填空题
Directions:
In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41- 45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.
Imagine this: the British government decides to set up an international committee to examine whether the English spoken around the world is up to scratch.
41. ______
If it sounds too ridiculous to be true, take another look at recent comments by Italy’s Agriculture Minister, Giovanni Alemanno. The minister, from the right-faction of the National Alliance, is about to set up an international agency to patrol standards of Italian cuisine—he has even promised to send some culinary heavy-hitters to Australia to decide which restaurants have deviated from the norm of Italian cooking.
42. ______
We can expect the minister’s men to anoint as autentico the food of a well-connected restaurant using only imported Italian ingredients, while others will be warned: buy Italian, or a foreign government will get you. They will then return to Rome chanting veni, edi, vici—"I came, I ate, I conquered. "
Most Italian-Australian restaurateurs will have the sense to tell Mr. Alemanno’s pizza patrol where to put its bizarre notions of la cucina italiana.
43. ______
The move comes as European Union membership forces the traditionally inward-looking Italy to face the world. And with a new outlook, Italian food producers have come to the realization, that there are more people of Italian descent abroad than in Italy, and they—the children of the diaspora—are setting the standards for how Italian culture is perceived internationally. The sophisticated buongustai in Italy may scoff at the contamination of Italian-American cuisine (pasta with meatballs, the "pepperoni pizza", the bad coffee).
44. ______
Who doesn’t know the meaning of capish It’s not from standard Italian, but the Neapolitan lingua franca spoken on New York’s Mulberry Street in the early 1900s, when a million Italian immigrants lived in just a few neighbourhoods. Even the stereotypical mafioso comes to us from the streets of Chicago, not Palermo, and always via American popular culture.
Italy now feels it’s losing control of its culture and, more importantly, what it sees as its right to demand a slice of the action every time a restaurant flies an Italian flag. But should this matter to people of Italian descent around the world Or, for that matter, to anyone running an Italian restaurant outside of Italy
45. ______
And whatever form Italian food and culture may have taken overseas, it has been promoted and maintained by local communities, not Italian ministers. Their culture doesn’t now require the approval of Italian authorities.
If Mr. Alemanno wants to defend Italy’s honour, he should get his kitchen hit-men to target those bandits in Florence who charge tourists $5 for a slice of microwaved margherita.
[A] But they forget that everything the English-speaking world knows about Italian culture comes from the Little Italies of the United States.
[B] Prime Minister Tony Blair’s hand-picked investigators travel the globe, issuing on-the-spot fines for anyone deemed to have strayed too far from standard pronunciation. American idioms may even attract a prison sentence.
[C] Americans, Canadians, Australians and Argentines with Italian antecedents realize they owe the Italian state nothing. They have been ignored by generations of Italian governments and treated with legendary contempt by Italian consular staff.
[D] Immigrant communities are a painful reminder that, in one generation, Italy has gone from the Third World reality of Carlo Levi’s novel, Christ Stopped at Eboli, to the glamour of Milan’s catwalks.
[E] Yet there’s something disturbing about Italy’s new obsession with reining in the culture of its communities abroad. (Italian coffee producers are also campaigning for their own form of international extortion—an espresso certificate. )
[F] Just in case restaurants in Melbourne or Sydney fear that their pizza is facing serious scrutiny, here’s the lowdown: It’s a joke, an unpalatable mix of trade promotion and ethno-chauvinism.
[G] As a result, their culture is a peasant one, miles from the fashionable, affluent lifestyle contemporary Italy is so desperate to promote.