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Базовый курс английского языка - Эккерсли К.Э.

Эккерсли К.Э. Базовый курс английского языка — М.: Лист Нью, 2002. — 704 c.
ISBN 5-7871-0174-X
Скачать (прямая ссылка): bazoviykursangliyskogo2003.djvu
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Kind regards and best wishes to you all,
Yours sincerely,
Lucille.
Extracts from Lucille's Journal
3rd February.
...The first sight of the skyline of New York from the water is really staggering, and it is just as impressive when you are in the streets and beside these enormous "skyscrapers" that rise up like great cliffs. They are a sort of vertical landscape instead of the horizontal one that we are accustomed to. They are hard and bare but they give one a feeling of power and have a kind of cold, hard beauty. I went up the highest one, the Empire State Building, 102 storeys, more than a thousand feet high.
Many Americans are terribly impressed with mere size; to them "bigger" and "better" seem to'mean the same thing. Within a very short time of being here I was told that the Cathedral in New York is the largest "Gothic" Cathedral in the world; that the finger of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour is eight feet long and that forty people can stand inside its head; that the Rockefeller Centre cost 100 million dollars to build, and its hanging gardens are four times the size of the famous hanging gardens of Babylon that were one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world; and if all the people in the skyscrapers came out at once, the streets couldn't hold them. As for their newspapers there is no doubt at all that, for the number of pages, they certainly take the prize, the daily edition of a newspaper has anything from 60 to 100 pages, and the Sunday editions remind you in size of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. But, of course, the United States is a big place. As one American said to me, "You can leave New York, fly twice as far as from London to Moscow, and find yourself still in America."
* * *
10th February.
It is easy to find your way about in New York, it is laid out so regularly. Instead of streets wandering and twisting as they do in London, they are all regular and planned. The streets running north and south are called "Avenues" and are numbered, e.g. 1st Avenue, 2nd Avenue, 3rd Avenue, etc., the streets going east and west are called "Streets" and are also numbered, e. g. 51st Street, 63rd Street, etc. It's all very much more logical and sensible than London's street names; but 1 couldn't help thinking how much more fascinating than these dull, cold numbers are London's illogical but colourful "Drury Lane" and "Petticoat Lane" (which are not lanes at all), "Bishopsgate" (which isn't a gate and hasn't a bishop in it), "Haymarket" or "Com Market" (where you won't see any hay or corn), or "Threadneedle Street" where you will find, not little girls learning to sew, but the fortress-like Bank of England.
* * *
15th February.
When I first arrived in America I thought how English America was; the people speak (more or less) the same language as the English,
649¦
their dress, houses, food, democratic government are-with, of course, some differences-very similar. After a time I began to realise that there were some differences between England and America; I suppose that isn't surprising when we think of the many nations that have gone to the making of America. I have been told that there are more Irish in America than in Dublin, more Germans than in Hamburg, more Poles than in Warsaw, more Russians than in Kiev, more Scandinavians than in Oslo and Stockholm, twice as many British as in Manchester, and more negroes than the combined population of Ghana, Congo, Guinea, Liberia and South Wfest Africa. And before very long it was the differences between England and America that struck me most. For example the American word for many things is not the same as the English one. So curtains are "drapes", a holiday is a "vacation", a cinema is "the movies", a cookery book is a "cookbook", a label is a "tag" and a lift an "elevator". Here, your luggage is your "baggage". The pavement is the "sidewalk", petrol is "gasoline" (gas). Biscuits, if sweet, are "cookies", if plain, are "crackers"; and instead of posting a letter you "mail" it. You don't live in a flat but an "apartment". Sweets are "candy", a tin is a "can", the Underground (railway) is the "subway", and the Englishman'sVrottfm and -waistcoat are the American's "pants" and "vest". After an Englishman has 'phoned you, he will ring off, after an American has "called" you, he will "hang up".
The well-mannered Englishman at table holds and keeps his knife in his right hand, his fork in his left, cuts his meat and presses his vegetables on to his fork. The well-mannered American first cuts up all his meat, then places his knife down on the right of his plate, takes his fork in his right hand and with his fork lifts the food to his mouth. He will have coffee half-way through his dinner before the pudding (which he calls "dessert"). The Englishman drinks his coffee after the dinner. And, of course, Americans are coffee-drinkers rather than tea-drink-ers.
(To be continued.)
The Non-Finites (4): The Gerund
The gerund looks exactly like the present participle, i.e., it is formed from a verb and ends in -ing. The difference is that the present participle is a verbal adjective and the gerund is a verbal noun. Here are examples:
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