1 . Why Is It “Eleven, Twelve” Instead of “Oneteen, Twoteen”

English number words are pretty logical after a point. From twenty-one to ninety-nine, the same principle applies. The units (个位数) f    1     the tens. But the teens are different. Not only does the ten (which is where the word teen comes from) come after the units place (10+7 is not teen-seven but seventeen), eleven and twelve don’t fit in at all.

Eleven and twelve come from the Old English words “endleofan” and “twelf”, which can be traced back further to a time when they were “ain+lif” and “twa+lif”. So what did this “-lif” mean? The best guess is that it is from a r    2     for “to leave”. “Ainlif” is “one left (after ten)” and “twalif” is “two left (after ten).”

So then the question is, why don’t we have “threelif”, “fourlif”, “fiflif”, “sixlif” and so on? The answer has to do with the development of number systems over history. A long, long time ago, when the number words were first being formed, most people didn’t have much reason to distinguish numbers above ten. In fact, some languages of a    3     cultures only have number words for one, two, and many. So the basic number words up to ten formed first, then they were extended a bit with the“-lif” ending.

Maybe there was a “threelif”, “fourlif” type system, but 11 and 12 were used more often in daily life. Many number systems are based on 12 because it can be divided e    4     by many numbers, such as 2, 3, 4 and 6, and because you can count to 12 on one hand by using your thumb to count the three knuckles (指关节) on each of the other fingers. (We have the word “dozen” because 12 is so useful). If 11 and 12 are being used more frequently, the forms for them will stick, even when another system starts to d    5    .

You can extend that idea to other number words. We have more irregularities of pronunciation in the tens (“twenty”, “thirty”, “fifty” instead of “twoty”, “threety”, “fivety”) because we’ve been making everyday use of those numbers for longer than we have for “two hundred”, “three hundred”, and “five hundred”). “Thousand” is an old word, but its original sense was “a great multitude”. It is not a specific number, but a very useful idea. The words we needed earliest, and used the most frequently are usually the most irregular.

So the short answer is, we created words for 11 and 12 a long time ago by calling them “one left after ten” and “two left after ten”. They were more useful to us than the bigger numbers, so we said them more and they became a h    6     that we couldn’t break.

2 . Early Writing and Alphabets (字母表)

       When people first began to write, they did not use an alphabet. ________, they drew small pictures to show the objects they were writing about. This was very ________ because there was a different picture for every word.

The Ancient Egyptians had a ________ of picture writing that was called hieroglyphics (象形文字). The meaning of this writing had been forgotten for a very long time, but in 1799, some scientists discovered a stone near Alexandria, Egypt. The stone had been there for over a thousand years. It had both Greek and hieroglyphics on it and researchers were ________ able to understand what the hieroglyphics meant.

An alphabet is quite ________ picture writing. It consists of letters or symbols that represent (代表) a sound and each sound is just part of one word. The Phoenicians (腓尼基人), who lived about 3,000 years ago, ________ the ancient alphabet. It was later improved by the Romans and this alphabet is now used widely throughout the world.

1.

A．However

B．Instead

C．Also

D．Then

2.

A．amazing

B．powerful

C．strange

D．slow

3.

A．wall

B．piece

C．system

D．collection

4.

A．finally

B．seldom

C．nearly

D．especially

5.

A．similar to

B．different from

C．full of

D．close to

6.

A．noticed

B．arranged

C．developed

D．discovered