听力文本

Both Oslo and Stockholm are on the water, but they are not touched by the Gulf Stream, so the water in their harbors is frozen over nearly all winter and ships cannot go and come at that time. Stockholm is often called the Venice of the North, because like Venice it has many streets of water.

Mary and John are our commonest names. The Scandinavians like some names for their children better than others. Ole is one name they like especially well. Hans is another, and Eric and Peter are others. We sometimes make a family name by adding “son” to John to make Johnson. The Scandinavians add “son” or “sen” to their names to make family names, as Ericson , Ole son , Hansen, Petersen, Nan sen, Amundsen. If you were in Wisconsin or Minnesota and looked in the telephone book you would find thousands of such names. That is because many, many Swedes and Norwegians have come to our country and settled in that part of our country which is most like their country.

Many common Norse words look like English words misspelled: lamp is lampe house is hus cow is ko

They haven’t copied us, we have copied them, for long ago Norse sailors settled in England, and after thousands of years we still use some Norse words changed very little.

参考译文

奥斯陆和斯德哥尔摩都是海滨城市，但是湾流不经过这两座城市，所以几乎整个冬季，海港里的海水全部结成冰，船只无法进出。斯德哥尔摩常被称作“北方的威尼斯”，因为像威尼斯一样，斯德哥尔摩市内河道纵横。

玛丽和约翰是美国人最常用的名字。斯堪的纳维亚人给自己的孩子取名也偏爱某些名字。他们特别喜欢的一个名字是“奥利”，另一个是“汉斯”，还有“埃里克”和“彼得”。有时，我们会在名字后面加上一个“逊”构成新名字，如“约翰”变成“约翰逊”。斯堪的纳维亚人会在名字后面加上“森”，构成新名字，如埃里克森、奥里森、汉森、彼得森、南森、阿姆德森等。如果你在威斯康星州或明尼苏达州翻看电话簿的话，你会看到数千个这样的名字。这是因为很多瑞典人和挪威人来到美国，定居在这两个州，因为这里的环境很像他们的祖国。

许多挪威的常见词语看起来就像是拼错了的英语单词，如，“lamp”（灯），挪威语写作“lampe”，“house”（房子），挪威语拼作“hus”，“cow”（母牛）挪威语是“ko”。

他们没有模仿我们，而是我们模仿他们，因为很久以前，挪威的水手在英格兰定居下来。几千年之后，我们仍然在沿用一些挪威语的词汇，这些词汇几乎没有什么改变。