练习

【练习】

Tracing missing persons can take much patient detective work. But a special　kind of "private eye" can trace the missing ancestors of whole peoples by　studying the clues buried by words. __1

These philologists, such as the language detectives are called, have traced __2

the word trail back from peoples in Europe, India, South Africa, the Americas,and the Pacific islands in a tiny nameless, and forgotten tribe that roamed central __3

Eurasia 5000 to 6000 years ago, before the dawn of writing history. __4

Since a long time scholars have been puzzled over the striking __5

difference of words in different languages. In Dutch, vader; in Latin, pater;in __6

old Irish, athir; in Persian, pidar;in the Sanskrit of distant India, pitr.

These words all sounded likely and meant the same thing—"father" __7

Where did it happen that widely separated peoples used such __8

close related sound symbols? The problem baffled linguists for years. The more so __9

because "father" was but one of a host of such coincidences. Towards the end of the 18 century it dawned on scholars that perhaps all these words stemmed __10

from some common language.

答案

【答案】

1 将by改为in

(be) buried in 意思为 “被…所掩盖,掩蔽于…”

2 将such去掉

在这里as是连词,引导状语从句。

3 将第一个and改为to

以便和前文的from构成搭配 “from…to…”,表示 “从……到……”

4 将writing改为written

“有文字记载的历史”英语为 “written history”

5 将Since改为 For

因为since做介词, 表示 “自从……起” 之意时,后面一般不跟表示一段时间的名词。

6 将difference改为similarity

从后面的例子我们可以看出,作者在这里讲述的是文字的惊人的相同之处,而不是不同之处。

7 将likely改为alike

likely 意思为 “很可能的”不做 “相同的，相似的”解。

8 将where改为why

这里不是问地点而是问原因，从后面的because也可以看出。

9 将close改为副词closely

因为形容词close不能修饰过去分词related

10 将18改为 18th.

The more so because “father” was but one of a host of such coincidences.

the more so because意思为：更何况。