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  3. The Aleuts, residing on several islands of the Aleutian Chain, the Pribilof I

The Aleuts, residing on several islands of the Aleutian Chain, the Pribilof I

游客2023-12-18  24
问题    The Aleuts, residing on several islands of the Aleutian Chain, the Pribilof Islands, and the Alaskan Peninsula, have possessed a written language since 1825, when the Russian missionary Ivan Veniaminov selected appropriate characters of the Cyrillic alphabet to represent Aleut speech sounds, recorded the main body of Aleut vocabulary, and formulated grammatical rules. The Czarist Russian conquest of the proud, independent sea hunters was so devastatingly thorough that tribal traditions, even tribal memories, were almost obliterated. The slaughter of the majority of an adult generation was sufficient to destroy the continuity of tribal knowledge, which was dependent upon oral transmission. As a consequence, the Aleuts developed a fanatical devotion to their language as their only cultural heritage.
   The Russian occupation placed a heavy linguistic burden on the Aleuts. Not only were they compelled to learn Russian to converse with their overseers and governors, but they had to learn Old Slavonic to take an active part in church services as well as to master the skill of reading and writing their own tongue. In 1867, when the United States purchased Alaska, the Aleuts were unable to break sharply with their immediate past and substitute English for any one of their three languages.
   To communicants of the Russian Orthodox Church a knowledge of Slavonic remained vital, as did Russian, the language in which 0ne conversed with the clergy. The Aleuts came to regard English education as a device to wean them from their religious faith. The introduction of compulsory English schooling caused a minor renascence of Russian culture as the Aleut parents sought to counteract the influence of the schoolroom. The harsh life of the Russian colonial rule began to appear more happy and beautiful in retrospect.
   Regulations forbidding instruction in any language other than English increased its unpopularity. The superficial alphabetical resemblance of Russian and Aleut linked the two tongues so closely that every restriction against teaching Russian was interpreted as an attempt to eradicate the Aleut tongue. From the wording of many regulations, it appears the American administrators often had not the slightest idea that the Aleuts were clandestinely reading and writing their own tongue or even had a written language of their own. To too many officials, anything in Cyrillic letters was Russian and something to be stamped out. Bitterness bred by abuses and the exploitations the Aleuts suffered from predatory American traders and adventurers kept alive the Aleut resentment against the language spoken by Americans.
   Gradually, despite the failure to emancipate the Aleuts from a sterile past by relating the Aleut and English languages more closely, the passage of years has assuaged the bitter misunderstandings and caused an orientation away from Russian toward English as their second language, but Aleut continues to be the language that molds their thought and expression. [br] Which of the following statements about the religious beliefs of the Aleuts can be inferred from the passage?
选项 A、Prior to the Russian occupation they bad no religious beliefs.
B、American traders and adventurers forced them to abandon all religious beliefs.
C、At no time in their history have the Aleuts had an organized religion.
D、The Russians forced Aleuts to become members of the Russian Orthodox Church.
答案 D
解析 这是意义含蓄的题目，答案是D，是按逻辑推理的结果。第二段中提到了Aleut非得learn Old Slavonic to take an active part in church services。这是什么样的church呢?这一定是下一段中提及的Russian Orthodox Church。那么我们怎么知道Aleuts被迫改变宗教信仰呢?因为Old Slavonic是教会成员必须使用的语言，在俄罗斯占领Aleut时，他们不懂old Slavonic，因此那时他们不可能是这种教会的成员。所以我们可以从逻辑的关系来推断俄罗斯占领者强迫他们成为Russian Orthodox Church的成员。含蓄的内容不可能在文中显而易见地找到，但是一定会得到文章内容的有力支持。A，B，C就错在找不到这样一个理由。A的内容在文章中找不到，在俄罗斯占领前Aleuts或许有宗教信仰，或许没有。B的错误原因与A相同。单凭文章的内容，可以说这种观点是对的，也可以说是错的，意义不确定。C是明显的错误。作者在文中确实提及有一段时间Aleuts曾是members of Russian Orthodox Church。
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