London

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Bilete: Anne Scott Hagen

London is a busy city. You may easily get lost, and chances are that the person you ask for directions will be unable to help. One in four Londoners is not born in the city, besides it is teeming with tourists, and, finally, around 300 languages are spoken in the city. Have a look at this video clip from Oxford Street.

Choose one of the passers-by and write their "story" from that particular day. (Suggested length - 300 words)

If you manage to find a genuine Londoner, he may speak very differently from what you have heard on the BBC or learnt at school. The local London dialect is called Cockney. Listen to this London cab driver being interviewed by a Norwegian tourist. They talk about various topics such as rhyming expressions, which are colourful artistic expressions involving a lot of imagery. They also talk about knife crime as they pass Hyde Park. Notice how he pronounces Hyde Park with no /h/. This is a typical Cockney trait.

London has a long and rich history going back over two thousand years. The Romans, who arrived in London in 43 A.D., founded a community on a small area of high ground where the river was narrow enough to be bridged. This is the area in the City of London now called Cornhill. Vikings sailed up the Thames and captured London in the 9th Century, but King Alfred recaptured it in 886 and fortified it.

Bridges, and London Bridge in particular, have always played an important part in the life of London. As mentioned above, the first London Bridge was built by the Romans, and there have been numerous other bridges on the same site. The latest one was built in 1973 when the old one became too small and too weak for modern traffic. The old one was sold to an American and now stands in the Nevada Desert in the USA.

Tower Bridge is the one that appears most often in tourist brochures. It was built in 1894 and is the only bridge across the Thames in London which opens to allow ships to pass through. It still functions today, though the pumps that provide power for the opening mechanism are no longer powered by steam, but by electricity.

Since 1295, London's Westminster has been the home of the United Kingdom’s Parliament and it is the seat of the Government. The Houses of Parliament with the clock tower, Big Ben, are a characteristic sight along the banks of the river Thames.

London has suffered numerous attacks and setbacks of one sort or another. In 1665, the plague killed off thousands of Londoners, bringing trade and business almost to a standstill. If you sneeze, you have probably noticed that the British give you a sympathetic look accompanied by “God Bless You!” Supposedly, this dates back to the plague. One of the first symptoms of the fatal disease was a sneezing fit. In 1666, a fire, which started in a baker's shop in Pudding Lane, destroyed most of the city, including St Paul's Cathedral. However, the fire did have one positive result. The city was rebuilt with much better housing and a number of fine public buildings and churches built of stone rather than wood.

During the 19th Century, London became a very important centre for trade and business and increased enormously in wealth and size. A large area of docks, which was important for international trade, was built to the east of the City. London's final disaster occurred during the last war, when German air attacks destroyed large areas of the city and of the docks. These areas have now been rebuilt. Since London has declined in importance as a port, the dock areas have been rebuilt as modern office and residential areas. To transport commuters and citizens back and forth to the city, London has one of the most extensive public transport systems in the world, with the vital underground system, among Londoners referred to as the Tube. When it comes to international traffic, London's Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world.

Over the past two thousand years, London has developed from a small primitive community to a sprawling metropolis with 7.5 million inhabitants and a population made up of people from all over the world speaking some 300 different tongues.