2019-10-14
6 分钟Hi there, this is Harry and welcome back to my English learning podcast. We're now back to sentences where I explain the meaning after I've given you a couple of readings. The sentence that I have for you for today is - The church which is highly influential in Italy, sees euthanasia as a morally unacceptable killing of a person and a violation of the law of God. Enrol in Harry's English Club at www.englishlessonviaskype.com for €9 per month, or sign up for Online Courses and Skype...
Hi there.
This is Harry, and welcome to the podcast.
And we're now back to the sentences, where I'll explain their meaning after I've given you a couple of readings.
This particular sentence concerns issues around euthanasia, assisted suicides, and this has been in the news quite recently in relation both to Holland and Switzerland, where I think it is acceptable.
And there's recently been some rulings in Italy.
Okay, so here's the first reading.
The church, which is highly influential in Italy, sees euthanasia as the morally unacceptable killing of a person and a violation of the law of God.
Second reading, the church, which is highly influential in Italy, sees euthanasia as the morally unacceptable killing of a person and a violation of the law of God.
Okay, so what grammatical aspects do we have here?
Well, what we have is a very strong statement.
Yeah.
And we've also got here the use of the relative clause, which.
And this is interesting here, because when we use some relative clauses, we can occasionally leave it out or put it in, and it will make no difference to the meaning of the sentence.
Now, here we have a relative clause, and I'll read you the relative clause.
First of all, which is highly influential in Italy, that's the relative clause and recognizable by the word, which.
So we've got here the church, and then the relative clause, which is highly influential in Italy, we could actually leave that sentence out.
It's additional information, and it's interesting information, but if we leave it out, it won't change the meaning and the grammatical meaning of the sentence.
So let me read it without.
The church sees euthanasia as the morally unacceptable killing of a person and a violation of the law of God.
So I've left that relative clause out, but the sentence still has meaning grammatically.