One big difference between British and American English is in vocabulary. For example, the British use the word “autumn”_______the Americans use the word “fall”. In this case, the older word is “autumn”. However, about four hundred years ago, the word “autumn” was_______with “fall”. Later, the British returned to “autumn”, while the_______still use “fall”.

Of course, people from many different countries came to America and made their_______to American English. Indeed, in American English there are words from every major_______spoken on Earth. Many of these words are absent in British English.

_______big distinction between American and British English is spelling. After the Americans defeated the British in 1781 and_______independence, they wanted to make their spelling of English words_______Therefore, Americans write “color”_______“colour”.

Finally, the pronunciations and accents are different. Both countries have slowly________the way they say the same words, but in different ways. This process is continuing even today.

People often use “Choubaguai” to play jokes on others’ looks. However, at first, this word did not refer to ________ people. In the Qing Dynasty, there was a special group of eight painters in   Yangzhou: Jin Nong, Zheng Xie, Huang Shen, Li Shan, Li Fangying, Wang Shishen, Luo Pin and Gao Xiang. Most of them were born into poor families. So they put their feelings about life into paintings by ________ how common people lived.These paintings were different from ________ of other artists.

Other artists didn’t like their paintings. They dismissed (对……不屑一提) them as “Yangzhou Baguai”. Their paintings ________ “Choubaguai” by some artists. However, common people     were interested in their paintings. Their painting styles still have a great ________ on painters in   modern times.

I’ve always been fascinated by languages, but I’ve never been any good at learning them. I remember sitting in my French lessons, I never _________ what I was being taught. My teacher wasn’t _________.

But one of my A levels was English Language, and that was where my interest in _________ started. Over the last few years, I’ve started learning more languages than I can _________. They include Latin, Russian, Spanish, and probably several others. None of them stuck.

And then came lockdown. While I was _________ enough to still be able to work from home, on evenings and weekends, I found myself getting _________ and looking through video websites for something to watch. That’s how I _________ a Chinese fantasy drama filled with complex relationships.

But by the time I got about halfway through the show, I _________ that in some cases, the words being spoken in Chinese didn’t match the words being said in the English translations. _________, a character was being called shijie instead of by her name. I went online, did some __________ and met a difficulty.

Shijie, which I learned can be translated as “martial sister”, introduced me to the complexities of Chinese __________. So many different words for “aunt”, “uncle” and “grandfather”! Characters with more than one name!

I was __________ by the way the language is so connected with the culture, and how poetic and __________ it is. I wanted to be able to __________ the source material, even if it was going to take me a long while __________ I got to that point.