最适合大学生的英语文章

Internet English 网络英语

Twenty years ago this week the British inventor Tim Berners-Lee created the world’s first webpage. It is worth pausing to consider the extraordinary impact that his invention has had on the English language.

Everyday words like google, unfriend and app simply didn't exist in 1990.

Even more words have had unexpected shifts in meaning in those two decades. If you had mentioned tweeting to an English-speaker a few years ago, he would have assumed you were talking about bird noises, not the use of the microblogging site Twitter.

Long ago, if someone lived online, it didn't mean they spent every waking minute on the internet, but that they travelled around with the rail network. And wireless still means, to anyone of a certain age, a radio - not the system for retrieving internet pages without wires.

"The internet is an amazing medium for languages," said David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Bangor. "Language itself changes slowly but the internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly."

English is a remarkably inclusive language, and if words continue to be used for at least five years they generally end up in the Oxford English Dictionary.

But less accepted are the peculiar dialects that have sprung up amongst some users. For example, 'LOLcat' is a phonetic, grammatically-incorrect caption that accompanies a picture of a cat, like "I'm in ur bed zleeping".

In an article called "Cats Can Has Grammar" the blogger Anil Dash referred to LOLcat as "kitty pidgin". But does something like LOLcat have the staying power to become an accepted form of English?

Not according to Professor Crystal. "They are all clever little developments used by a very small number of people - thousands rather than millions. Will they be around in 50 years' time? I would be very surprised."

Goodbye Harry Potter 《哈里·波特》终结篇

The first part of the final Harry Potter film has just had its premiere in London. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows marks the end of the almost

ten-year fantasy film franchise.

The young stars of the films have been in the limelight for almost a decade but now it's the beginning of the end for the Hogwarts schoolmates and for fans of the films.

The first film was screened in 2001. The girls and boys who watched it then have grown up, perhaps more quickly than the on-screen characters. Certainly

the films have got darker and scarier and this latest episode is a long way

from the original film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

The Harry Potter effect has certainly been profitable,becoming one of

the highest- grossing film series of all time. But is it because of the story or because of its high-profile marketing campaign? Xan Brooks talks about the films in The Guardian newspaper saying "It's hard tomourn the demise of a franchise that was never more than half-alive to begin with… after all this time and all these films, it is as though we never really knew you at all."

Others may disagree and for the cast it's been a franchise that has launched their careers. The actor Daniel Radcliffe told the BBC he has fond memories of playing the wizard Harry Potter but "as ten years with one character I'm

ready to move on as well".

Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley, agrees that playing the role has been a great start to his acting career but he admits "it has been hard to adjust really because it's been a huge part of my life".

The downside of actors playing the same person for so many years is that they can become typecast. The audience just can't think of them playing another character.

But Daniel Radcliffe has already made appearances on stage and is set

to perform in a Broadway musical. Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Granger, has already made her modelling debut for the fashion brand Burberry.

The second part of this final story will be screened next year. After that,

for die-hard fans of Harry Potter the legacy will live on in J.K. Rowling's books and also through a theme park in Florida called The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. And maybe the wizard will cast some of his magic on the author's future projects.