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BBC Learning English
London Life
Thames watermen and lightermen
[Barge FX]
William: A sound familiar to all Londoners - a noisy
boat moving along the River
Thames.
[End FX]
My name’s William Kremer and this is London Life. The
people who move boats along this part of the Thames have a
very old job. They’re called watermen and lightermen. But
what’s the difference between a waterman and a lighterman1?
Listen to this short news clip2 for the answer:
Journalist: It takes a five year apprenticeship4 to
qualify5 as a Thames waterman (carrying passengers) or a
lighterman (carrying freight6), and that regime7 has been in
place since the sixteenth century.
William: Don’t worry if you missed some of that,
you’ll be listening to the clip again.
The answer is that watermen are in charge of boats which
carry passengers, so, people. Lightermen are in charge of
boats which carry freight. Freight is
simply anything that is transported but which isn’t alive
– so, it could be building supplies, or food, or products
from a factory. Recently, watermen and lightermen have been
in the news in London. That’s because on January 1st
2007 an official change occurred that will affect their
work. The clip we heard just now is from a journalist who
is reporting on this change. Let’s listen to a longer
section of his report – and as you listen, try to work out
what the change
is.
Journalist: It takes a five year apprenticeship to
qualify as a Thames waterman (carrying
passengers) or a lighterman (carrying freight), and that
regime has been in place since the sixteenth century. Well,
not any more: from January 1st, it’s been replaced by a
new National Boatmasters’ Licence for Inland Waterways
which will reduce the qualification time to just two years,
plus six months of local training.
William: Did you catch it? Since the sixteenth
century – so, for the last five hundred years – if you
wanted to become a waterman or a lighterman you first had
to be an apprentice3 for five years. Now, an apprentice does
an apprenticeship. An apprenticeship is a period of
training that you do while you’re working in a job in
order to learn all the skills of that job. When you have
done everything you need to do before you start the job
properly, you have qualified8 for the job. Of course, there
are different ways to qualify for different jobs – maybe
for your job you had to study a course at college or take
an exam. But the traditional
way of qualifying9 as a waterman or lighterman is by doing
an apprenticeship for five years – and this is what has
been changed. Listen again:
Journalist: It takes a five year apprenticeship to
qualify as a Thames waterman (carrying passengers) or a
lighterman (carrying freight), and that regime has been in
place since the sixteenth century. Well, not any more: from
January 1st, it’s been replaced by a new National
Boatmasters’ Licence for Inland Waterways which will
reduce the qualification time to just two years, plus six
months of local training.
William: The journalist said that the old regime, or
system, of apprenticeships has been replaced by a
Boastmasters’ Licence, which will allow people to qualify
in just two years, plus six months of training.
[STING]
Next we’re going to hear a conversation between a
journalist and Bert Andrews, a waterman whose family have
been doing the job for nearly a hundred years. How long was
Bert’s apprenticeship?
Journalist: So you studied for seven years to get your
licence. Seven years is an awfully10 long time – you can
become a doctor in seven years.
Bert: Yes, unfortunately I wasn’t that way inclined11, but
erm… The minimum is five years, at the moment. Personally,
I done seven on me father’s advice and erm… I’m still
learning today.
William: He was an apprentice for seven years. It
takes seven years to qualify as a doctor but Bert said he
wasn’t ‘that way inclined’ – which means he either wasn
’t interested in becoming a doctor or he didn’t have the
natural talent that the job needed.
Now if you were listening very carefully to Bert, you might
have noticed some interesting grammar. Listen again:
Bert: Yes, unfortunately I wasn’t that way inclined, but
erm… The minimum is five years, at the moment. Personally,
I done seven on me father’s advice and erm… I’m still
learning today.
William: Bert is talking about the apprenticeship he
did as a young man, but instead of saying ‘I did seven
years’ he says ‘I done seven years.’ Bert is using the
subject together with the past participle – done – in the
same way that we would normally use the past tense. Now, he
isn’t an English student who has made a mistake with his
grammar, this is just the way he talks naturally. Bert
has a strong Cockney accent – the traditional accent of
London’s working people. He also says ‘me father’
instead of ‘my father’ – which is also quite common in
spoken English. Listen again:
Bert: Yes, unfortunately I wasn’t that way inclined, but
erm… The minimum is five years, at the moment. Personally,
I done seven on me father’s advice and erm… I’m still
learning today.
William: If you go to the London Life page on
bbclearningenglish.com you can listen again to the full
news report that we featured in today’s programme and also
listen again to today’s vocabulary. You’ll also see some
links to find out more about the Cockney accent. Goodbye!
[STING]
收听单词发音 |
1
lighterman
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| n.驳船夫 | |
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2
clip
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| n.夹子，别针，弹夹，片断；vt.夹住，修剪 | |
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3
apprentice
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| n.学徒，徒弟 | |
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4
apprenticeship
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| n.学徒身份；学徒期 | |
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5
qualify
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| vt.取得资格，有资格，限定，描述；vi.取得资格，有资格 | |
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6
freight
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| n.货物，货运；vt.运送（货物）看，装货于 | |
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7
regime
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| n.政体，政权，制度 | |
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8
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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9
qualifying
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| 使具有资格的 | |
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10
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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11
inclined
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| a.有…倾向的 | |
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