General English. Ульянова О.В - 70 стр.

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в шуточной форме. Однако, как известно, в каждой
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какие сведения, полезные для изучающих английский, можно
извлечь и какие выводы можно сделать.
LANGUAGE
By G. Mikes
When I arrived in England I thought I knew English. After I'd been
here an hour, I realized that I did not understand one word. In the first
week I picked up a tolerable working knowledge of the language and the
next seven years convinced me gradually but thoroughly that I would
never know it really well, let alone perfectly. This is sad. My only being
that nobody speaks English perfectly.
Remember that those five hundred words an average Englishman
uses are far from being the whole vocabulary of the language. You may
learn another five hundred and another five thousand and yet another fifty
thousand and still you may come across a further fifty thousand you have
never heard of before and nobody else either.
If you live here long enough you will find out to your greatest
amazement that the adjective nice is not the only adjective the language
possesses, in spite of the fact that in the first three years you do not need
to learn or use any other adjectives. You can say that the weather is nice,
a restaurant is nice, Mr Soandso* is nice, Mrs Soandso's* clothes are nice,
you had a nice time, and all this will be very nice.
Then you have to decide on your accent. The easiest way to give
the impression of having a good accent or no foreign accent at all is to
hold an unlit pipe in your mouth, to mutter between your teeth and finish
all your sentences with the question: 'isn't it?' People will not understand
much, but they are accustomed to that and they will get a most excellent
impression.
*Mr Soandso, Mrs Soandso - мистер такой-то, миссис такая-то
tolerable – терпимый; pick up - зд. научиться ч-л. быстро,
нахвататься; convince – убеждать, thoroughly – тщательно,
consolation – утешение, possess – обладать, in spite of the fact that –
несмотря на то, что; to give the impression – производить
впечатление, to mutter – бормотать, to be accustomed – привыкать

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