听播客学英语 209 烟花

 　　This year, the end of October has been really noisy. The reason? Fireworks!

　　Now, the traditional time for fireworks in England is on November 5th – Guy Fawkes night. I shall tell you more about Guy Fawkes in another podcast. But in recent years, many English people – particularly children, of course – have adopted the American custom of celebrating Halloween, which is the 31st October. So we have fireworks at Halloween as well as on Guy Fawkes night. And last week was Eid, the great Muslim festival at the end of Ramadam, so our Muslim neighbours had fireworks in their garden. And a few days before that was Diwali, the Hindu and Sikh festival of light – and that needed fireworks too. So for about three weeks here in Birmingham, every evening is filled with the whoosh¹ of rockets and the bangs, crackles, fizzes and pops of other fireworks.

　　Look at these words – bang, crackle, fizz, pop. They sound like the sounds which they describe. We have a technical name for words which sound like the thing they describe – onomatopaeia. It comes from Greek and means, literally², “word-making”. The sound makes the word that we use to describe it. Do you remember the podcast about the old English song, Sumer is Icumen in? There was a bird that sings loudly in the early summer – the cuckoo. The word cuckoo is onomatopaeic, because it comes from the sound the cuckoo makes.

　　Here are some other onomatopoeic words, words which sound like the thing they describe:

　　buzz

　　woof

　　croak³

　　cluck

　　thud

　　crash

　　hum

　　And finally, a game – yes, table tennis, or as we often call it, ping-pong.

1 whoosh   

v.飞快地移动，呼

参考例句：

• It goes whoosh up and whoosh down.它呼一下上来了，呼一下又下去了。
• Whoosh!The straw house falls down.呼！稻草房子倒了。

2 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

3 croak   

vi.嘎嘎叫，发牢骚

参考例句：

• Everyone seemed rather out of sorts and inclined to croak.每个人似乎都有点不对劲，想发发牢骚。
• Frogs began to croak with the rainfall.蛙随着雨落开始哇哇叫。