Eats, Shoots & Leaves

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

" Why? " asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

" I'm a panda, " he says, at the door. " Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds the explana­tion:

" Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Can you explain why the panda took a gun and fired two shots in the air?

Do you understand what makes the story funny? If you don't, you won't even smile after reading it. Well, look at the last sentence carefully. There is a comma in it, isn't there? The comma makes the word shoots a verb, meaning «стреляет» in Russian. Then the Russian translation of leaves would be «ухо­дит». You certainly know the Russian for leaves as a noun, don't you? It's «ли­стья». But you may not know the meaning of shoots as a noun. It's a rare word and you are unlikely to find it in a small dictionary. So look it up in a big one. Shoots as a noun in the plural means «ростки», «побеги», «веточки». Then the story will become funny, won't it?

8.

1. Why does every pilot and ship's captain have to speak English?

2. What language do many European multi-national companies use as a
common language?

3. What has become an integral part of modern life?

4. How long has English been the language of rock and pop music?

12.

A.

1. Children under 14 must be accompanied by an adult.

2. He is very interested in modern art. He's got a lot of books on art at
home.

3. The heroine of the book was forced to choose between happiness and
duty.

4. Do you agree that wood has advantages over plastic?

5. Children learn at different rate.

6. We can rely on him. He always keeps his promise.

7. That happened on my first day at school.

8. He said that on hearing that, he felt free of any obligations.

B.

If you have decided, for some reason or another, to learn a foreign lan­guage, you must first of all have a very clear idea of what you need it for. If it is a matter of a two-week tourist trip, then it isn't worth spending your time and effort trying to learn grammar and looking up the words you want to know in the dictionary. All you need is a reliable phrase-book (Italian-Russian, French-Russian, etc.), depending on the country you are going to visit. Choose the situ­ations you are most likely to find yourself in, and learn the necessary phrases, practising out loud, of course. Ideally, your phrase-book should be accompa­nied by a disc on which these phrases are recorded by a native speaker of the language you are interested in. The disc will help you to avoid mispronunciation and not to be baffled by the spelling. Believe it or not, you are most unlikely to forget the phrases you have learnt in this way. They will remain in your long-term memory for a long time.

A much more difficult thing is learning to understand the people you might want to talk to. In all probability, you won't be able to learn that before your tour­ist trip.

An absolutely different method is unavoidable if you need a foreign lan­guage for your profession. In this case you should be prepared for a course that will, probably, take not less than a year, or even longer. A modern course of this type usually comprises course books, workbooks and is accompanied by a lot of taped material. It would be most misleading to assert that it will be easy, but it's very interesting, indeed, and is, no doubt, worth trying.

13.

A.

1. That country's economy has been expanding very rapidly in the last few
years.

2. The meeting was followed by some entertainment.

3. The numerical dominance of those, who actually took part in the voting,
gave an advantage to the ruling party over the opposition.

4. Proverbs are not often used in ordinary speech or writing.

5. The Director General was the first to emerge from his limousine.

B.

1. The numerical dominance of those, who actually took part in the voting,
gave an advantage to the ruling party over the opposition.

2. The Director General was the first to emerge from his limousine.

3. The meeting was followed by some entertainment.

Keys

4. That country's economy has been expanding very rapidly in the last few
years.

5. Proverbs are not often used in ordinary speech or writing.

14.

2.

...And still I think that English is most likely to preserve its status of an in­ternational language for the next hundred years, or so. Now I would like to say a few words about one of its features which hasn't been mentioned yet (so far). It is laconic. For one thing (first/first of all) there are lots of short words in it. There are some long ones, of course, such as 'consistency', 'legislation', 'financial', 'unequal', 'misinterpretation' and many others, but in ordinary situations a nu­merical dominance of short words over long ones is absolutely clear. This is a great advantage in everyday conversations when you must (have to) say a lot, clearly and exactly at that, but you don't have much time. For example, in con­versations between the pilots of two planes in the air, or the captains of two ships at sea. That is why English has become an agreed language of communication for most international airlines and emergency services.

With all its unpleasant booby traps, English syntax allows you to do with one or two words, where in other languages you will need several (words), per­haps even a whole sentence.

Try to translate 'fitness' or 'PR officer' into Russian, and you will get some­thing like «хорошая физическая форма» or «сотрудник, отвечающий за свя­зи с общественностью». What is the translation of 'talk-show'? A way out has already been found - the word has simply been borrowed.

If you compare an English book (a really good one, of course) with its Rus­sian translation (a really good one, too), you will see that the latter is much thick­er. The book is thicker! Why? Just think about it. It's interesting.

All this does not mean, however, that the English language is superior to all the others, or that its literature is unequalled anywhere else in the world. And still we have to admit that for better or worse, English has become the most global language of today. Will it preserve this status in the future? Predictions (fore­casts) are difficult to make!