Задание 10 из ЕГЭ по английскому языку: задача 16

2. A bird on the run

3. A smelly giant

4. A geographical tongue-twister

5. The biggest in the world

6. Unusual and not dangerous

7. Secret species

8. Strange travellers

A.The longest geographical name in Europe and the second longest geographical name in the world belongs to a large village in Wales. Clocking in at 58 letters, “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch” seems excessive for a name, but when translated it actually means “St. Mary’s Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel Near to the Rapid Whirlpool of Llantysilio of the Red Cave.” This unusual name has made the village a magnet for tourists. Unsurprisingly, the locals still prefer to call their native village Llanfairpwllgwyngyll or even simply Llanfair.

B. Residents of a Massachusetts neighborhood were treated to an unusual spectacle when an escaped emu went running through the streets. The Brockton Police Department said calls started coming in about 9:35 p.m. Thursday about an emu running loose through the Pine Street and Perry Avenue area. Residents posted video footage of the Australian bird to social media. Police said animal control officers were able to capture the emu around 10:30 p.m. The emu was returned to its owner’s home in East Bridgewater.

C. Heterochromia is when someone has more than one eye colour. In many cases, this means each eye is a different colour — for example, one is brown and another is green. It can also mean there are at least two different colours in parts of one eye or both eyes. Heterochromia is a rare condition that affects the iris, the coloured part of the eye. A pigment within the iris called melanin gives eyes their distinct colour. A harmless genetic mutation is believed to cause this phenomenon.

D. Astronomers have divided the sky into 88 different constellations. The word “constellation” comes from a Latin term meaning “set with stars.” The first people to discover and use the constellations were farmers — in some areas the changing of seasons was so subtle that the farmers depended on the stars to know when it was time to plant and when the time was right to harvest. Most names of the constellations were invented by the Greek — these names came from their mythological heroes and legends.

E. Rafflesia, a plant with no leaves, no roots, no stem and the biggest flower in the world sounds like the stuff of science fiction. “It is perhaps the largest and most magnificent flower in the world” was how Sir Stamford Raffles described his discovery in 1818 of Rafflesia arnoldii, modestly named after himself and his companion, Dr James Arnold. It is one of the rarest plants in the world and on the verge of extinction. As if size and rarity weren’t enough, Rafflesia is also one of the world’s most disgusting plants — it smells like rotten meat!

F.In Death Valley, there’s a faraway area with a truly bizarre natural phenomenon: hundreds of stones that gradually move themselves over time. Each of the stones travels a few inches per year, leaving a trail in the dusty ground behind it. Scientists have studied these ‘sailing stones’ since the 1940s, proposing a range of mechanisms that might be responsible. In 2011, Ralph Lorenz, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University, suggested that a layer of ice formed around the stones, lifting them up off the ground and allowing them to be blown by gentle breezes.

G. The Kermode bear, which can be found in Canada, is a white black bear. Sounds strange, right? Surprisingly, 1 out of 10 black bears of west-central British Columbia has white fur. The Aboriginal people call this unusual white bear a ‘spirit bear,’ believing that it had a connection with the spiritual world. When fur trade arrived in western Canada, native people never mentioned the existence of the white black bear. Thanks to keeping silent about the spirit bears, these rare animals survived are still around.