The British are known for their sense of humor. However, it is often difficult for foreigners to understand their jokes. The main point to remember is that the British often use understatement.
Understatement means saying less than you think or feel. For example, if someone gets very wet in a shower of rain, he might say, “It’s a little damp (潮湿的) outside.” Or, if someone is very impolite and shouts at another person, someone else might say, “She isn’t exactly friendly.” Understatement is often used in unpleasant situation or to make another person look silly. Understatement plays an important part in British humor.
Another key to understanding British humor is that the British like to make fun of themselves as well as others. They often laugh about the silly and unpleasant things that happen to our everyday life when someone accidentally falls over in the street. They also like to make jokes about people from different classes of society. They like to make jokes about their accents, the way they dress and the way they behave. What’s more, the British love to watch comedies (喜剧) about people who do not know how to behave in society. The comedies series Mr. Bean is a good example of this kind of humor.
Mr. Bean is the character created by British actor Rowan Atkinson in 1990. Mr. Bean doesn’t talk often, and instead he uses his body movement and facial expressions to make people laugh. Perhaps what makes Mr. Bean so funny is that he does things that adults in the real world cannot do. Mr. Bean is popular in many countries around the world because you do not have to speak English to understand the humor. Because of this, many people have become familiar with the British sense of humor.
1. Why is it difficult for foreigners to understand British jokes?| A．The British often enlarge the fact. |
| B．The British try to understate something. |
| C．British jokes are connected with many different cultures. |
| D．British jokes are not as funny as jokes in other countries. |
| A．describing a process | B．using examples |
| C．following time order | D．making comparisons |
| A．telling funny stories |
| B．copying how others behave |
| C．making jokes about others’ accent |
| D．using his body movement and facial expressions |
| A．British Humor in Comedy | B．Humor in Different Cultures |
| C．Developing Your Sense of Humor | D．Understanding British Humor |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Living in a foreign culture can be exciting, but it can also be confusing. A group of Americans who taught English in other countries recently discussed their experiences. They found that miscommunication was always possible even over something as simple as “yes” and “no”.
On her first day in Micronesia, an island in the Pacific, Lisa thought people weren’t paying any attention to her. The day was hot. She went into a store and asked, “Do you have cold drinks?” The woman there didn’t say anything. Lisa repeated the question. Still the woman said nothing. She later learned that the woman had answered her. She had raised her eyebrows (眉毛) , which in Micronesia means “yes”.
Jan remembered an experience she had in Bulgaria, a country in Europe. She went to a restaurant that was famous for its cabbage. She asked the waiter, “Do you have cabbage today?” He nodded his head. Jan waited, but the cabbage never came. In that country, a nod means “no”.
Tom had a similar problem when he arrived in India. After explaining something in class, he asked his students if they understood. They answered with many different nods and shakes of the head. He thought some people had not understood, so he explained again. When he asked again, they did the same thing. He soon found out that his students did understand. In India, people nod and shake their heads in different ways depending on where they come from. You have to know where a person is from to understand whether they mean “yes” or “no”.
1. The Americans teaching English in other countries found that they __________.| A．should go abroad for vacations |
| B．needed to learn foreign languages |
| C．should often discuss their experiences |
| D．had problems with communication |
| A．saying “no” | B．raising eyebrows |
| C．shaking heads | D．nodding heads |
| A．In Bulgaria, nodding heads means “no”. |
| B．Jan taught English on a Pacific island. |
| C．Lisa was trying to buy some cabbage. |
| D．In India, only shaking heads means “yes”. |
| A．he didn’t know a nod means “no” in Indian. |
| B．he didn’t explain everything clearly enough |
| C．some students didn’t understand his questions |
| D．he did not know much about Indian culture |
There exist in both spoken and written Chinese a great number of idioms also called chengyu, literally “set language” or “set expressions”, which are translated in English as “idiom”.
These may be general in nature or they may reflect famous events or stories from Chinese history, or they may be direct quotations from famous works of Chinese literature. The great majority of Chinese idioms are composed of four characters, which usually –though not always- can be parsed in groups of two.
Chinese idioms are usually composed in Classical Chinese and thus typically have a different grammatical structure from that of Modern Chinese. In their speech and writing, Chinese people make frequent use of idioms, since these often sum up briefly a meaning which it would otherwise take many words to express.
Contextually appropriate use of idioms tends to impress hearers as to the educational level and eloquence of the speaker. Since idioms are frequently used in formal speech and higher-level written materials, such as newspaper editorials and commentaries, they serve as a useful medium for helping learners move up on the proficiency ladder.
Familiarity with idioms can also be helpful for the non-native in gaining credibility in Chinese society. Indeed, almost nothing impresses a Chinese person more than a properly used idiom coming from the mouth of a foreigner.
