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学习英语这么多年的你们，有许多英语冷常识或许你还不晓得，其实，不晓得也不打紧，因为晓得了之后你会感触冷冷的。
1、It is the only major language without an academy to guide it.
英语是仅有没有学术机构加以规正的大语种。
L’Académie fran?aise, based in Paris, is in charge of overseeing the French language. For Spanish there is the Real Academia Espa?ola. German has the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung. There is no equivalent to L’Académie for English. Of the 10 most-widely spoken languages in the world, only English has no academy guiding it.
法兰西文学院位于巴黎，担任检查法语。关于西班牙语，有西班牙皇家学院，德语有标准德语德语正字法协会。而英语则没有相应的文学院。世界十大运用最为广泛的口语中，唯有英语没有学术研讨院引领。
2、More than 1 billion people are learning English as you read this.
你读这篇文章的时分，有跨越10亿的人正在学英语。
According to the British Council, around 1 billion people around the world were learning English in 2000. This figure is now likely to be significantly higher.
据英国文明委员会的查询数据闪现，在2000年，全球有10亿支配的人正在学习英语。如今这个数字很可以有了更为显着的前进。
3、96 of the 100 most common English words are Germanic.
英语中100个最常用词中96个来自日耳曼语。
Of the hundred most frequently used words in English, 96 have Germanic roots. Together, those 100 words make up more than 50% of the Oxford English Corpus, which currently contains over 2 billion words found in writing around the world.
100个运用频率最高的英语词汇中，96个有日耳曼语词根。总的来说，牛津英语语料库词汇有跨越一半由这100个词汇构成——当前包括世界各地书面语中跨越20亿的词汇。
Surprised? The most frequently used words are the meat and bones of the language, the essentials that make communication work, including I, you, go, eat, and so on.
吃惊吗?运用频率最高的词汇是一门言语的骨架，这些要素让我们成功交流，比方“我”、“你”、“去”、“吃”等等。
4、But most words that have entered the language since 1066 have Latin origins.
不过自1066年之后的大有些英语词汇都有拉丁词根。
The Renaissance, which started in Italy and reached England via France, was a massive source of new vocabulary. New ideas, or old ideas rediscovered, started flooding out of the southern cities but there were no words to describe them in English. So the language adopted or adapted the Latin words. During the Renaissance, the English lexicon roughly doubled in size.
来历于意大利，席卷法国再延伸至英国的文艺温习带来了海量新词。新的点子也罢，旧的主意也罢，被我们从头发现，不断从南部的意大利城市中奔涌而出，而英语中却没有相应词汇用以描绘。所以英语就选用、改写了拉丁词汇。文艺复兴时期，英语的词汇几乎翻了一倍。
5、For more than a century, the English aristocracy couldn’t speak English.
有一个世纪多的时刻，英国贵族不会说英语。
William the Conqueror tried to learn English at the age of 43 but gave up. Within 20 years of the Normans taking power in England, almost all of the local religious institutions were French-speaking. There is little to suggest that aristocrats themselves spoke English. It isn’t until the end of the 12th Century that we have evidence of the children of the English aristocracy with English as a first language.
英国国王威廉一世曾在43岁时测验学习英语，但功败垂成。诺曼人控制英国的20年里，大有些的当地宗教机构都说法语。鲜有根据闪现英国的贵族自个会说英语。根据闪现，直到12世纪末，才有英语贵族子孙以英语为第一言语。
6、That is why Latin words sound more prestigious than Germanic ones.
这就是为啥拉丁词汇比日耳曼词汇听上去更巨大上。
Think about the difference between a house (Germanic) and a mansion (French), or between starting something and commencing, between calling something kingly or regal. English has a huge number of close synonyms, where the major difference is the level of formality or prestige. The prestigious form is almost always the Latin one.
想想看"house"("房子"，日耳曼词汇)与"mansion"("宅邸"，法语词汇)的差异，及"starting(初步)"与"commencing(肇始)"的不一样、“kingly(皇家气质)"与"regal(君威)"的差异。英语中有许多意思靠近的近义词，其首要差异在于其正式与高档程度。高档方法几乎都是拉丁词汇。
7、The concept of “correct” spelling is fairly recent.
“正确”拼写是恰当新近的概念。
Shakespeare, for example, was liberal in his spellings of wor
ds, often using multiple variants within a single text; his name itself has been spelt in many different ways over the centuries.
例如莎士比亚，在拼写单词就非常随意，常在同一文本中运用数种变体;数世纪以来，其名字也有多种不一样的拼法。
8、One man is largely responsible for the differences between American and British spelling.
美式英语和英式英语拼写上的差异很大程度上因一人而起。
Noah Webster, whose name you still find on the front of many American dictionaries, was a patriotic man. Between 1783 and 1785, he produced three books on the English language for American schoolchildren. During his lifetime, 385 editions of his Speller were published. The modern US spelling of color was initially spelt in the British way, colour, but this changed in later editions.
在美国的许多词典封面上你还能找到一自个的名字，一位赋有爱国心的美国人——诺亚·韦伯斯特。在1783至1785年间，韦伯斯特为美国的学龄儿童创造了三本关于英语的书本。韦伯斯特终身中，其拼写教材出了385版。现代美式英语中“color(颜色)”一词起先是英式的拼写方法，但在后来的版别中，这些词的拼写方法发生了改变。
9、-ize is not an American suffix-ize.
并不是美式英语中的后缀。
There is a popular belief that words such as popularise/ize, maximise/ize and digitise/ize have different spellings in British and American English.
我们广泛认为，popularise/ize(广泛)、maximise/ize(最大化)、digitise/ize(数字化)等词在英式英语和美式英语中拼写方法不一样。
Look at that z – isn’t it snazzy? It’s got to be American, hasn’t it?
看看这个Z——不是很时髦吗?它必定是美式英语，不是吗?
这篇文章摘自《北外网院》博客，点击查看原文
