Exploring London and the British Isles: History, Culture, and Language - Prof. Sáez, Apuntes de Idioma Inglés

¡Descarga Exploring London and the British Isles: History, Culture, and Language - Prof. Sáez y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity! CULTURA Y SOCIEDADES Guadalupe Cubo. 1º Grado Estudios Ingleses 2013/2014Tema 1. Introduction: approaching British, American and Irish cultures. 1. BRITISH CLICHÉS. • “It rains all the time.” • “London is a multicultural city.” More than 300 languages are spoken in London! Moreover, 300,000 French people live here. About 27% of inhabitants are born outside England. In every district, there are many foreign restaurants. It is very easy to eat Chinese, Turkish, Japanese, Jamaican, Indian, or even Bulgarian and Polish food… Chinatown is a symbol of this cultural diversity. This district aims to maintain Chinese culture and traditions. All the shop signs are both in English and Chinese. At the entrance of Chinatown, you can even find a big gate that comes from Shanghai. • St Paul’s Cathedral is one of the strongest symbols of London. This cathedral enables us to identify the city, such as the Eiffel Tower symbolizes Paris. It is an iconic building which represents modern London. However, it seems to be a paradox that such an old building makes us think of modernity. Indeed, St Paul’s Cathedral, as we know it nowadays, was built by the architect Christopher Wren between 1675 and 1710. The former cathedral was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. This way, the new cathedral represents the resurrection of London and the beginning of the construction of modern London. This building is also the height of Wren’s talent. St Paul’s Cathedral is in the middle of the City of London that is the business district. There is an interesting sharp contrast between the white front of the cathedral and surrounding modern buildings. The cathedral seems to be a pure and peaceful place, in the middle of the City that is in perpetual motion. • The red telephone box, a telephone kiosk for a public telephone designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, is a familiar sight on the streets of the United Kingdom, Malta, Bermuda and Gibraltar. Despite a reduction in their numbers in recent years, the traditional British red telephone box can still be seen in many places throughout the UK, and in current or former British colonies around the world. The colour red was chosen to make them easy to spot. • Tower Bridge (built 1886–1894) is a combined bascule and suspension bridge in London which crosses the River Thames. It is close to the Tower of London, from which it takes its name, and has become an iconic symbol of London. The bridge consists of two towers tied together at the upper level by means of two horizontal walkways, designed to withstand the horizontal forces exerted by the suspended sections of the bridge on the landward sides of the towers. The vertical component of the forces in the suspended sections and the vertical reactions of the two walkways are carried by the two robust towers. The bascule pivots and operating machinery are housed in the base of each tower. The bridge's present colour scheme dates from 1977, when it was painted red, white and blue for Queen Elizabeth II's silver jubilee. Originally it was painted a mid-greenish-blue colour. • The London Underground (also known as the Underground or the Tube) is a public rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and parts of the counties of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex. The system serves 270 stations and has 402 kilometres (250 mi) of track, 55 per cent of which is actually above ground. The network incorporates the world's first underground railway, the Metropolitan Railway which opened in 1863 and now forms part of the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines, and also the first line to operate underground electric traction trains, the City & South London Railway in 1890, now part of the Northern line. The network has expanded to consist of 11 lines and in 2011/12 it carried over 1 billion passengers. Guadalupe Cubo • Big Ben is the nickname for the great bell of the clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, and often extended to refer to the clock and the clock tower. The tower is now officially called the Elizabeth Tower, after being renamed in 2012 (from "Clock Tower") to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II. The tower holds the largest four-faced chiming clock in the world and is the third-tallest free- standing clock tower. The tower was completed in 1858 and had its 150th anniversary on 31 May 2009, during which celebratory events took place. The tower has become one of the most prominent symbols of both London and England and is often in the establishing shot of films set in the city. • Buckingham Palace is the official London residence and principal workplace of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality. It has been a focus for the British people at times of national rejoicing and crisis. • Sherlock Holmes. • Breakfast. 2. IRISH CLICHÉS. • Guinness beer is a popular Irish dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803) at St. James's Gate, Dublin. Guinness is one of the most successful beer brands worldwide. • Leprechaun is a type of fairy in Irish folklore, usually taking the form of an old man, clad in a red or green coat, who enjoys partaking in mischief. Like other fairy creatures, leprechauns have been linked to the Tuatha Dé Danann of Irish mythology. The Leprechauns spend all their time busily making shoes, and store away all their coins in a hidden pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If ever captured by a human, the Leprechaun has the magical power to grant three wishes in exchange for their release. Popular depiction shows the Leprechaun as being no taller than a small child, with a beard and hat, although they may originally have been perceived as the tallest of the mound-dwellers (the Tuatha Dé Danann). • Shamrock refers to the young sprigs of clover or trefoil. It is known as a symbol of Ireland, with St. Patrick having used it as a metaphor for the Christian Trinity, according to legend. The name shamrock is derived from Irish seamróg, which is the diminutive version of the Irish word for clover (seamair) meaning simply "little clover" or "young clover". 