Long ago，as people got older，there was something wrong with their teeth and it would be very painful. To avoid a toothache，they had their teeth pulled out. Later people learned that cleaning their teeth was important，but they didn’t have toothpaste (牙膏) at that time. They used lemon juice，salt or other things to clean their teeth.

It was only about 100 years ago that someone finally created a mint (薄荷) cream to clean teeth. Not long after that，the toothpaste tube (管子) was invented，so people could squeeze (挤出) the toothpaste right onto the toothbrush! Tooth brushing became popular during the World War I. The U. S. Army gave brushes and toothpaste to all the soldiers，and they learned to brush teeth twice a day. Back then，toothpaste tubes were made of metal；today they’ re made of soft plastic and are much easier to use!

Today there are plenty of toothpaste choices：lots of colors and flavors (口味) to choose from，and some kinds of toothpaste are made just for children. When you’re choosing a kind of toothpaste，make sure it has fluoride (氟化物). Fluoride makes your teeth strong and healthy. When you brush，you don’t need a lot of toothpaste：just squeeze out a bit.

If you ask people to name the one person who had the greatest effect on the English language, you will get answers like “Shakespeare,” “Samuel Johnson,” and “Webster,” but none of these men had any effect at all compared to a man who didn’t even speak English-William the Conqueror.

Before 1066, in the land we now call Great Britain lived peoples belonging to two major language groups. In the west-central region lived the Welsh, who spoke a Celtic language, and in the north lived the Scots, whose language, though not the same as Welsh, was also Celtic. In the rest of the country lived the Saxons, actually a mixture of Anglos, Saxons, and other Germanic and Nordic peoples, who spoke what we now call Anglo-Saxon (or Old English), a Germanic language. If this state of affairs had lasted, English today would be close to German.

But this state of affairs did not last. In 1066 the Normans led by William defeated the Saxons and began their rule over England. For about a century, French became the official language of England while Old English became the language of peasants. As a result, English words of politics and the law come from French rather than German. In some cases, modern English even shows a distinction (区别) between upper-class French and lower-class Anglo-Saxon in its words. We even have different words for some foods, meat in particular, depending on whether it is still out in the fields or at home ready to be cooked, which shows the fact that the Saxon peasants were doing the farming, while the upper-class Normans were doing most of the eating.

When Americans visit Europe for the first time, they usually find Germany more “foreign” than France because the German they see on signs and advertisements seems much more different from English than French does. Few realize that the English language is actually Germanic in its beginning and that the French influences are all the result of one man’s ambition.