English Club Опции

[sharethelight]

Hi, everybody! Nice to meet you!
I have got an idea about creating an English club for the members of "Young Russia".
I tried to write about this subject yesterday in Russian, but without success. This is the link:
http://www.molrus.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=14143

So, I decided to write it in English in this section. If this idea sounds interesting, let me know. You are also welcome to write right here.
Anyway, feel free to contact me on these matters.

Best wishes,
Alexander

[Kifa]

ВНИМАНИЕ
Для того, чтобы не прерывать процесс изучения английского языка по согласованию с очаровательной luna0706 принято решение.
Следующая встреча английского клуба состоится как обычно: 30 мая (среда) в 19.20 на первом этаже Никольской трапезной.
Текст для перевода: Concerning Hobbits (см. ниже).
Тема разговора: англичане. Каждый должен составить небольшой текст (5-6 преложений) об англичанах: что он о них знает или думает или слышал, или поведать как он с ними общался (если общался). В общем - всё, что угодно.
Также мы подумаем, насколько верно предположение, что хоббиты были срисованы Джоном Р. Толкиеном именно с них.

Не смотрите, что текст - небольшой. Он - сложный.

Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favourite haunt. They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skilful with tools.
As for the Hobbits of the Shire, with whom these tales are concerned, in the days of their peace and prosperity they were a merry folk. They dressed in bright colours, being notably fond of yellow and green; but they seldom wore shoes, since their feet had tough leathery soles and were clad in a thick curling hair, much like the hair of their heads, which was commonly brown. Thus, the only craft little practised among them was shoe-making; but they had ling and skilful fingers and could make many other useful and comely things. Their faces were as a rule good natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red cheeked, with mouth apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them). They were hospitable and delighted in parties, and in presents, which they gave away freely and eagerly accepted.
At no time had Hobbits of any kind been warlike, and they had never fought among themselves. In olden times they had, of course, been often obliged to fight to maintain themselves in a hard world; but in Bilbo's time that was very ancient history.
Nonetheless, ease and peace had left this people still curiously tough. They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or to kill; and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces. Though slow to quarrel, and for sport killing nothing that lived, they were doughty at bay, and at need could still handle arms. They shot well with the bow, for they were keen-eyed and sure at the mark. Not only with bows and arrows. If any Hobbit stopped for a stone, it was well to get quickly under cover, as all trespassing beasts knew very well.
All Hobbits were, in any case, clanish and reckoned up their relationships with great care. They drew long and elaborate family trees with innumerable branches. In dealing with Hobbits it is important to remember who is related to whom, and in what degree. It would be impossible in this book to set out a family-tree that included even the more important members of the more important families at the time which these tales tell of. The genealogical trees at the end of the red Book of Westmarh are a small book in themselves, and all but Hobbits would find them exceedingly dull. Hobbits delighted in such things, if they were accurate: they liked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions.