ENGLISH HISTORY IN PLACE NAMES.

 

The oldest place names in England are Celtic, like the majority of the place names in Wales and Cornwall. They include river names such as Avon and Ouse, and some names including the word pen, meaning " hill". There is even one of these in a London suburb - Penge. The Roman occupation, during the first four hundred years of our era, left some place names, particularly those ending in -Chester, -cester, or -caster (from Latin castra, " a camp or fort" ). The English word street also comes from the Roman strata.

But the overwhelming majority of English place names were contributed by the Angles and Saxons, who invaded or settled from the fifth century onwards. Very common endings are -ham, -ton, and -wick (or wich) mean­ing " a farm"; -worth or -worthy implies also something like " a farm". The family suffix, like -ov in Russian, was -ing. The town of Reading was originally the small farm of a man called Red, whose name is preserved in the pronunciation, which is, as it were, " Red-ing".

 

 

The ending -bury, -burgh, or -borough usually means " a fort" (Old English burh) but sometimes a " hill" (Old English bearh, like German berg). Names which use hall do not often imply an ancient hall; they are more likely the same as the names in hale or halgh, meaning a corner or a triangular piece of land. Lea, lee, or leigh were originally clearings in a wood, and later any open place. Shaw meant " a wood", hurst meant a small hill, probably wooded. Many of these elements are not found as separate words in Old English, but only as part of a place name. However, some place names are quite easy to under­stand, like Cambridge - the bridge over the river Cam.

 

 

The Scandinavian invaders (9th to 11th centuries) brought some place names of their own: -by and -thorpe for a settlement, -thwaite for a clearing, and -toft for a homestead.

The Normans after their conquest in 1066 contributed very few place names, but the more important places often acquired something of a Norman-French form from being recorded by the new administra­tion, e.g. Chester-le-Street, where Ie is the French word " les" mean­ing " next to"; or Ashby-de-la-Zouch, which added the name of the Norman lord of the manor to the original Ashby.

 

New names since those days are very few indeed, but there have been a few industrial settlements named after the firm which was responsible for their existence, e.g. Stewartby in Bedfordshire. When founding " New Towns" the British authorities have preferred to use the name of an existing settlement however small, e.g. Cumbernauld in Scotland. Peterlee in Durham, however, was named after miners' leader Peter Lee.

TASK:

Complete the table using the text

Historic events of the period.	origin	Typical words/endings and their meaning	Examples of place names
800 BC	Immigration of early Celtic tribes begins	Celtic	PEN- ‘’hill’’	PENGE
55 BC	Julius Caesar first comes to the British Isles	Roman
43 AD	Roman invasion of Britain
406-410	All Roman legions removed from Britain. British cities must defend themselves against Angles, Saxons and Jutes
449 673-735             866-871       1042-1066	Anglo- Saxons begin conquest of Britain The union of 7 Saxon kingdoms takes shape (Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, Kent, Sussex, East Anglia, Essex). Venerable Bede writes ‘’History of the English Church and People’’ Century of Viking raids Danes attempt major invasion by sea Danes settle on land and raid on horseback Canute, King of Denmark, Norway and Hebrides, becomes King of England- reconciles English and Danes, church and state Norman influence increases in England Wlliam, Duke of Normandy, defeats English at Battle of Hastings. Normans conquer England

NOTA BENE: In this sort of " telegraphic English" the articles are often omitted. Ordinarily we say and write, " the Anglo-Saxons", " the English", " the Battle of Hastings", etc. However, if we use the articles in this table, it won't look English.

II. Remake the names of 19 old English towns, using the following fragments:

HAM FORD POOL

CHESTER NOR BIRMING LIVER

CLEVE BURY COL PLY

CAM BRIDGE

MOUTH PORT CASTLE LAND

NEW BRAD BLACK WICH CANTER

OX ‘S NOTTING IPS MAN

 

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ENGLISH COOKING

 

There is no single European cuisine. French, yes; Spanish, yes: German, yes; etc. And within each country there are regional specialities. Similarly, there is no " UK cuisine’’. But is there a distinctive English cuisine? A visitor to England might think not. In London and other big cities - and even in small towns, or in the countryside you may find Chinese restaurants, Indian restaurants, Italian, French, Russian, Greek. Indonesian... Well, you name it and England has got it! With one notable exception. There are very few restaurants that call them­selves " English". Simpsons on the Strand in London is one of the very few restaurants which specialise in and advertise traditional English food.

 

The very expression " English cuisine" sounds a little strange to the English. This may be for historical rea­sons, because of the now extinct " Protestant Ethic" of hard work and a very simple life at home. British peo­ple used to say, with scorn (or perhaps envy? ), that " the French live to eat, and we eat to live". The word " cui­sine" itself sounded foreign (as it is! ) and self-indulgent, as opposed the idea of " good, plain (= simple), sen­sible, English food".

 

But of course there is an English cuisine. Lots of dishes are not-so-good, very plain, not so sensible (overcooked vegetables especially), and decidedly boring. Rice pudding, for example. But there is another, better, side to the coin. There is Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, Lancashire Hot-Pot, and lots of other delicious dishes. That's the good news. The bad news is that, to have a real English meal, yon have to eat it at home with an English family. Not any family, however. In all countries there are good cooks — and the other sort... But even if yon are not lucky enough to have an English meal at home with a good English cook, all is not lost. Yon can try fish and chips at a " Fish & Chip Shop" - probably the first " takeaway" in the world — or you can have delicious, and very cheap, meals in a pub: Ham, Eggs and chips. Shepherd's pie, and so on. The English do not have any expression like " ПРИЯТНОГО аппетита! " so they borrow words from the French and say - as we say to you — " Bon Appetit".

Task:

 

1. If you would like to cook a traditional English meal, look for some recipes and read them in the class.

2. English breakfast on the menu. What is it? What does it contain?

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III. Museums

The Tretyakov Gallery.

 

The Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow is one of the world's largest museums. For many of its visitors, it is the first serious encounter with Russian art and culture, with their powerful moral and aesthetic impact on the viewer. There is hardly a person in Russia who had been in Moscow and failed to make at least one visit to the Tretyakov Gallery, which has long become a truly national museum.

The gallery's collection includes only Russian and Soviet art, from the Middle Ages to Modernity, precisely as it was conceived by its founder, Russian merchant Pavel Tretyakov (1832 - 1898), a great patriot and connoisseur of art, In the late 1850s, he decided to set up a public art museum, the first of its kind in Russia. " Sincerely and passionately loving painting, I have no better desire than to start a public, universally accessible depository of fine arts, which will be of use to many, and delight to everybody, " he wrote. For more than thirty years he pursued his objective unswervingly. When in 1892, he presented his collection to the Moscow community, it included about 2, 000 first-class works by almost all outstanding Russian artists of the 19^th century and, partly, of the 18^th century. It was a real museum of national art, reflecting its history and the modern state in its best samples. This feature of the Tretyakov Gallery became a tradition, carefully preserved today as well.

The Russian public gratefully and enthusiastically responded to Pavel Tretyakov's gift of his collection to the Moscow community and the Russian nation. On this occasion, Moscow saw the first Congress of Russian artists; the Moscow Municipal Council appointed Tretyakov the Gallery's curator for his life, and the Gallery itself was named after its founders - the Tretyakov brothers.

Heading the gallery for another 6 years, until his death, Pavel Tretyakov constantly and indefatigably replenished it, buying new exhibits with subsides from the Moscow Municipal Council and his own money, each time presenting a new picture to the Moscow Gallery.

