Scrabble is a favourite with British families over the festive period, with an estimated 11 million going head to head on Boxing Day, according to its makers.
拼字游戏是英国家庭在节庆期间最喜欢的游戏。据该游戏生产商的估计,在节礼日约有1100万人进行拼字游戏比赛。
University of York sociolinguistics expert Professor Paul Kerswill said the English language has evolved to compensate for tricky pronunciations but some words remain a challenge.
约克大学社会语言学专家保罗·凯斯维尔说,随着英语的演化,一些拗口的单词已经渐渐进化发展,但是一些很难发音的单词依然存在。
He said: ‘People always find a way of simplifying words that they find difficult to get their tongues round, so that an everyday word like ‘handbag’ sounds like ‘hambag’.
他说:“人们总是能够找到方法简化那些难以顺利发音的单词,这样,‘handbag’这种日常单词会听起来像‘hambag’。
‘Our forebears simplified ‘waistcoat’ to ‘weskit’ - but we’ve turned our backs on that.
“我们的祖先把单词'waistcoat'(背心马甲)简化成了‘weskit’——不过后来我们又放弃了后一种说法。
‘We certainly don’t pronounce Worcester and Gloucester the way they are spelt any more. And ‘York’ used to have three syllables, not one.
【最难发音的10个英语单词】相关文章:
最新
2017-01-09
2016-11-10
2016-09-21
2016-09-18
2016-08-11
2016-08-11