3. AMERICAN CLICHÉS • Hollywood is a district in Los Angeles, California, famous for its commercial area and entertainment industry, and a name used to represent the motion picture industry of the United States. It is also a highly diverse, densely populated, mostly immigrant, low-income residential neighbourhood. • Western is a genre of various arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. • Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city known primarily for gambling, shopping, fine dining, and nightlife and is the leading financial and cultural centre for Southern Nevada. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous for its consolidated casino–hotels and associated entertainment. A growing retirement and family city, Las Vegas is the 31st-most populous city in the United States, with a population at the 2010 census of 583,756. The 2010 population of the Las Vegas metropolitan area was 1,951,269. Today, Las Vegas is one of the top tourist destinations in the world • Fast food is the term given to food that can be prepared and served very quickly, first popularized in the 1950s in the United States. Guadalupe Cubo Mexico. The state of Alaska is the north-western part of North America, west of Canada and east of Russia, which is across the Bering Strait in Asia, and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-North Pacific. The country also has five populated and nine unpopulated territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean. 9. NORTH AMERICA OR THE UNITED STATES North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America have different territories: • Bermuda (UK) • Canada • Greenland (Denmark) • Mexico • Saint Pierre and Miquelon • The United States. 10. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. United Kingdom, United States and Ireland have in common the English language. English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now the most widely used language in the world. It is spoken as a first language by the majority populations of several sovereign states, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and a number of Caribbean nations. It is the third-most-common native language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. It is widely learned as a second language and is an official language of the European Union, many Commonwealth countries and the United Nations, as well as in many world organisations. • Expansion. English was expanded from England to different places of America, Africa and Asia. The history of English is conventionally, if perhaps too neatly, divided into three periods usually called Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, and Modern English. The earliest period begins with the migration of certain Germanic tribes from the continent to Britain in the fifth century A.D., though no records of their language survive from before the seventh century, and it continues until the end of the eleventh century or a bit later. By that time Latin, Old Norse (the language of the Viking invaders), and especially the Anglo-Norman French of the dominant class after the Norman Conquest in 1066 had begun to have a Guadalupe Cubo substantial impact on the lexicon, and the well-developed inflectional system that typifies the grammar of Old English had begun to break down. • Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southern and eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-11th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon. It is a West Germanic language closely related to Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Old English had a grammar similar in many ways to Classical Latin. In most respects, including its grammar, it was much closer to modern German and Icelandic than to modern English. • Middle English describes dialects of English during the three centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century. Middle English developed out of Late Old English in Norman England (1066–1154) and was spoken throughout the Plantagenet era (1154–1485). The Middle English period ended at about 1470. By that time the variant of the Northumbrian dialect (prevalent in Northern England) spoken in southeast Scotland was developing into the Scots language. Unlike Old English written Middle English displays a wide variety of scribal (and presumably dialectal) forms. This diversity suggests the gradual end of the role of Wessex as a focal point and trend-setter for writers and scribes, the emergence of more distinct local scribal styles and written dialects, and a general pattern of transition of activity over the centuries that followed, as Northumbria, East Anglia, and London successively emerged as major centres of English literature, each with their own particular interests. Middle English literature of the 12th and 13th centuries is comparatively rare, as written communication was usually in Anglo-Norman (French) or in Medieval Latin. Middle English became much more important as a literary language during the 14th century, with poets such as Chaucer and Langland. • Modern English. With some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 15th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern English, or more specifically, are referred to as using Early Modern English or Elizabethan English. English was adopted in regions around the world, such as North America, the Indian subcontinent, Africa, Australia and New Zealand through colonisation by the British Empire. Modern English has a large number of dialects spoken in diverse countries throughout the world. • Dev elop men t. Guadalupe Cubo