......it is often the little, unnoticed things that are most revealing about the history and nature of language. Nursery rhymes, for example, are fastidiously resistant to change.......they are sometimes among the longest-surviving features of any language. "Eenie, meenie, minie, mo" is based on a counting system that predates the Roman occupation of Britain, that may even be pre-Celtic. If so, it is a rare surviving link with the very distant past. It not only gives us a fragmentary image of how children were being amused at the time Stonehenge was built, but tells us something about how their elders counted and thought and ordered their speech. Little things, in short, are worth looking at. (查看原文)
They called themselves Saints. Those members of the party who were not Saints they called Strangers. Pilgrims in reference to these early voyagers would not become common for another two hundred years. Even later was Founding Fathers. It isn't found until the twentieth century, in a speech by Warren G. Harding. Nor, strictly speaking, is it correct to call them Puritans. They were Separatists, so called because they had left the Church of England. Puritans were those who remained in the Anglican Church but wished to purify it. They wouldn't arrive in America for another decade, but when they did they would quickly eclipse, and eventually absorb, this little original colony. (查看原文)
最近开始读比尔·布莱森的《Made In America》，这是一部关于美国英语和历史的漫谈书，既有正经而学术的部分，也镶嵌了不少历史上的花边新闻。前半部分按照历史顺序，历数美国英语的变迁，后半部分，有不少主题。 我先看的是一个Sex And Other Distractions…… 果然，看到一...
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比尔·布莱森 作者
雪地里的水煮蛋
Black Swan1998版
无机客
Black Swan1998版
肥田
江苏凤凰文艺出版社2023版
还没人写过短评呢