Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 1 to 8.
The world is losing languages at an alarming rate. Michael Krauss suggested that of the approximately 6,000 human languages alive today, only 350 to 500 are safe from extinction. Some linguists estimate that a language dies every two weeks or so. At the current rate, by 2100, about 2,500 native languages could disappear.
Languages become extinct for many reasons. Through imperialism, colonizers impose their languages on colonies. Some politicians believe multilingualism will fragment national interests. Thus they prohibit education in all but the national language. Another reason for language death is the spread of more powerful languages. In the world today, several languages, including English, are so dominant in commerce, science, and education, that languages with fewer speakers have trouble competing.
Although in the past, governments have been one of the primary causes of language death, many have now become champions of preserving endangered languages and have had some significant successes. Two outstanding examples are the revival of Hebrew and Irish. Hebrew was considered a dead language, like Latin, but is now the national language of Israel. Irish was not dead, but severely threatened by English when the government of Ireland began its rescue immediately after the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. All students in public schools must now take some classes in Irish and there are Irish programs in major media, such as television and radio. According to the Irish government, approximately 37% of the population of Ireland now speaks Irish.
One of the largest programs to revive languages, Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL), is being conducted by three U.S. government agencies: the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Museum of Natural History. Researchers funded by these agencies are recording interviews with the mostly elderly people who still speak the languages. Analyses of these interviews will help linguists publish dictionaries and grammars of the languages. Eventually, linguists hope to establish language-training programs where younger people can learn the languages, carrying them on into the future.
The linguists participating in DEL defend spending millions of dollars to preserve dying languages. They point out that when a language dies, humanity loses all of the knowledge of the world that that culture held. Traditional healers in rural areas have given scientists important leads in finding new medicines; aspirin is an example of these. But one of the most common reasons given by these researchers is that studying languages gives us insight into the radically different way humans organize their world. David Lightfoot, an official at the National Science foundation, gives the example of Guguyimadjir, and Australian aboriginal language, in which there are no words for “right” or left,” only for “north,” “south,” “east,” and “west.”
Many researchers are optimistic that the efforts to save dying languages will succeed, at least in part. Bruce L. Cole, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, said, “Not only is this a time of great potential loss, it is also a moment for enormous potential gain. In this modern age of computers and our growing technological capabilities, we can preserve, assemble, analyze, and understand unprecedented riches of linguistic and cultural information.”
Question:How would you describe Bruce Cole’s opinion of the DEL project?
A. He thinks that we will lose the fight to save endangered languages.
B. He believes that it isn’t worth the time and energy required to save languages.
C. He believes we can save significant amounts of information about languages.
D. He thinks that we will be able to save Guguyimadjir, the aboriginal language.
Today,when English is one of the major languages in the world, it requires an effort of the imagination to realize that this is relatively recent thing-that in Shakespeare's time,for example,only a few million people spoke,and the language was not thought to be very important by the other nations of Europe,and was unknown to the rest of the world.
English has become a world language because of its establishment as a mother tongue outside England,in all the continents of the world. This exporting of English began in the seventeenth century,with the first settlements in the United States,assisted by massive immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,that has given the English language its present standing in the world.
1. English was spoken by a few million people in Shakespeare's time...T....
2. It is considered as a mother language outside England....T...
3. English was spoken in North America in the seventeenth century....F.....
4. Most of the immigration in the USA do not speak English......F....
câu 2 ở trong bài nói as a mother tongue con ở câu hỏi ns as a mother language đúng hay sai