Initially, Tretyakov's entire collection was exhibited in his mansion in Lavrushinsky Lane, but, by the 1870s it became so large, that Tretyakov undertook the construction of the first halls of the gallery's special separate building. By the early 1890s, the gallery's suite of rooms surrounded the house on all sides, thus forming together with it a large rectangle of spacious inner premises. In 1901 - 04, the previously existing halls were complemented with Tretyakov's reconstructed mansion, and the entire set of buildings was enveloped with its present, highly original facade, designed in pseudo-Russian style by Victor Vasnetsov, Tretyakov's close friend and admirer. ' '

The Russian revolution of 1917 brought about cardinal changes in the character of the Tretyakov collection and arrangement of Gallery activities. On June 3, 1918, Lenin signed a decree by the Council of People's Commissars on the nationalization of the gallery, under which it became state instead of municipal property, thus eliminating the discrepancy between the gallery's formal position as a " municipal depository of art" and " truly national significance that it actually had." " Now this museum was assigned the functions of the nation's enlightenment" and had broad opportunities for mass aesthetic education. Lenin's decree also enshrined the gallery's name for good.

After the revolution, the Tretyakov Gallery's collections grew. Nationalized private collections and separate valuable works of art poured it from abandoned private mansions and the country estates, which often saved them from destruction in the turmoil of the civil war in Russia (1918 - 20).The centralization of museums in the 1920s brought to the Tretyakov Gallery a large number of works from Moscow's smallest museums, for instance, the Rumyantsev Art Gallery, the Tsvetkov Gallery, and the Ostroukhov Museum of Icons and Painting.

Task:

1. Render the text

2. Make the synopsis of the text

3. Answer the questions:

a) Have you ever been to the Tretyakov Gallery?

b) What are your favourite pictures in the collection?

c) Will you tell about the picture you like the best?

2. The National Treasure of Russia

1. The Depository's collection of historical and artistic pieces began to take shape in 1922. It comprised articles of jewelry from the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century and the Russian Crown Jewels, which were previously kept in the Diamond Room of the Winter Palace in St. Peter­sburg. These articles, known as the Russian Diamond Treasury, made up the nucleus of the future collection.

2. The Diamond Treasury is one of the world's major collections of unique precious stones and rare pieces of jewelry. It is one of the " big three" (the other are the Tower of London and the Teheran Markazi Bank): depositories holding exceptional treasures.

3. Intended by Peter I to store Russia's Crown Jewels, the Diamond Room held the tokens of Imperial power, of which the main were the crown, the orb and the sceptre.

4. The political significance and enormous value of the crown jewels, which were the symbol of power, necessitated special custody regulations. The list of officials responsible for their safe-keeping and their duties were specified in Ukasy issues by Peter I in 1719; for example, each of the officials had to secure the treasury doors with its own lock. But in the years that followed the monarchs began to use pieces from the Diamond Room to bestow gifts of various kinds, including gifts to high-placed persons abroad; some of the articles were redesigned according to current fashions and some were sold.

5. After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 the stock of the Di­amond Room was taken to Moscow along with some of the other treasures so as to forestall the possible threat Petrograd. From 1914 to 1920 valuab­les from the palaces and country estates of the Russian Imperial family were also brought to Moscow. A large part of these was installed in the Armoury Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin.

6. But in 1927 and 1932, in keeping with the rulings of the USSR Council of People's Commissars and the Board of the State Bank of the USSR, some of the treasures were sold abroad.

7. Along with the famous pieces crafted in the eighteenth and ninete­enth centuries, this display includes unique selections of nuggets, magnifi­cent specimens of uncut diamonds from Yakutia and gemstones from the Urals, East Siberia and other sites, which the Depository received from the 1930s to the 1990s. There is also a new line: jewelry crafted in our own time; many of the pieces, specially designed for the display by masters from the Depository's own workshop, the pieces are remarkable for their technical excellence.

8. In the 1980s and the following decade a full-fledged collection of art objects began to take shape on the basis of the Depository's stock. It in­cludes exhibits by Russian and foreign jewellers, gold and silver tableware, and decorative appointments from the mid-eighteenth century to the 1980s.