There are a great number of idioms in Chinese, with certain dictionaries of idioms including well over 20,000 entries. All Chinese people know idioms, even though the total number known by any one individual will depend on her or his education, linguistic talent, general intelligence, etc…
Idioms are such an important part of Chinese popular culture that there even exists a game called chengyu jielong that involves someone calling out an idiom, with someone else then being supposed to think of another idiom to link up with the first one, so that the last character of the first idiom is the same as the first character of the second idiom, and so forth.
According to the Chinese search engine Baidu, the longest idiom chain ever created was all of 1,788 idioms long!
For the learner of Chinese as a second/foreign language, idioms are not so easy to understand, since the functional meaning of idioms is often different from the surface meaning and may, to quote an English idiom, be “greater than the sum of its parts”.
This is because Chinese idioms frequently involve literary allusions, extended meanings, and metaphors.
For example, consider the following idiom: 雪中送炭 xuě zhōng sòng tàn
This could be translated literally as “in the snow to deliver charcoal”; however, the actual meaning usually has nothing at all to do with “snow” or “charcoal”, but rather involves the rendering of aid to someone at time of need.
Idioms have a long history in Chinese, with some having existed for well over 2,000 years. Indeed, the grammatical structure of most Chinese idioms is that of Classical Chinese.
There are three common origins of idioms: ancient fables and historical tales; Buddhist and Confucian classics as well as other works of ancient Chinese literature; and habitual collocations of terms that gradually came to be stable and used in a certain way, even though their exact origin is not known today. To use a Chinese idiom, we could say there are in the Chinese language as many idioms “as there are hairs on an ox”.(598 words)
1. What is the main character of Chengyu?2. What does it depend on whether you can use Chengyu properly or not?
3. Why does the writer say idioms work as a useful medium for helping learners move up on the proficiency ladder?
4. What is chengyu jielong? Give an example please.
5. List three common origins of idioms.
6. Explain the follow Cehnyu in English.
衣食住行 yī shí zhù xíng
【推荐3】Green is an important color in nature. It is the color of grass and the leaves on trees. It is also the color of most growing plants.
Someone who has the ability to grow plants well is said to have a green thumb.
Green is also the color used to describe the powerful feeling, jealousy(嫉妒). The green-eyed monster is not a frightening creature from outer space. It is an expression used about four hundred years ago by British writer William Shakespeare in his play “Othello”.
| A．The plants produced much larger crops． |
| B．The expression comes from the early 1900s. |
| C．Sometimes, it describes something that is not yet ripe or finished. |
| D．Later, it meant a soldier who had not yet had any experience in battle. |
| E．It was used to describe a man who just arrived from one of the big cities． |
| F．It was the result of hard work by agricultural scientists who had green thumbs． |
| G．It describes the unpleasant feeling a person has when someone has something he wants. |
【推荐1】A sperm whale (抹香鲸) surfaces. The baby whale comes in close to drink milk. When the baby has had its fill, mom moves her tail. Then, together the pair div e down deep. Gasper Begus watches from a boat. “You get this sense of how vast and different their world is when they dive,” he says. “But in some ways, they are so similar to us.”
Sperm whales have families and other important social relationships. They also use loud clicking sounds to communicate. It seems as if they might be talking to each other.
Begus is an expert majoring in languages. He got the chance, last summer, to observe sperm whales in their wild Caribbean habitat off the coast of the island nation of Dominica. With him were marine biologists and roboticists. There were also experts in other fields. All have been working together to listen to sperm whales and figure out what they might be saying.
They call this Project CETI. That’s short for Cetacean Translation Initiative. To get started, Project CETI has three listening stations. Each one is a cable (电缆) hanging deep into the water from the surface. Along the cable, several dozen underwater microphones record whale sounds. From the air, drones (无人机) record video and sounds. Robots do the same underwater. But just collecting all these data isn’t enough. The team needs some way to make sense of it all. That’s where artificial intelligence, or AI, comes in.
Now a type of AI known as machine learning can find patterns from vast amounts of data and you can open an app and use it to help you talk to someone who speaks Japanese or French. One day, the same tech might translate sperm-whale clicks.
Project CETI’s team is not the only group turning to AI for help. Researchers have trained AI models to sort through the sounds of prairie dogs, dolphins and many other creatures. Could their efforts crack the codes of animal communication? Let’s take a cue from the sperm whales and div e in head first.
