Контрольная работа 4. LANGUAGES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

Вариант 2

Переведите текст.

TEXT

LANGUAGES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

Among many languages and dialects used in the EU, it has 23 official and working languages: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish. All important documents, such as legislation¹, are translated into every official language. The European Parliament provides translation into all languages for documents and its plenary sessions. Some institutions use only a few languages as internal working languages. Language policy is the responsibility of member states, but EU institutions promote² the learning of other languages.

German is the most widely spoken mother tongue and there are about 18% of native speakers, that is, 88.7 million people, living in the European Union. German is followed by English (13%), Italian (13%) and French (12%). However, nowadays English is the most widely spoken foreign language of over half (51%) the population, while German is spoken by 32% and French by 26% population. Moreover, it has been found that 56% of European citizens are able to speak a language other than their mother tongue. Most official languages of the EU belong to the Indo-European language family, except Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian, and Maltese. Most EU official languages are written in the Latin alphabet except Bulgarian, written in Cyrillic, and Greek, written in the Greek alphabet.

Besides the 23 official languages, there are about 150 regional and minority languages, spoken by up to 50 million people. Of these, only the Spanish regional languages (Catalan/Valencian, Basque and Galician), Scottish Gaelic and Welsh can be used by citizens in communication with the main European institutions. Although EU programmes can support regional and minority languages, the protection of linguistic rights is provided by the individual member states.

Пояснения к тексту

1) legislation – законодательство, законопроект;

2) to promote – способствовать, содействовать.

Ответьте на следующие вопросы к тексту.

1. How many languages used in the EU are considered to be official and working languages?

2. Whose responsibility is language policy?

3. What is the most widely spoken mother tongue in the EU?

4. What is the status of the English language in the EU?

5. What language family do most official languages of the EU belong to?

6. What alphabet are most EU official languages written in?

7. What other languages are there in the EU besides the 23 official languages?

2. Заполните пропуски, используя слова под чертой (слова даны в нужной форме):

1. Everyone in the European Parliament is entitled … in their own native language and to have this … into other languages.

2. The European Parliament … over 4000 interpreters at a cost of almost one billion … .

3. One of the problems is that sometimes translating needs to be done across … languages, due to a lack of … between certain languages (e.g. Greek-Danish, Portuguese-Greek).

4. Besides many regional languages, a broad variety of languages from other parts of the world are spoken by … communities in the member states.

5. Turkish, Russian, Urdu, Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Ukrainian, Punjabi and Balkan … are spoken in many parts of the EU.

6. Migrant languages have no formal … or recognition in the EU or in the EU countries.

Interpreted, immigrant, intermediate, to communicate, employs, interpreters, euros, status, languages.

3. Отметьте утверждения, которые не соответствуют содер­жанию текста.

1.There are 23 member-countries in the European Union and the same number of languages is spoken on its territory.

2.It is strictly banned to speak any other foreign languages except officially recognized languages.

3.The number of people speaking minority languages is not as large as the number of people speaking official languages.

4.Only five regional languages can be used by European Union citizens in dealing with the main European organizations.

5.All the documents don't have to be translated into 23 official languages.

6.Although English is the most popular language it is spoken by less than a half of population in the European Union.

7.Widely spoken official languages of the European Union belong to the same language family.