Test Your English

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Попробуйте прочесть следующие английские тексты без помощи словаря и попытайтесь их понять.

Тексты даны в таком порядке: от более сложного к более простому.
Прочитав эти тексты, Вы сможете составить примерное представление о том, в какой степени Вы владеете (или не владеете) английским языком.
Также попробуйте пройти тест Spelling Bee на знание английских слов, восприятия их на слух и умение грамотно их писать.

Итак:

1. The Tree of Languages
2. The Pearl
3. A Traveller’s Tale
4. Spelling Bee (Тест на знание английских слов, восприятия их на слух и умение грамотно их писать.)

The first voice spoke, and the sounds faded on the drifting wind, yet those words that were uttered at the down of time have echoed through the centuries. Generations upon generations of languages have flourished, and though they may themselves have died, they have left daughter languages, which in turn have split up and developed into new tongues. The tantalizing goal that linguists have set themselves is to work out the family tree of the world’s myriad tongues and to delve back into the distant past to find the original source of language itself.

It was Sir William Jones, writing in 1786, who first set this branch of scholarship in train. He noted that Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, an ancient language of India, were related in a way, that could not be put down to chance, and that they must have “sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.“ The similarities were striking: the words Jupiter in Latin, Zeus pater in Greek and Dyaus pitar in Sanskrit all derive from the more ancient words deiw-os and p’ter meaning “god” and “father” respectively.

When linguists compare languages, they look for cognate words (i. e. words that are the same in different languages) and at sound shifts. For example, the English word father has links with Vater in German and pitar in Sanskrit, and this f-v-p pattern is repeated in many words. By examining these and other features, linguists can not only establish links between languages, but can also reconstruct the protolanguage from which later languages have derived.

The protolanguage that has been the most painstakingly researched is proto-Indo-European, which is seen us the source of a vast array of modern and ancient languages. It shows how apparently diverse languages such as English and Gujarati in fact share a common ancestry.

Linguists have been able to reconstruct the vocabulary of proto-Indo-European, and the words themselves give a unique insight into ancient cultures. For example, it contains words for domesticated animals and crops, indicating that these ancient societies were agricultural. The word for the father of gods, Deue p’ter, reflects too upon both their anthropomorphic religious beliefs and the patriarchal nature of their societies.

Proto-Indo-European started in Transcaucasus (not far from the site of the Tower of Babel itself), and then spread eastwards and northwards, round the Caspian Sea towards Europe. As the mainly agricultural communities migrated and separated from each other, the language changed into different dialects and then daughter languages and, by about 4,000 years ago, proto-Indo-European had split into twelve distinct languages, not all of which survived.

The full description of proto-Indo-European may once have seemed an almost impossible task; but just as it was nearing completion, the certainties it offered vanished like a mirage. For some linguists now believe that proto-Indo-European is itself merely a branch of a much larger tree of ancient languages, and that it is possible to trace the roots of language even further into the past.

Two Soviet linguists, Illych-Svitych and Dolgopolsky posited the theory that Indo-European, together with five other language families, stemmed from a far more ancient language, which they called Nostratic, and which was spoken some 15,000 years ago. Work on the reconstruction of Nostratic vocabulary has uncovered some 1,600 routs, and in many ways the words speak volumes about the lives of those ancient people.

Nostratic has many words in common with proto-Indo-European, but it is the differences that are far more significant. For example, Nostratic has no words for crops and does not distinguish between domestic and wild animals. It does, however, have words for hunting, and terms like haya, which refers to tracking and hunting an animal for several days. This suggests that Nostratic was spoken by huntergatherers long before the long before the development of agriculture, and these cultural inferences are backed by archaeological evidence.

Not at all linguists agree with the Nostratic theory, but most accept that the monogenesis of languages is plausible. As the history of language is uncovered layer by layer, each discovery brings new insights into the past. It may indeed be that language itself was the critical factor in defining homosapiens and ensuring the survival of our species, perhaps at the expense of our then contemporaries the Neanderthals, who have long been extinct.

[Этот же текст, но с приложенным к нему словником, Вы можете посмотреть на этой странице]

The largest single natural pearl known as a drop shaped gem, three inches long and nearly two inches thick, was found by a Persian diver in the pearl bearing bed near Bahrain in the year 1628. The Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan bought it for enormous amount and presented it to his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahall. A century later, the gem known as the “Pearl of Asia” was listed among the treasures of Ch’ien Lung, Manchu Emperor of China and in 1799 it was buried with the Emperor”s body.

In the year 1900 a gang of grave robbers managed to steal this famous pearl and sold it to somebody in China. Eighteen years later it turned up in Hong Kong and was acquired as security for a loan by the Catholic Board of Foreign Missions. It is stated, when the loan was in default, the religious people carried it to Paris during World War and sold it for an unrevealed price to an unidentified person, but for an amount believed to be below the prewar estimated value. The present whereabouts of this giant pearl have remained a mystery and, as such it has become only a subject of research.

As usual, the giant pearl of Shah Jahan and other historic diamonds mysteriously slipped away from the subcontinent and found their way to Great Britain.

In the autumn of 1935, when I was a young man, I was traveling in the north-west of India. One evening, after hunting in the forest all day, I was returning alone to the place where I had put up my tent. It was getting dark, and I was walking along a narrow path. On my right was a wide river; on my left, a thick, dark forest. Suddenly I saw two green eyes looking at me from among the trees. A man-eating tiger was getting ready to jump on me.

What could I do? Should I jump into the river and hope to save my life by swimming? I looked to the right. In the river there was an immense crocodile waiting to welcome me with its mouth wide open.

I was so frightened that I shut my eyes. I heard branches moving as the tiger jumped. I opened my eyes. What do you think had happened? The tiger had jumped right over me and was now in the jaws of the crocodile. That’s a true story, believe it or not!

[Этот же текст, но с приложенным к нему словником, Вы можете посмотреть на этой странице]