首页
登录
职称英语
(1)Think of the solitude felt by Marie Smith before she died earlier this ye
(1)Think of the solitude felt by Marie Smith before she died earlier this ye
游客
2023-11-30
56
管理
问题
(1)Think of the solitude felt by Marie Smith before she died earlier this year in her native Alaska, at 89. She was the last person who knew the language of the Eyak people as a mother-tongue. Or imagine Ned Mandrell, who died in 1974 — he was the last native speaker of Manx, similar to Irish and Scots Gaelic. Both these people had the comfort of being surrounded, some of the time, by enthusiasts who knew something precious was vanishing and tried to record and learn whatever they could of a vanishing tongue. In remote parts of the world, dozens more people are on the point of taking to their graves a system of communication that will never be recorded or reconstructed.
(2)Does it matter? Plenty of languages — among them Akkadian, Etruscan, Tangut and Chibcha — have gone the way of the dodo, without causing much trouble to the descendants. Should anyone lose sleep over the fact that many tongues — from Manchu(spoken in China)to Hua(Botswana)and Gwich’in(Alaska)— are in danger of suffering a similar fate?
(3)Compared with groups who lobby to save animals or trees, campaigners who lobby to preserve languages are themselves a rare breed. But they are trying both to mitigate and publicize an alarming acceleration in the rate at which languages are vanishing. Of some 6,900 tongues spoken in the world today, some 50% to 90% could be gone by the end of the century. In Africa, at least 300 languages are in near-term danger, and 200 more have died recently or are on the verge of death. Some 145 languages are threatened in East and South-east Asia.
(4)Some languages, even robust ones, face an obvious threat in the shape of a political power bent on imposing a majority tongue. A youngster in any part of the Soviet Union soon realised that whatever you spoke at home, mastering Russian was the key to success.
(5)Nor did English reach its present global status without ruthless tactics. In years past, Americans, Canadians and Australians took native children away from their families to be raised at boarding schools where English rules. In all the Celtic fringes of the British Isles there are bitter memories of children being punished for speaking the wrong language.
(6)But in an age of mass communications, the threats to linguistic diversity are less ruthless and more spontaneous. Parents stop using traditional tongues, thinking it will be better for their children to grow up using a dominant language(such as Swahili in East Africa)or a global one(such as English, Mandarin or Spanish). And even if parents try to keep the old speech alive, their efforts can be doomed by films and computer games.
(7)The result is a growing list of tongues spoken only by white-haired elders. A book edited by Peter Austin, an Australian linguist, gives some examples: Njerep, one of 31 endangered languages counted in Cameroon, reportedly has only four speakers left, all over 60. The valleys of the Caucasus used to be a paradise for linguists in search of unusual syntax, but Ubykh, one of the region’s baffling tongues, officially expired in 1992. [br] In the fourth and fifth paragraphs the author discusses that
选项
A、mastering Russian is the key to success in the Soviet Union.
B、the vanishing languages are triggered by political power.
C、English becomes a world language due to political power.
D、languages face an obvious threat in the shape of a political power.
答案
D
解析
段落细节题。第4段首句提到了甚至一些充满活力的语言也会受到政治权力倾向的影响,接下来分别以前苏联的俄语和英语的流行来说明政治对语言的影响,这两段是典型的“论点+论据”结构,故据第4段首句可知D为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:http://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3233332.html
相关试题推荐
Shouldhighschoolseniorstakeagapyearbeforetheygotouniversities?G
EvenbeforethehumanorganismdevelopedintotheirpresentstageofHomosapien
HowtoPrepareforaScholarshipInterview?I.Beforetheinterview—Preparatio
HowtoPrepareforaScholarshipInterview?I.Beforetheinterview—Preparatio
HowtoPrepareforaScholarshipInterview?I.Beforetheinterview—Preparatio
HowtoPrepareforaScholarshipInterview?I.Beforetheinterview—Preparatio
HowtoPrepareforaScholarshipInterview?I.Beforetheinterview—Preparatio
HowtoPrepareforaScholarshipInterview?I.Beforetheinterview—Preparatio
HowtoPrepareforaScholarshipInterview?I.Beforetheinterview—Preparatio
HereintheUnitedStates,beforeagriculturalactivitiesdestroyedthenat
随机试题
E
Membersoftheclubarerequiredto______.[br][originaltext]M:Right,thisi
Howmenfirstlearnttoinventwordsisunknown;inotherwords,theorigin
期刊稿件加工整理不同于图书的特点包括( )。A.按栏目特点统一稿件格式 B.
每月消防水泵运行前,检查主电源、备用电源切换是否正常;检查备用电源,应保证在30
第1鳃裂瘘管内瘘口位于()A.咽后壁 B.梨状窝 C.外耳道软骨
科创板制度设计的创新点包括( )。 ①上市标准多元化 ②发行审核注册制
共用题干 HeatIsKillerExtremelyhotweathe
(2019年真题)中国人民银行批准的国家助学贷款经办银行不包括()。A.汇丰银
某因素与疾病可能有因果关系,下列哪种观点不正确?( )A.患者中发现该因素者多
最新回复
(
0
)