 

TASK:

 

I. Answer the questions:

1. When did the Depository’s collection begin to take shape?

2. Where were articles known as the Russian Diamond Treasury, previously kept?

3. When was the stock of the Diamond Room taken to Moscow?

4. Were any of the treasures sold abroad?

5. What does the today Collection include?

 

II. Render the text.

 

Pop Art

International movement in painting, sculpture and printmaking. The term originated in the mid-1950s at the ICA, London, in the discussions held by the Independent group concerning the artefacts of popular culture. This small group included the artists Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi as well as architects and critics. Lawrence Alloway (1926–1990), the critic who first used the term in print in 1958, conceived of Pop art as the lower end of a popular-art to fine-art continuum, encompassing such forms as advertising, science-fiction illustration and automobile styling. Hamilton defined Pop in 1957 as: ‘Popular (designed for a mass audience); Transient (short term solution); Expendable (easily forgotten); Low Cost; Mass Produced; Young (aimed at Youth); Witty; Sexy; Gimmicky; Glamorous; and Big Business’. Hamilton set out, in paintings such as Јhe (1958–61; London, Tate), to explore the hidden connotations of imagery taken directly from advertising and popular culture, making reference in the same work to pin-ups and domestic appliances as a means of commenting on the covert eroticism of much advertising presentation.

The most cohesive group of British Pop artists, and those to whom the label was first consistently applied, emerged at the Royal College of Art between 1959 and 1962. It included the American-born R. B. Kitaj as well as younger students such as David Hockney, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips, Derek Boshier and Patrick Caulfield. Although Kitaj and Hockney in particular were quick to shun the Pop label, they all shared a detached and ironic attitude towards style and imagery, regarding both as elements that could be appropriated from other sources and quoted at will. Other British artists associated with Pop art later in the 1960s included Clive Barker (b 1940), Anthony Donaldson (b 1939), Gerald Laing (b 1936), Nicholas Monro (b 1936), Colin Self (b 1941) and the American-born Jann Haworth (b 1942).

American Pop art emerged suddenly in the early 1960s and was in general characterized by a stark and emblematic presentation that contrasted with the narrative and analytical tendencies of its British counterpart. At its most rigorous, American Pop art insisted on a direct relationship between its use of the imagery of mass production and its adoption of modern technological procedures. Whereas British Pop art often celebrated or satirized consumer culture, American Pop artists tended to have a more ambiguous attitude towards their subject-matter, nowhere more so than in the mixture of glamour and pathos that characterized Andy Warhol’s silkscreened icons of Hollywood film stars, as in The Marilyn Diptych (1962; London, Tate).

Compared to the disparate nature of British Pop art, from the early 1960s American Pop art appeared to be a unified movement. Its shared formal characteristics included aggressively contemporary imagery, anonymity of surface, strong, flatly applied colours and a stylistic unity often associated with centralized compositions. Each of the American artists was quick to establish his or her identity, often with the ironic suggestion that the art was like any consumer product or brand name to be marketed. Foremost among them were Warhol’s testaments to machine-line production and to capitalism, such as 80 Two-dollar bills (1962; Cologne, Mus. Ludwig), and Roy Lichtenstein’s formalized enlargements of the frames of comic strips, often violent or melodramatic, for example Drowning Girl (1963; New York, MOMA; for further illustration see Lichtenstein, roy; see also Still-life). Oldenburg produced sculptural paraphrases of ordinary objects, often on a huge scale, as in Floor-burger (Giant Hamburger) (1962; Toronto, A.G. Ont.), while James Rosenquist favoured dream-like combinations of grossly enlarged familiar images, which he painted in the manner of billboard advertisements, such as I Love you with my Ford (1962; Stockholm, Mod. Mus.). Tom Wesselmann specialized in provocatively posed female nudes and in domestic still-lifes of consumer products, for example Still-life #30 (1963; New York, MOMA).

TASK:

I. Answer the questions:

1. When did the term Pop Art originate?

2. What does it mean?

3. How did Hamilton define Pop?

4. When did the most cohesive group of Britain Pop artists emerge? Name the artists.

5. When did American Pop art emerge?

6. What contrast was between American and British arts?

7. Could you name some American Pop art artists and tell about their works?

 

IV. Music

 

Music in Britain.

The people living in the British Isles are very fond of music, and it is quite natural that concerts of the leading symphony orchestras, numerous folk groups and pop music are very popular.

