The Queen’s English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts has found. Researchers have studied each of her messages to the Commonwealth countries since 1952 to find out the change in her pronunciation from the noble Upper Received to the Standard Received.

Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany’s University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent changes recorded over the past half century would take place within one person. “As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records,” he said.

He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels(元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years. “Her accent sounds slightly less noble than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very small and slow changes that we don’t notice from year to year.”

“We may be able to relate it to changes in the social classes,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British  newspaper. “In 1952 she would have been heard saying ‘thet men in the bleck het’. Now it would be ‘that man in the black hat’. Similarly, she would have spoken of ‘the citay’ and’dutay’, rather than ‘citee’ and ‘dutee’, and ‘hame’ rather than ‘home’. In the 1950s she would have been ‘lorst’, but by the 1970s ‘lost’.”

The Queen’s broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth countries. Each Christmas, the 10-minute broadcast is put on TV at 3 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch(传统火鸡午餐).

The results were published(发表) in the Journal of Phonetics.

1.The Queen’s broadcasts were chosen for the study mainly because         .

A. she has been Queen for many years

B. she has a less upper-class accent now

C. her speeches have been recorded for 50 years

D. her speeches are familiar to many people

2.Which of the following is an example of a less noble accent in English?

A. “Dutay”.                  B.  “Hame”.                C. “Citee”. D. “Lorst”.

3.We may infer from the text that the Journal of Phonetics is a magazine on         .

A. Christmas customs                                                        B. speech sounds

C.TV broadcasting                                                   D. personal messages

4.What is the text mainly about?

A. The changes in a person’s accent.

B. The Queen’s Christmas speeches on TV.

C. The relationship between accents and social classes.

D. The recent development of the English language.

The iPhone, the iPad: each of Apple’s products sounds cool and has become a fad(一时的风尚). Apple has cleverly taken advantage of the power of the letter “i” —and many other brands are following suit. The BBC’s iPlayer —which allows Web users to watch TV programs on the Internet —adopted the title in 2008. A lovely bear —popular in the US and UK—that plays music and video is called “iTeddy”.
A slimmed-down version of London’s Independent newspaper was launched last week under the name “i”.
In general, single-letter prefixes(前缀) have been popular since the 1990s, when terms such as e-mail and e-commerce first came to use..
Most “i” products are targeted at young people and considering the major readers of Independent’s “i”, it’s no surprise that they’ve selected this fashionable name.
But it’s hard to see what’s so special about the letter “i”. Why not use “a”, “b”, or “c” instead? According to Tony Thorne, head of the Language Center at King’s College. London, “i” works because its meaning has become ambiguous. When Apple uses “i”, no one knows whether it means Internet, information, individual or interactive, Thorne told BBC Magazines.” Even when Apple created the iPod, it seems it didn’t have one clear definition,” he says.
“However, thanks to Apple, the term is now associated with portability(轻便),” adds Thorne.
Clearly the letter “i” also agrees with the idea that the Western World is centered on the individual. Each person believes they have their own needs, and we love personalized products for this reason.
Along with “Google” and “blog”, readers of BBC Magazines voted “i” as one of the top 20 words that have come to define the last decade.
But as history shows, people grow tired of fads. From the 1900s to 1990s, products with “2000” in their names became fashionable as the year was associated with all things advanced and modern. However, as we entered the new century, the trend inevitably disappeared.
(   ) 【小题1】. People use iPlayer to        .

A．“i” products are often of a high quality

B．the popularity of “i” products may not last long

C．the letter “b” replaces letter “i” to name the products

D．iTeddy is a live bear

根据句意和首字母或汉语提示，将单词的正确形式写在题中相应的横线上。
【小题1】There’s nothing in this box. Look, it’s e______________.
【小题2】If you are in danger, remember to dial (拨) the telephone n ______________ 110 at once.
【小题3】— Do you know what the p ______________ of China is now?
— It’s over 1.3 billion.
【小题4】The ice is too t ______________. It’s very dangerous to skate on it.
【小题5】It’s good for our health to g ______________ up early in the morning.
【小题6】Last summer holiday, my teacher ______________ (介绍) Joy to me, and now we are close friends.
【小题7】Jack is so smart that he can answer these questions ______________ (容易地) .
【小题8】People will use robots to do the ______________ (家务) in the future.
【小题9】Little Tom did quite well in the English exam. He hardly made any ______________ （错误） .
【小题10】This is our new teaching building. It was  ______________（建造）last year.