Wales is a country of lakes and mountains. Its about the half the size of Switzerland, and it has a population of two and three quarter million. On the north of Wales is some of the most beautiful scenery in the British islands, the Snowdon mountain. Snowdon is Britain’s second highest mountain.
<span>Wales is an not independent nation. In 1292, the English king, Edward, invaded Wales and built fourteen huge castles to control the Welsh people. His son, Edward, became the first prince of Wales, since then all the kings and queens of England have given their eldest sons the title, Prince of Wales. Prince Charles became the twenty-first Prince of Wales. Although the English have ruled Wales for many centuries, Wales still has its own flag, culture, and, above all, its own language. In the towns and villages of North Wales, many people speak English only as a second language. Their first language is Welsh. In Llanberis, a small town at the foot of Snowdon, eighty-six per cent people speak Welsh as their first language. At the local primary school children have nearly all their lessons in Welsh. The children should be bilingual by the time that they are eleven years old. It is not a problem for children to learn two languages at the same time. Children have insight into two cultures, so have all the folk tales of two languages. Children like Welsh because in Welsh you spell things just how you say them, in English there are more silent letters. </span>
<span>Welsh is one of the oldest languages in Europe. Its a Celtic language, like Breton in France, Gaelic in Ireland, or Gaelic in Scotland. Two and a half thousand years before these languages were spoken in many parts of Europe. They died out when the Romans invaded these areas, but some of them survived in the northwest corner of Europe. But over the last hundred years the number of Welsh-speaker has fallen very quickly. Now only twenty per cent of Welsh people speak Welsh. Here are some of the reasons for the decline. </span>
<span>In the nineteenth century people thought that Welsh an uncivilized language. If you wanted to be successful in life you had to learn English, the language of the British Empire. So in many schools children were forbidden to speak Welsh. </span>
<span>At the beginning of the twentieth century many English and Irish people moved to South Wales to work in the coalmines and steel works. They did not learn Welsh. </span>
<span>People, especially young people, moved away from the Welsh-speaking villages and farms of north and west Wales to look for work in the big towns and cities, so the Welsh-speaking communities became much smaller. In the 1960s and 1970s many English people bought holiday cottages in villages in Wales. Most of them did not learn Welsh. This also pushed up the price of houses so that local Welsh-speaking people cold not afford them. </span>
<span>English comes into every Welsh home trough the television, the radio, newspapers, books, etc. There are Welsh-language TV and radio stations, but far fever than English ones. And now there is cable and satellite TV, too-in English, of course! </span>
The decline has now stopped, because a lot has been done. Road signs, bilingual documentation, and there is a Welsh language act. The future of Welsh is uncertain. The problem is that Welsh has to survive next door to English, and, as we all know, English is a very successful language.
Every man has its own Motherland. It’s the place where a man was born. May be my native place is usual and uninteresting for other people but for me it’s the dearest place in the world. The beauty of our native village we imbibed with our mother’s milk. I like to walk on a carpet of meadows and flowers or climb the hills covered with thick woods or fish in our ponds or drink the crystal clear water…I wish it were always so!
But in recent years the environmental problems have become extremely urgent. And we in our native village are also concerned about it. I think that all ecological problems are the result of scientific and technological progress of the 20th century. Sometimes people do a lot of harm to nature because they don’t understand that the man is the part of the environment. There must be a unity between a man and nature. It’s one of the most vital problems facing civilization today.
Even in ancient times people used nature’s resources without doing harm. But with the development of society, science and technology our descendants will soon discover that we recklessly squandered and polluted their inheritance. The Professor of California University Dasmann Raymond said: ”We are all concerned about the beginning of the third world war…. But the third world war has already begun –we are fighting against the environment. Moreover, we win!”
The planet’s resources are not unlimited. Over the past twenty yearsthe population of our planet has increased sixfold and our levels of consuming exceed the amount that can give us the Earth. The government simply must deal with the environmental problems. But instead of healing the planet it strongly favours the development of industry. This doesn’t mean that only the government is responsible for the environmental situation. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, 16th US president: ”With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed”. There is no way to say it better I think. So we should work together realizing that we have entered a critical moment in our history, when humanity must choose its future as the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile.
I suppose the world’s leaders must:
-protect and preserve the unity of the Earth’s ecosystems giving special attention to biodiversity and natural process that sustain life;
-adopt at all levels such plans on sustainable development which would make the conservation and restoration of the environment as an integral part of all initiatives aimed at further development;
-support the revival of endangered species, populations and ecosystems;
-control the use of renewable resources such as water , soil, forest products and marine species;
-manage the production and use of non-renewable resources such as minerals and fossil fuel products so as not to harm the environment;
-prevent the environmental pollution and the accumulation of radioactive and toxic substances;
-avoid military activities damaging to the environment;
On the 22d of April we celebrate the World Earth Day .However there is a danger that in a few hundred years we would have nothing to celebrate so we are slowly destroying our planet and we forget the fact that there were no other world where we would happily move. We and only we are responsible for the ecological problems of the Earth. Let our time will be remembered as a time of reverence for life and a firm decision to keep the evolutional possibilities of the Earth.
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1. Do you like to swim in the lake<span> or in the </span>river?
<span>2. I like to swim in the </span>sea<span>. The water in the Black </span>Sea<span> is warm in summer.</span>
<span>3. My house stands near the </span>forest<span>.</span>
<span>4. Last summer the Browns lived near the </span>pond.
<span>5. Will you go to the </span>beach <span>next summer?</span>
