(水手长) would blow a whistle, or pipe, at the end of the day to indicate (表明) to the sailors it was time to quieten down and go to sleep."可知，当听到哨声，水手们要去睡觉。所以选A项。

　　4．The passage is mainly about ________ .

　　A．the business on British sailing ships

　　B．the influence of British sailors' language on English

　　C．the sailing history of England

　　D．the sailing story of British sailors

　　答案：B　主旨大意题。本文主要通过介绍英国是一个受到海洋影响的国家引入主题，即水手们在航行的时候使用的一些航海术语对英语这门语言产生了深远的影响。因此B项符合题意。

　　B

　　A three­mile­long fishhook­shaped piece of land in the middle of Chesapeake Bay, Tangier Island has always been a community set apart from the mainland.

　　These days, the island's 500­plus residents, who mostly use golf cars as transportation on the village's narrow roads and who don't allow the public consumption of alcohol, have managed to preserve their traditional culture.

　　Probably the most striking example of their heritage is the islanders' unique way of speaking.

　　David L. Shores, a linguist (语言学家) who was born on Tangier Island, has found out the reason why the speech of Tangier Island strikes outsiders as strange.

　　According to Shores, the islanders pronounce their vowels louder and longer, which causes common words to sound different when spoken by Tangier natives.

Some scholars have said the natives of Tangier speak an old form of English that goes back to the time of Queen F. Elizabeth I.Shores doesn't