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炉边故事:惊心动魄地冲向死亡

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只要我有一点时间,我就喜欢拿起一本书为大家朗读一些片段。也希望喜欢英音的伙伴可以和我一起真正地将原著朗读出来,而不是仅仅看看而已。

今天,我来和大家一起开始朗读「巨人的陨落」,这是我曾经在「吴聊好书」中介绍过的。用这本原著,我来示范给大家英音发音中的各种技巧。

找个安静的角落,放松下来,听我慢慢读来,随后,和我一起将它读出来。


Brainy is the New Sexy!

用新鲜书单,3分钟升级英语力、性感力!


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船长

01

导读开始


船长英音朗读工具:原文划线处都可以处理成重音。根据这个提示,你就能将这篇高难度的练习材料地道地用英音表达出来。

CHAPTER SEVEN


B Company marched off towards the battlefield. They went across the fields, leaving the roads clear for wheeled transport. As they left they started to sing "Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah." Their voices lingered in the night air after they disappeared into the darkness.


An open truck was waiting to take the officers to the front line. Fitz sat next to Lieutenant Roland Morgan, son of the Aberowen colliery manager.


Fitz could not help wondering if the brigadier had gone too far.  Seven days of artillery bombardment had not obliterated the enemy's defenses: the Germans were still shooting back. Fitz had actually said the same thing in a report, whereupon Colonel Hervey had asked him if he was scared.


Fitz was worried. When the general staff closed their eyes to bad news, men died.


As if to prove his point, a shell exploded in the road behind. Fitz looked back and saw parts of a lorry flying through the air. A car following it swerved into a ditch, and in its turn was hit by anothertruck.


More shells fell in the fields to the left and right. The Germans were targeting approaches to the front line, rather than the line itself. With deadly efficiency they were killing men who had not yet even reached the trenches. Fitz fought down a feeling of panic, but his fear remained.


He reached the marshaling area when several thousand men were leaning on their rifles and talking in low voices. The Aberowen Pals arrived intact, to his relief, and formed up. Fitz led them the last few hundred yards to the frontline assembly trench.


There was water in the trench, and singing and smoking were forbidden. Some of the men were praying. A tall soldier took out his pay book and began to fill out the "Last Will and Testament" page in the narrow beam of Sergeant Elijah Jones's flashlight. Fitz recognized him as Morrison, a former footman at Ty Gwyn.


Dawn came early--midsummer was only a few days past. The light strengthened, then the sun appeared. The steel helmets of the Aberowen Pals shone, and their bayonets flashed.


A mammoth British artillery barrage began with the light. Perhaps this last effort would finally destroy the German positions. That must be what General Haig was praying for.


The Aberowen Pals were not in the first wave, but Fitz went forward to look at the battlefield. He pushed through the crowds of waiting men to the frontline trench, where he stood on the fire step and looked through a peephole in the sandbagged parapet.


A morning mist was dispersing, chased by the rising sun. The blue sky was blotched by the dark smoke of exploding shells. It was going to be, Fitz saw, a beautiful summer day.


Zero hour was seven thirty. At seven twenty the British guns fell silent.


"No!" Fitz said aloud. "Not yet--this is too soon!" No one was listening, of course. But he was aghast. This would tell the Germans that an attack was imminent. The British had given the enemy a clear ten minutes to prepare!


Sergeants barked commands, and the men around Fitz climbed the scaling ladders and scrambled over the parapet. To Fitz's surprise the sergeants barked: "Dressing by numbers, right dress--one!" The men began to dress off as if on the parade ground, carefully adjusting the distances between them until they were ranged as perfectly as skittles in a bowling alley. To Fitz's mind this was madness.


At seven thirty a whistle blew, all the signalers dropped their flags, and the first line moved forward.


They did not sprint, being weighed down by their equipment: extra ammunition, a waterproof sheet, food and water, and two Mills bombs per man, hand grenades weighing almost two pounds each. They moved at a jog, splashing through the shell holes, and passed through the gaps in the British wire. As instructed, they reformed into lines and went on, shoulder-to-shoulder, across no-man’s-land.


When they were halfway, the German machine guns opened up.


Fitz saw men begin to fall. One went down, then a dozen, then twenty, then more. "Oh, my God," Fitz said as they fell, fifty of them, a hundred more. Before they reached the German wire, most of them had fallen. Another whistle blew, and the second line advanced.



船长英音朗读工具:原文划线处都可以处理成重音。根据这个提示,你就能将这篇高难度的练习材料地道地用英音表达出来。


colliery /ˈkɒl.jə.ri/ : n. 煤矿

obliterate /əˈbɪt.ər.eɪt/: vt. 除去 擦掉

swerve /swɜːv/:vt 使突然转向

barrage /ˈbær.ɑːdʒ/:n. 弹幕

parapet /ˈpær.ə.pet/:n. 护墙

skittle /ˈskɪt.əl/ n. 九柱游戏中的柱子


音标来源/ Longman Pronunciation Dictionary & Cambridge English Pronunciation Dictionary


02

中文概要

故事进展到了英国当年排名前十的年轻富翁Fitz伯爵参军来到一站法国战线。在圣诞节过后,英德惨绝人寰的战壕战正式开始了。这段描述的是他被裹挟到冲锋队伍中,眼看着整齐地拍成保龄球球柱般的士兵面对德军的机关枪,纷纷中弹当场阵亡。因为双方科技军事力量的不平衡,绞肉机的一幕再次在书中被描绘了出来。

     

(堑壕战真实场景)


03

No-man's-land

      直接翻译成为无人区。在一战中,因为交火双方采用的堑壕战方式,使得步步为营的战略变成了两方长久僵持的消耗战。不仅仅消耗的是时间、物资、更多的是人命。由于双方挖掘了复杂的堑壕,因此在冲锋前往往一方要对对方的阵地狂轰滥炸。这些堑壕在防守对方冲锋时有用,可是对于头顶上落下来的炸弹是没有太多防御力的。一颗炮弹砸落到堑壕里,躲在里面的人全都血肉横飞。经过狂轰滥炸,两套堑壕系统当中的交战区寸草不生,表层土壤都被炮弹的金属碎片和高温碾成粉末般,因此得名无人区。而接下来的冲锋则是更可怕的。一战中,一场冲锋两小时内战死六万人,且毫无正义可言。这场大战,的确是人类的疯狂,


在英语中no-man's-land有了这样的背景,现在也可以用于描述处于焦灼、需待解决的状态或者局面。


神奇女侠能够平安穿越No-man's-land(无人区)。那是因为她不是man, 而是woman。

04

往期经典回顾

     

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