2008年高考英语全国卷2-阅读理解B

The Queen's English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen's Christmas broadcasts had 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.
一项关于英国女王圣诞广播的科学研究发现，现在女王的英语听起来不像上流社会了。研究人员研究了自1952年以来她给英联邦国家的每一次演讲，以了解她的发音从贵族口音到标准口音的变化。

Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany's University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent changers 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.
德国慕尼黑大学的教授Jonathan Harrington想知道过去半个世纪以来是否还有其他人记录过口音的变化。“据我所知，没有其他人有这种广播记录”，他说。

He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels 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."
他说这种元音的贵族发音方式在过去几年里，已经和贵族口音一样逐渐失去了往日高高在上的地位。“她的口音听起来没有50年前高贵，但这些变化非常非常小，而且缓慢，这么多年都没有注意到。”

"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 hears saying 'thet men in the bleck het'. Now it would be 'that man in the black hat'. And 'hame' rather than 'home'. In the 1950s she would have been 'lorst', but by the 1970s 'lost'."
他对英国《每日电讯报》说：“我们也许能把它与社会阶层的变化联系起来。1952年，人们会听到她说‘thet men in the bleck het（戴着黑帽子的男人）’，现在是‘that man in the black hat’，以及‘hame’而不是‘home’。50年代，她会说‘lorst’，但到了70年代，她会说‘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.
女王广播是对英联邦国家的个人演讲。每年圣诞节，10分钟的广播会在英国下午3点在电视上播出，这时候许多家庭刚刚结束传统的火鸡午餐。

The results were published in the Journal of Phonetics.
研究结果已发表在《语音学杂志》上。