Languageshavebeencomingandgoingforthousandsofyears,buti...

問題詳情：

Languages have been coming and going for thousands of years, but in recent times there has been less coming and a lot more going. When the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers, small, tightly knit(聯繫) groups developed their own patterns of speech independent of each other. Some language experts believe that 10,000 years ago, when the world had just five to ten million people, they spoke perhaps 12,000 languages between them.

Soon afterwards, many of those people started settling down to become farmers, and their languages too became more settled and fewer in number. In recent centuries, trade, industrialisation, the development of the nation-state and the spread of universal compulsory education, especially globalisation and better communications in the past few decades, all have caused many languages to disappear, and dominant languages such as English, Spanish and Chinese are increasingly taking over.

At present, the world has about 6,800 languages. The distribution of these languages is hugely uneven. The general rule is that mild zones have relatively few languages, often spoken by many people, while hot, wet zones have lots, often spoken by small numbers. Europe has only around 200 languages; the Americas about1,000; Africa 2 400; and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3,200, of which Papua New Guinea alone accounts for well over 800. The median number(中位數) of speakers is a mere 6,000, which means that half the world's languages are spoken by fewer people than that.

Already well over 400 of the total of, 6,800 languages are close to extinction(消亡), with only a few elderly speakers left. Pick, at random, Busuu in Cameroon (eight remaining speakers), Chiapaneco in Mexico (150), Lipan Apache in the United States (two or three) or Wadjigu in Australia (one, with a question-mark): none of these seems to have much chance of survival.

can we infer about languages in hunter-gatherer times?

developed very fast.                             were large in number.

had similar patterns                              were closely connected.

h of the following best explains “dominant” underlined in paragraph 2?

lex                  nced.                 rful                  rn.

many languages are spoken by less than 6,000 people at present?

t 6,800             t 3,400              t 2,400              t 1,200

is the main idea of the text?

languages will be created.

le's lifestyles are reflected in languages.

n development results in fewer languages.

raphy determines language evolution.

【回答】

1.B; 2.C; 3.B; 4.C 解析：1.推理判斷題。根據第一段中的When the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers... they spoke perhaps. 12,000 languages between them.可知,在狩獵時代雖然人口很少,但語言種類很多。 2.詞義猜測題。根據第二段最後一句中的increasingly taking over意為"越來越佔據統治地位",可知dominant意為"佔優勢的;佔支配地位的",與C項同義。 3.細節理解題。根據第三段最後一句The median number of speakers is a mere 6,000, which means that half the world's languages are spoken by fewer people than that.以及第四段第一句中的the total of 6,800 languages可知*為B。 4.主旨大意題。通讀全文可知,文章主要講述隨着人類社會的發展,語言的種類越來越少,故C項為正確*。

知識點：*經濟文化類閲讀

題型：閲讀理解