双语阅读英语外刊精讲：钻石与婚姻(附音频)

2018-10-31 09:39:00来源：酷学英语

　　双语阅读是英语学习爱好者的天堂，在双语阅读里，不仅可以了解英美当地文化、习俗，还可以掌握地道英语表达，提高英语综合能力。本期主题：新东方刘琦老师为大家带来《双语阅读英语外刊精讲：钻石与婚姻(附音频)》，与大家一起分享。更多双语阅读资料，可点击查看：《双语阅读：英语外刊阅读精讲汇总》

　　Diamond and marriage

　　A girl's new best friend

　　The diamond engagement ring may not have a future as a symbol of courtship. What could replace it?

　　PEACOCKS strut; bowerbirds build lovenests; spiders gift-wrap flies in silk. Such courtship rituals play an important role in what Charles Darwin called sexual selection: when the female of a species bears most of the costs of reproduction, males use extravagant displays and gifts to demonstrate their “reproductive fitness” and females choose between them. For human males, shards of a crystalline form of carbon often feature. A diamond engagement ring signals a man's taste, wealth and commitment, all to persuade a woman that he is a good bet.

　　This particular courtship gift was dreamed up by an ad agency for De Beers, the cartel that sold almost all of the world's diamonds throughout the 20th century. In the 1930s it started to promote a link between diamonds and marriage. Diamonds' unmatched hardness would symbolise love's endurance and their “fire”, or brilliance, its passion. Two months' salary, the firm suggested, was what the ring should cost—a good investment since, as the admen said, “A diamond is forever.”

双语阅读：英语外刊阅读精讲(附音频)