The Queen's English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen's Christmas broadcasts had found. Researchers have studied each of her messages to the Commonwealth countries since 1952 to find out the change in her pronunciation from the noble Upper Received to the Standard Received.

    Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany's University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent  changes recorded over the past half century would take place within one person. “As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records,” he said.

    He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels (元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years. “Her accent sounds slightly less noble than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very small and slow changes that we don't notice from year to year.”

    “We may be able to relate it to changes in the social classes,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper. “In 1952 she would have been heard saying ‘thet men in the bleck het'. Now it would be ‘that man in the black hat'. Similarly, she would have spoken of ‘citay ' and  ‘dutay' , rather than ‘citee' and ‘dutee' and ‘hame' rather than ‘home'. In the 1950s she would have been ‘lorst', but by the 1970s ‘lost'.”

    The Queen's broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth countries. Each Christmas, the 10-minute broadcast is put on TV at 3 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch.

    The results were published in the Journal of Phonetics.

    Some of the best thing in life don't happen until you grow old enough to recognize them. I can say that about tea. .

    I didn't start to drink tea until I was 35. The first time felt a genuine urge to drink tea was in 2003, when I stayed briefly in the United Kingdom. After a time of consuming local food, I started to really like strong black tea.

    I took packs of green tea with me as gifts but was disappointed to find my British friends preferred much stronger black tea from Sri Lanka. Later I learned that although people know China for its tea, it ranks only third among the world's black tea exporters, after Sri Lanka and Kenya.

    After I came back to China and started to cover food stories, I met friends in the tea-drinking circle and learned more. Although the majority of the rest of the world drinks black tea, which the Chinese call “red tea”, China processes and drinks mostly green tea.

I feel lucky to be Chinese because of the great variety of tea available in the county. It is estimated that there are more than 2000 tea in China it you divide them geographically,] including more than 600 locally famous tea. A more simple way to categorize it is by color ； and extent of fermentation(发酵). That comes down to six main categories — green, white, yellow, dark greenish(oolong), red and black tea.

    Tasting tea can be compared to our life. It can be plain and predictable but sometimes it is j full of pleasant surprises. Occasionally it can even seem too good to be true. The best thing is, you know there's always more to explore.

    If you want to travel from Xi'an to Chengdu by train, it will take about 16 hours. But starting this month, the new Xi'an-Chengdu high-speed railway will shorten this travel time to three hours.

    The 643-kilometer line is China's first high-speed railway to run through the Qinling Mountains, which form a natural boundary (分界线) between China's north and south. With a speed of 250 km per hour, it's also the first mountain-heavy train line to provide a 4G network. Along the way, the train passes through two areas for rare (稀有) wild animals — one for pandas and the other for crested ibises (朱鹮).

    To reduce the railway's influence on the animals, workers and experts have designed and built the railway to be environmentally friendly. There were 345 wild pandas living in the Qinling Mountains. China currently has 1,864 wild pandas in total, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

    To avoid disturbing the pandas, the railway was designed to run through tunnels (隧道) within the area. Protective shields (防护屏) are placed near the entrance of each tunnel to stop animals from going in.

    To protect the thousands of crested ibises that fly near one part of the railway, protective nets have been set up to make sure the birds will not fly into a train.

    The nets are about 32 km long and 4 meters high. Experts tested different shapes and materials for building the nets before making their final choice.

Teen Climbing Camp

    This 5-day climbing camp is suitable for teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 who have an interest in rock climbing. The climbing days are designed for beginners and those who have some basic experience in a gym or outdoors. Participants will find themselves challenged physically and mentally.

    Rock Dimensions camps are designed to be a positive and memorable experience by providing healthy communication between participants, individual goal setting, and challenges that lead to personal growth.

    Dates

    Monday, June 29-Friday, July 3

    Monday, July 27-Friday, July 31

    Locations

    Climbing Tower at Footsloggers

    Linville Gorge and Table Rock area

    Local climbing areas near Boone

    Responsibilities

    Participants will meet Rock Dimensions guides at our location each morning and at the end of each day. Rock Dimensions will provide all climbing items, including a safety rope, a helmet and climbing shoes for each participant. Participants are responsible for bringing their own lunch, water, small backpack, appropriate clothing, and personal items like sun cream, etc.

    Pre-camp planning

    Participants will receive the following information in their registration(注册) packet Medical Form, Responsibility Agreement, Clothing/Equipment List, and Directions.

    Cost

    $575/person for the 5-day camp

    $325/person for the first 3 days

    Anyone interested in participating in just the last two days of the camp should call to discuss pricing and necessary skills/experience.

    When I lived in Spain, some Spanish friends of mine decided to visit England by car. Before they left, they asked me for advice about how to find accommodation. I suggested that they should stay at 'bed and breakfast' houses, because this kind of accommodation gives a foreign visitor a good chance to speak English with the family. My friends listened to my advice, but they came back with some funny stories.

"We didn't stay at bed and breakfast houses," they said, "because we found that most families were away on holiday."

I thought this was strange. Finally I understood what had happened. My friends spoke little English, and they thought 'VACANCIES' meant 'holidays', because the Spanish word for 'holidays" is 'vacancies'. So they did not go to house where the sign outside said 'VACANCIES', which in English means there are free rooms. Then my friends went to house where the sign said 'NO VACANCLES', because they thought this meant the people who owned the house were not away on holiday. But they found that these houses were all full. As a result, they stayed at hotels!

    We laughed about this and about mistakes my friends made in reading other signs. In Spanish, the word 'DIVERSION' means fun. In English, it means that workmen are repairing the road, and that you must take a different road. When my friends saw the word 'DIVERSION' on a road sign, they thought they were going to have fun. Instead, the road ended in a large hole.

English people have problems too when they learn foreign languages. Once in Paris, when someone offered me some more coffee, I said "Thank you" in French. I meant that I would like some more. However, to my surprise the coffee pot was taken away! Later I found out that "Thank you" in French means "No, thank you."

    Listed here are four of the thousands of impressive museums around the world.

    The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain

    Built in 1997, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is one of the newest in the world. It has transformed the industrial city of Bilbao into a travelers' desired destination. The beautiful architecture of the museum has provided a dramatic background for movies and commercials.

    The Louvre in Paris, France

    Probably the most famous Louvre also holds the most famous painting in the world, the "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci. Crowds can be found any day surrounding the small, but mysterious painting of the smiling woman. But, the Louvre is much more than a home to the "Mona Lisa". The Louvre is visited by more people each year than any other museum in the world.

    The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, America

    Just opened in its new downtown location in 2012, the Barnes Foundation is "unique" in that it is a completely reproduced display from one man's private collection. Dr. Albert C. Barnes started collecting art in the early 20th century and collected, among others, the largest number of original Renoir paintings in the world.

    The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy

    Walking on the marbled floors feels like stepping back in time. The building itself is a beautiful palace—like structure with frescoes(湿壁画) decorating the ceilings and walls. Viewers are bowled over(印象深刻) by the works by Botticelli, such as "The Birth of Venus". Classic artworks from nearly 1, 000 years ago describe religious events of the time.