken the connectives TheThe ManMan WhoWho MadeMade SpellingSpelling SimpleSimple In English the spelling of words doesdoes notnot always representrepresent the sound So people saysay rait but spellspell it right or write or even rite Combinations of letters like ough maymay bebe pronounced pronounced in a number of ways And some words just seemseem toto havehave too many letters For Americans things areare a little bit easier thanks to the work of Noah Webster a teacher who graduatedgraduated from Yale University in1778 AsAs a young man he hadhad foughtfought againstagainst the British in the American War of Independence and he feltfelt that written English in the newly independent United States shouldshould havehave a distinctive American look So he beganbegan his work on American English His first book The Elementary Spelling Book suggestedsuggested simplifying the spelling of English words The book waswas extremely popular By the 1850s it waswas sellingselling one million copies a year making it one of the most popular school books ever Many of the suggestions werewere quickly adopted adopted Center instead of centre program instead of programme and flavor instead of flavour Others however such as removing silent letters like s in island or the final e in examine werewere not not Webster isis best known known for his American Dictionary of the English Language which first appeared appeared in 1828 It introducedintroduced lots of new American words with information about their pronunciation and use and of course the new spelling The British criticised the dictionary butbut it quickly becamebecame a standard reference book in the States Today Webster s dictionary isis still the number one dictionary for American students After After youyou readread Copy all the useful expressions into your Expression Book You may make sentences with these expressions ExpressionsExpressions from from TheThe ManMan WhoWho MadeMade SpellingSpelling SimpleSimple In English the spelling of words represent the sound combinations of letters be pronounced in a number of ways have too many letters for Americans a little bit easier thanks to the work of Noah Webster graduate 用心 爱心 专心2 from as a young man fight against in the American War of Independence written English in the newly independent United States have a distinctive American look begin one s work on suggest doing simplify the spelling of English words be extremely popular by the 1850s sell one million copies a year one of the most popular school books adopt suggestions instead of remove silent letters be best known for first appear in 1828 introduce lots of new American words with information about their pronunciation and use of course the new spelling criticise the dictionary become a standard reference book in the States the number one dictionary for American students Reading Reading moremore aboutabout spellingspelling inin EnglishEnglish SpellSpell ItIt inin EnglishEnglish English spelling is confusing and chaotic as any student of English knows all too well How can the letters ough spell so many different sounding words they ask like dough bough rough and through And what about a word like colonel that clearly contain no r yet pretends it does and ache with its k sound instead of the chuh sound of arch And why does four have a u while forty doesn t There are no simple rules for English spelling but there is an explanation behind its complexity We have only to look back in history Over the centuries the English language has been like a magnet attracting words from numerous other languages It all started with the Britons an ancient people living in a part of western Europe that eventually became the British Isles They spoke a language called Celtic which was a combination of the early forms of Irish Scottish and Welsh When the Britons were conquered by the Romans and later the Germanic tribes their language was also invaded The merging of the languages gave birth to Old English and a Latin alphabet replaced with a few exceptions the ancient Germanic alphabet In the ninth century the conquering Norsemen from Scandinavia added their pinch of language spice as did the French in the eleventh century By the fourteenth century English with its mix of at least five languages had evolved into what is called Middle English and had become Britain s official language At that time however its spelling were far from consistent or rational Many dialects had developed over the centuries and sometimes people adopted the spelling used in one part of the country and the pronunciation used in another For instance today we use the western English spellings for busy and bury but give the first the London pronunciation bizzy and the second the Kentish 肯特语的 pronunciation berry Of course this all happened when English was primarily a spoken language and only scholars knew how to read and write Even they appear to have been quite indifferent to matters if consistency in spelling and were known to spell the same word several different ways in a single sentence Even after William Caxton set up England s first printing press in the late fifteenth century and the written word became available to everyone standard spelling wasn t considered very important As a matter of fact the 用心 爱心 专心3 typesetters 排字工人 in the 1500s made things even worse by being very careless about spelling If a blank space needed to be filled or a line was too long they simply changed the spellings of words to make them fit Moreover many of the early printers in England were from Germany or Holland and didn t know English very well If they didn t know the spelling of a word they made up one Different printers each had their favorite spellings so that one word might be spelled five or six different ways depending on who printed the passage Throughout this period names and words appear in many different forms For instance where can be wher whair wair wheare were and so on People were even very liberal about their names More than eighty spellings of Shakespeare s name have been found among them Shagspeare Shakspeare and even Shakestaffe Shakespeare himself didn t spell his name the same way in any two of his six known signatures he even spelled his name two different ways in his will By the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century some progress had been made in standardizing spelling due to the work of various scholars By then however English spelling was far from a simple phonetic system 语音系统 For one thing word pronunciations had changed too rapidly for a truly phonetic spelling to keep up Also English had borrowed from many languages and ended up having far too many sounds more than forty for the twenty six letters in its Roman alphabet By the time printing houses finally began to agree on standard spellings many of these written forms were only a shadow of their spoken selves In other words spelling and pronunciation sometimes had little in common Finally in 1775 Samuel Johnson gave English its first great dictionary His choice of spelling may not have always been the best or the easiest but the book helped to make spellings of most English words uniform Eventually people became aware of the need for correct spelling Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic Noah Webster was standardizing American English in his American Dictionary of the English Language and American Spelling Book Although the British had been complaining about the messiness of English spelling for some time it was the American who screamed the loudest Webster not only favored a simplified more phonetic spelling system but also tried to persuade Congress to pass a law making the use of nonstandard spelling a punishable offense In 1906 the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie gave 250 000 to help establish the Simplified Spelling Board The board quickly issued a list of 300 words commonly spelled two ways such as ax an