The Promenade concerts are probably the most famous. They were first held in 1840 in the Queen's Hall and were directed by Sir Henry Wood. They still continue today in the Royal Albert Hall. They take place every night for about three months in the summer, and the programmes include new and contemporary works, as well as classics. Among them are symphonies and other pieces of music composed by Benjamin Britten, the famous English musician.

Folk music is still very much alive. There are many folk groups. Their harmony singing and good humour win them friends everywhere.

Rock and pop music are extremely popular, especially among younger people. In the 60s and 70s groups such as the Booties, the Rolling Stones, the Who became very popular and successful.

The Beatles, with their new and exciting style of singing and their wonderful sense of humour, became the most successful pop group the world has ever known. Many of the famous songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney are still popular.

British groups often set new trends in music. New stars and styles continue to appear. One of the most popular contemporary musicians and composers is Andrew Lloyd Webber. The musicals and rock operas by A. L. Webber have been a great success both in Britain and overseas.

A famous English composer of the 19th century was Arthur Sullivan. Together with William Gilbert, the writer of the texts, he created fourteen operettas, of which eleven are regularly performed today.

Task:

I. Answer the questions:

1. What are the Promenade concerts?

2. Do the British like folk music?

3. What rock groups were extremely popular in the 60s and 70s?

4. What famous British musicians and composers do you know?

III. Retell the text in 10-15 sentences.

 

LOUIS ARMSTRONG

The black man with the wonderful smile Finished singing mopped his forehead with a huge white handkerchief, raised the gleaming trumpet to his lips and played. The music was jazz. It was exciting and happy music, and soon everyone was smiling and feeling good, clapping and swaying to the rhythm. He finished playing and the crowd roared and applauded.

That was Louis Armstrong, one of the most famous and best-loved jazz musicians of all the time. Armstrong did a great deal to popularize this type of music. Jazz was created by black Americans from African drumbeats, work songs, blues, spirituals, and especially the lively marchingband tunes so popular right after the Civil War.

The cradle city of jazz was New Orleans. Louis Armstrong was born there on July 4, 1900. His family was very poor. He loved music from a very early age and would follow street bands at parades and even funerals just to hear the music.

On New Year's Eve, when he was twelve, he and his friends were having fun with shooting a small gun. Louis had brought his own gun and shot it off. It made such a big noise that it scared everybody and suddenly Louis found himself in the arms of a tall policeman. He was sent to the colored Waifs' Home, a place for black children who go into trouble. One of the teachers that Louis liked a lot was a music teacher named Mr. Davis, who had formed a band in the school. Louis behaved himself very well and soon was asked: to join the band. Mr. Davis gave him bugle and comet lessons, and the boy had never been happier. He learned quickly and was soon made the leader. Louis finally left the Home after a year and a half and went to live with his father. Because his family was so poor, he had to go right out and earn some money, doing odd jobs like helping a junkman and shovelling coal. He managed to save enough money to buy a battered old cornet. He began to practice and listen to music every chance he got. Louis got his first real job playing when he was sixteen, working for whatever money the customers threw him.

He also began to play with Fate Marble on the riverboats that went up and down the Mississippi. With the Marble band he first learned how to read music well and also got the chance to play jazz for many who had never heard it before. Louis was becoming known as the best player around New Orleans.

In 1924 he got his own band, and some of the best music he ever played was recorded during this period. Louis did all sorts of new musical things. He began travelling all over with his band. Music was his whole life.

On his seventieth birthday a great tribute was paid to Louis. A number of Jazz dubs had birthday celebrations. Many famous singers and musicians came and performed in his honour. Everyone acknowledged that he was truly the " King of Jazz".

Louis Armstrong died one year later, but the world will never forget the musician who did so much to make people happy and bring the people of the world closer together.

 

Task:

1. Render the text.

2. Tell about Armstrong’s childhood and his family.

3. Answer the questions:

a) Who was jazz created by?

b) What city was the cradle city of jazz?

c) Why do people call Armstrong the “King of Jazz’’?

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