✸✸“HAT’S pants!” says theexasperatedLondoner, confusing Americans. Why would anyone swear by pants? Transatlantic types know the reason: in Britain, pants are undergarments, in America they are mere trousers. Or at least that’s what the New York-London jet-set believes. But in the north-west of England, “pants” are trousers, just as they are in America (and just as they were first elsewhere in England). “Pants” as underpants is thenewcomer.
1) exasperated 英 [ɪgˈzæspəreɪtɪd] adj.愤怒的，恼火的 v.使恼怒，激怒，恶化(exasperate的过去式)
Bertha was exasperated at the delay.
延误让伯莎十分恼怒.
2) newcomer 英 [ˈnju:kʌmə(r)] 美 [ˈnu:kʌmə(r)] n.新手;新来的人;新生事物
The company's latest newcomer is a 4 x 4 estate with a 2.2 litre petrol engine.
公司最近新到了一辆有2.2升汽油发动机的4x4客货两用车
✸✸Jack Grieve, a linguist at Birmingham University, uses Twitter to study regional patterns in English. Those who think Twitter is only good for being rude about others aredead wrong. Millions of people use Twitter for ordinarychitchatandunfilteredthoughts. This may be no great contribution to world literature, but it is a gold mine for dialectologists.
1) dead wrong 大错特错;那你就死定了
I know what you are going to say, but you're dead wrong.
我知道你要说什么，不过你绝对错了。
2) chitchat 英 ['tʃɪttʃæt] 美 [ˈtʃɪtˌtʃæt] n.闲谈，聊天 vi.闲谈
During a lunch break, he and the buyer passed the time with some chitchat.
午饭休息时间，他与顾客谈天闲聊以消磨时间。
3) unfiltered 英 [ʌn'fɪltəd] 美 [ʌn'fɪltəd] adj.未滤过的
I thought matrix data could be sent unfiltered.
我以为矩阵数据可以不经过滤的发送。
✸✸That’s because people on social networks write much as they speak. Dialectologists otherwise have a tough job. To find dialect words or expressions, theytrack downold people in the countryside, sit with them and patiently question them about their childhood, hoping todraw outdistinctive local words and expressions. But it is time-consuming, allowing dialect researchers tointeract withonly a small number of speakers. They arenaggedby the thought that they may not have found truly representative ones, or that they are missing changes a foot Enter big data. People writing on Twitter or Facebook leave an electronic data trail that can be gathered and analysed almost instantly. And in those media they put what they would say in speech into text, in a new mode of communication that John McWhorter of Columbia University has come to describe as “fingered speech”.
1) track down 英 [træk daun] 美 [træk daʊn] 追寻;查获;追捕到，追查出
She had spent years trying to track down her parents
她已经花了好多年时间试图追寻父母的下落。
2) draw out 英 [drɔ: aut] 美 [drɔ aʊt] 拉长;掏出;鼓励;（使）离开
The teacher helped to draw out the meaning of the poem.
教师帮助揭示这首诗的含义。
3) interact with 英 [ˌɪntərˈækt wið] 美 [ˌɪntɚˈækt wɪð] 与…相互作用，与…相互影响;与…相互配合
Atoms within the fluid interact with the minerals that form the grains.
液体中的原子与形成颗粒的矿物质相互作用。
4) nagged 英 [nægd] 美 [nægd] adj.经常遭责怪的;被压制的;感到厌烦的;被激怒的 v.不断地挑剔或批评（某人）( nag的过去式和过去分词 );不断地烦扰或伤害（某人）;无休止地抱怨;不断指责
He could be wrong about her. The feeling nagged at him.
他可能冤枉她了，这种感觉让他备受折磨。
✸✸Fingered speech is perfect for the dialectologist who wants lots of data but is short of time. If people “talk” on Twitter as they do in real life, all you need isaccess tolots of tweets. Not all tweets are public, and not all show the location of the tweeter, but there are enough that they offer billions of bits of usable data.
1) access to 英 [ˈækses tu:] 美 [ˈæksɛs tu] 有权使用
They now have access to the mass markets of Japan and the UK.
他们现在进入了日本和英国的大众市场。
✸✸Mr Grieve can make postcode-by-postcode maps showing dialect features. “Trousers” shows up as astarkwhite on his maps in north-western England, meaning the word is hardly used there. In the southeast “Trousers” is deep red. “Pants”, meaning trousers, is a dusky light blue in London and the south-east, but a dark blue in north Wales and the north-west. (Oddly, people don’t seem to talk about underwear much on Twitter.)
