大学英语四级听力在线练习

大学英语四级听力在线练习

大学英语四级听力在线练习合集

大学英语四级考试,即CET-4,College English Test Band 4的'缩写,是由国家教育部高等教育司主持的全国性英语考试。以下是店铺为大家搜索整理的大学英语四级听力在线练习，希望能给大家带来帮助! 大学英语四级听力在线练习篇1

How Did Thanksgiving Turkey Get its Name?

感恩节“火鸡”是如何得名?

The U.S. Thanksgiving holiday is symbolized by its traditional food, a large bird we call a turkey. But turkey is certainly not from Turkey.

In fact, its English name is based on one big mistake. We could say it is a case of mistaken identity.

Let’s set the record straight.

The word “Turkey” has meant “the land of the Turks” since ancient times. The word “turkey” as it refers to the bird first appeared in the English language in the mid-1500s.

The misunderstanding over the word happened because of two similar-looking kinds of birds.

There is an African bird called the guinea fowl. It has dark feathers with white spots and a patch of brown on the back of its neck. Portuguese traders brought the guinea fowl to Europe through North Africa.

This foreign bird came to Europe through Turkish lands. So, the English thought of the bird as a “Turkish chicken.”

When Europeans came to North America, they saw a bird that looked like the guinea fowl. This bird was native to the North American continent.

Orin Hargraves is a lexicographer, someone who writes

dictionaries. Hargraves explains what happened.

“Some Europeans saw an American turkey, thought that it was the guinea fowl, which at that time was called the ‘turkey cock,’ and so gave it the same name."

Hundreds of years later, we continue to call this North American bird “turkey,” even though it has no connection at all with the country Turkey, or even with Europe.

But English is not the only language with interesting -- and even questionable -- names for this North American bird.

The Turkish, for their part, call turkey “hindi,” the Turkish name for India. The reference to India probably comes from the old, wrong idea that the New World was in Eastern Asia.

The French call it “dinde,” a name that also connects the bird to India. “D’Inde” means “from India” in the French language. “Turkey” has similar names in several other languages.

So, what do they call this North American bird in India? Well, in the Hindi language, “turkey” is “tarki.”

But wait, there’s more. In Portuguese, the same bird is called “Peru,” after the South American nation.

Thanks to our VOA Learning English Facebook friends, we have a few more names for “turkey” to share with you.

The Vietnamese word for the bird is “gà ty” or wes tern chicken. Our Facebook friend Nguyen Duc explains that “local chicken is smaller than western chicken.”

A Facebook friend in Myanmar explained that the Burmese word for “turkey” is “kyat sin.” The name translates to “elephant chicken” in English.

“That animal looks like a big chicken,” Zaw Myo Win explained.