1. What is the purpose of paragraph 1?| A．To lead in the topic. | B．To introduce Gasper Begus. |
| C．To imply the danger of scientists’ work. | D．To show humans and whales’ similarities. |
| A．It needs experts’ joint efforts. |
| B．It requires a good command of whales’ language. |
| C．It demands the knowledge of whales’ living habitat. |
| D．It calls for an understanding of whales’ social relationships. |
| A．To collect sounds. | B．To analyze data. |
| C．To monitor whales. | D．To operate drones. |
| A．The wide application of Al. | B．The sperm whales’ parenting styles. |
| C．The study of the sperm whales’ clicks. | D．The ways to track sperm whales. |
【推荐2】Rush hour traffic is a problem in many big cities around the world. Commuters (上下班者) rush to and from their jobs in cars, buses, subways, trains, and even on bicycles. Large cities in the United States have two rush hours –– one in the morning and one in the evening. But in cities in other parts of the world, there are four rush hours. In Athens and Rome, for example, many workers go home for lunch and a nap. After this midday break, they rush back to their jobs and work for a few more hours.
In Tokyo, there’s a big rush hour underground. Most of the people in Tokyo take the subways. The trains are very crowded. Subway employees called packers wear white gloves and help pack the commuters into the trains when the doors close. They make sure that all purses, briefcases, clothes, and hands are inside the trains.
In Seoul, many commuters prefer to take taxis to get to work. To hail a cab, many people stand at crossroads and raise two fingers. This means they’ll pay the cab driver double the usual fare. Some people even raise three fingers! They’ll pay three times the normal rate.
Streets in Rome are very crowded with automobiles and mopeds (摩托自行车) during rush hours. The city can’t make its streets wider, and it can’t build new highways, because it doesn’t want to disturb the many historic sites in the city, such as the Forum and the Coliseum. It took the city fifteen years to construct a new subway system. Construction had to stop every time workers found old artifacts and discovered places of interest to archaeologists (考古学家).
In many big cities, there are special lanes on highways for carpools. These are groups of three or more people who drive to and from work together. They share the costs of gas and parking and take turns driving into the city.
1. Big cities have traffic problems during rush hours because there are_______.| A．special lanes on highways | B．many commuters |
| C．four rush hours | D．many cars on the street |
| A．take subway trains to work | B．are packers |
| C．take taxis to work | D．carry briefcases to work |
| A．pay double the normal fare | B．try to get a cab |
| C．prefer to take taxis | D．to stand at crossroads |
| A．live in the city | B．take the subway to work |
| C．save money on gas and parking fee | D．have special license plates (牌照) |
【推荐3】Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but a new study suggests it could have an unexpected downside: A few minutes of floor cleaning indoors with a fresh-scented cleaning product can generate as many airborne particles (微粒) as vehicles on a busy city street, because these products contain chemicals that react with ozone (臭氧) in the air to form harmful small particles.
“I was absolutely amazed that floor cleaning produced potentially harmful particles at similar rates to those generated by traffic on a busy street,” says Nicola Carslaw of the University of York who was not involved with the study. “There is a lot of particle formation during these cleaning events, even under conditions that we would consider very normal.”
Previous studies found cleaning products can generate such pollution. But not all of these experiments were realistic or detailed. The new study was designed to reveal, minute by minute, what happens with airborne-reactions during a typical floor cleaning. Researchers brought their lab instruments into a room with an air volume of 50 cubic meters. In the morning, they cleaned the floor for 12 to 14 minutes with a terpene-based (含有萜烯成分的) cleaner. Then, they used the most advanced instruments to monitor the reactions over the next 90 minutes. “This is the first study that really looked at the entire chemical process under realistic indoor conditions,” says researcher Philip Stevens.
What about opening windows? It can also be a double-edged sword, researchers say. Ventilation (通风) removes particles, but it can also bring in more dangerous ozone from outdoors. Keeping ozone levels below one part per billion — either by reducing ventilation or using activated carbon air filters (活性炭空气过滤器) — would help, the researchers say. So would cleaning in the morning or evening, when ozone levels tend to be lower, and avoiding products with terpenes. Portable air filters can also reduce the concentration of particles inside rooms, says another researcher Brandon Boor.
The larger problem, Boor says, is the lack of rules for the design and operation of buildings — and the use of various common chemicals inside them — with respect to air quality. “We need to pay closer attention to what’s going on in indoor environments.”
1. What surprised Nicola Carslaw?| A．Cleaning can create air pollution that matches city street pollution. |
| B．Particle formation during cleaning events is considered normal. |
| C．The air in homes cannot be purified by cleaning products. |
| D．Cleaning products contain ozone gas. |
| A．It was inspired by previous studies. |
| B．It was conducted in a real room. |
| C．It lasted longer than previous studies. |
| D．It raised people’s concerns about indoor air quality. |
| A．Keeping plants indoors. | B．Keeping doors open while cleaning. |
| C．Cleaning at the beginning of the day. | D．Cutting down the frequency of cleaning. |
| A．Reduce cleaning products' chemical ingredients. |
| B．Monitor the construction of tall buildings. |
| C．Improve the living environment. |
| D．Focus more on indoor air quality. |
