阅读理解
Every
profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary,
the function of which is partly to name things, or processes which have no
names in ordinary English, and partly to secure greater exactness in
terminology (术语). Such special dialects
are necessary in technical discussion of any kind. Being universally understood
by those engaged or interested in the particular science or art, they have the
accurateness of a mathematical formula (公式). Besides,they save time in these kinds of discussions, for it is much more
economical to name a process than to describe it. Thousands of these
technical terms are very properly included in every large dictionary, yet, as a
whole, they are rather in the suburbs of the English language.
Different
occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special
vocabularies. In trades and handicrafts, and other professions, like farming
and fishery, which have occupied great numbers of men from remote times, the
technical vocabulary is very old. It consists largely of native words, or of
borrowed words that have worked themselves into the very central part of our
language. Thus, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies
are more familiar in sound, and more generally understood, than most other
technical terms. In law, medicine, and philosophy, the special dialects have
also become pretty familiar to cultivated persons and have contributed much to
the popular vocabulary. Yet among these professions, each one still possesses a
large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated
speech. And the proportion has increased in the last fifty years, particularly
in the various departments of natural and political science and in the mechanic
arts. Here new terms are coined with the greatest freedom, and abandoned when
they have served their turn. Most of the newly-invented terms are restricted to
special discussions, and seldom get into general literature or conversation.
Yet
no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a close combination.
Lawyers, doctors and men of science all communicate freely with others, not in
a merely professional way. Furthermore, what is called "popular science"
makes everybody familiar with modem views and recent discoveries. Any important
experiment, though made in a remote or provincial laboratory, is at once
reported online, and everybody is soon talking about it-as in the case of AI.