WHY DO WE SPEAK ENGLISH?

About three thousand years ago, groups of people who lived in southern and eastern Europe began to move into the northern regions that today we call Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. They are known as the Germanic peoples, and the dialects and languages they spoke are all called Germanic too.
大約3000年前，原本居住在歐洲南部、東部的一群人開始向北遷移，來到我們現(xiàn)在所謂的德國(guó)、荷蘭、丹麥、瑞典和挪威等國(guó)家。他們被稱為“日耳曼人”，他們說的語言就叫“日耳曼語”。

A monk called Bede wrote a book telling us how groups of Germanic people arrived in Britain in the fifth century from different parts of northern Europe. He says some of them were called Angles, some were called Saxons and some were called Jutes. They settled in different parts of Britain. And it didn't take long before they developed new ways of speaking.
有個(gè)叫Bede的修道士寫了一本書，講述了5世紀(jì)時(shí)很多日耳曼人從北歐的不同地方遷移到了英國(guó)，其中有些被稱為盎格魯人，有些被稱為撒克遜人，還有一些被稱為朱特人，他們留在了英國(guó)各地。沒多久，他們就形成了自己新的語言。

After a while, people began to give these new settlers a name. They called them Anglo-Saxons – in other words, the 'English' Saxons, not the other Saxons who still lived in mainland Europe. They called this country 'English land', and eventually this became the name we now know, England. And the language spoken by these new Saxons, they called 'English'.
不久，大家給這群新移民起了個(gè)名字叫盎格魯-撒克遜人，是指English的撒克遜人，而不是歐洲大陸的撒克遜人。他們的國(guó)家叫“English land”，后來就演變成了現(xiàn)在地球人都知道的England（英格蘭），而這些撒克遜人所說的語言就叫“English”（英語）。

If you look at the English that the Anglo-Saxons spoke, you'll find it's very different from what we use today. There have been so many changes that it's almost like a foreign language. We call it Old English.
如果你聽過盎格魯-撒克遜人說的英語，你就知道他們說的英語和咱們說的英語差別好大，他們的英語聽著像一門外語。我們現(xiàn)在稱他們的英語為“Old English”（古英語）。

If you travelled back in time a thousand years, you'd have some difficulty understanding what the Anglo-Saxons were saying. But you'd recognize quite a few words that are still used in Modern English, such as house, bed, child and friend. And if you said to an Anglo-Saxon warrior, 'I live in that street,' he'd know what you were talking about, for all the words in that sentence have been in English for over a thousand years.
如果你穿越回到1000年前，你可能很難聽懂盎格魯-撒克遜人在說啥，但你也可能會(huì)聽得懂零星單詞，比如house、bed、child和friend這些咱們?nèi)栽谟玫脑~。如果你對(duì)一個(gè)盎格魯-撒克遜武士說：“I live in that street”（我住在那條街），他會(huì)明白你在說啥，因?yàn)镮、live、in、that和street這幾個(gè)單詞從古用到今。

競(jìng)猜——>Queen's English=?

A. 女王講話。B. 正宗英語。

Queen's English=最正宗的英語、英國(guó)上層社會(huì)講的英語，據(jù)說這詞的發(fā)明是英國(guó)人拿來針對(duì)美式英語的。因?yàn)楝F(xiàn)在在位的是女王，所以說Queen's English，如果是男的國(guó)王，就改說King's English了，這跟英國(guó)國(guó)歌是一樣的，女王在位時(shí)叫God Save the Queen（天佑女王），男的國(guó)王在位時(shí)叫God Save the King（天佑吾王）。

有童鞋知道English breakfast是什么嗎？

English breakfast=英式早餐，也叫full breakfast，聽名字就知道有多豐盛了，而且每樣食物都要用到油煎，包括培根、香腸、煎蛋或炒蛋、烤番茄、煎蘑菇、烘豆、土司、黃油、飲料（咖啡或茶）等，簡(jiǎn)直就是日不落帝國(guó)的滿漢全席嘛。那你知道和English breakfast完全相反的早餐叫什么嗎？

Continental breakfast=歐式早餐，相對(duì)于英式早餐食物品種明顯較少，且基本不用烹煮，就是面包（可頌、蛋糕）加黃油、果醬再配上一杯飲料（咖啡、牛奶、果汁），跟大英帝國(guó)的滿漢全席比這算是黃面窩窩頭了吧。