1) stark 英 [stɑ:k] 美 [stɑ:rk] adj.完全的;荒凉的;光秃秃的;僵硬的 adv.完全;一丝不挂，赤裸;明显地;质朴地 n.斯塔克
UK companies face a stark choice if they want to stay competitive
英国公司如果想要保持竞争力就不得不面对严峻的选择。
短语：stark naked 英 [stɑ:k ˈneikid] 美 [stɑrk ˈnekɪd] 一丝不挂的;光屁股;赤条精光
All contestants competed stark naked.
所有参赛者都一丝不挂地参加比赛。
✸✸The same goes for other shibboleths. “Sofa” is near-universal in England, and “couch” dominant in Scotland. Smaller words are naturally harder for dialectologists using traditional methods to find. But with Twitter data, researchers can easily find the rarer “settee” enough times to show that it is popular in south Wales and in bits of the north of England.
✸✸The results are culturally interesting, too. Mr Grieve’s maps for “gosh” in America show this “minced oath” to be popular not only in Mormon Utah, but in a contiguous region of the inland south, from Texas to Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky. Butcontrary towhat one might expect, ithardlyshows upin the deep-Dixie states of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
1） contrary to 英 [ˈkɔntrəri tu:] 美 [ˈkɑnˌtrɛri tu] 悖;和…相反， 违反
Contrary to general expectation, he announced that all four had given their approval.
与大众的期盼相反的是，他宣布那4个人都同意了。
2） show up 英 [ʃəu ʌp] 美 [ʃo ʌp] 显而易见;到场;（使）看得见;羞辱
He wanted to teach her a lesson for showing him up in front of Leonov
她在列昂诺夫面前让他难堪，他要教训她一通。
2）‘：showup 英 ['ʃəʊʌp] 美 ['ʃoʊˌʌp] n.暴露，揭发，（为识别嫌疑犯）排队成一队供识别的Through the introduction of urban wetland in the function of the urbanlandscape reflect showup beauty of Nature 、 Ecological and cultural in aesthetics of Urban wetland.
通过论述城市湿地在城市景观的功能，表现出城市湿地在审美中体现出的自然之美、生态之美和人文之美。
✸✸Things get even more interesting when Mr Grieve stacks his maps—some 9,000 of them—on top of each other to find bigger patterns. And here the mystery of “gosh” is solved: the inland south is heavily white and religious. Many blacks still live in the lowland south, where their ancestors worked as slaves. And black Americans, on the whole, speak (and tweet) differently from white ones, a fact that shows up brightly in Mr Grieve’s work: the south-east is easily the most distinct region on his map. In other words, these are not just dialect regions, but cultural regions. The second most distinctive difference in his maps comes from the rural-urban divide. The coasts and big cities use “bagel” and “avocado”; in rural and inland bits “truck” and “boots” abound.
✸✸That’s a lot of work to confirm stereotypes, but it has the advantage of capturing quickly what pollsters and cultural geographers could onlyspeculateover with census data. Billions of data points also make the work robust. And last, Twitter can capture changes that would take traditional researchers—whether geographers or dialectologists—so much time that they might miss quick-moving developments. Tomorrow’s researchers have a lot tolook forward to.
1） speculate 英 [ˈspekjuleɪt] 美 [ˈspɛkjəˌlet] vt.思索，猜测，推测 vi.推测;投机;思索
The reader can speculate what will happen next.
读者可以推测下一步会发生什么事。
短语:speculate about 英 [ˈspekjuleit əˈbaut] 美 [ˈspɛkjəˌlet əˈbaʊt] 思考关于…
Critics of the project speculate about how many hospitals could be built instead
对该项目持批评态度的人在推测如果改作他用不知可以建多少所医院。
speculate on 英 [ˈspekjuleit ɔn] 美 [ˈspɛkjəˌlet ɑn] v.考虑，推测
It would be unfair to Debby's family to speculate on the reasons for her suicide
猜测黛比自杀的原因对她的家人来说是不公平的。
2) look forward to 英 [luk ˈfɔ:wəd tu:] 美 [lʊk ˈfɔrwəd tu] 企;期望，盼望;瞩望;属望
He was looking forward to working with the new Prime Minister.
他期待着与新首相共事。