At every time, and in every place, there is a body of conservative opinion which holds that the language reached some kind of pinnacle of perfection a generation or so ago, and is now going rapidly downhill with all these ‘ugly’, ‘sloppy’, ‘illiterate’ new usage we keep hearing nowadays. (查看原文)
It is even possible to ‘borrow’ a word which doesn’t exist at all: English nom de plume ‘pen name’ is ‘borrowed’ from French, but no such word exists in French, in which the equivalent item is nom de guerre. English-speaker with a somewhat limited command of French were trying to borrow something from French, but got it wrong, and wound up inventing some fake French and borrowing that…Why should English-speakers go to the trouble of trying to borrow a French word for something when English already had a perfectly good word with the same meaning: pen name? The reason is a simple one: prestige…Not long ago, a well-known British journalist of courtly manners, needing a word to identify the prominent physical charms of a buxom young lady, found the entire vast repository of English words for m... (查看原文)
0 有用 Josef 2008-11-26 11:53:02
这本教材比Lehmann那本更具可读性
0 有用 Josef 2008-11-26 11:53:02
这本教材比Lehmann那本更具可读性