2024年4月1日发(作者：)

时事热点 冲刺2022年高考英语阅读理解

语言文化类

（解析版）

(2018·全国卷Ⅰ· C)

话题:语言的消失 词数:304W 难度:★★★★

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 (联系) 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 about 1,000;

Africa 2,400;and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3,200,of which Papua New Guinea

alone accounts for well over median number (中位数) 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.

【文章大意】本文是一篇说明文,主要讲述了随着人类社会的发展,很多语言逐渐

消失。

can we infer about languages in hunter-gatherer times?

developed very fast.

were large in number.

had similar patterns.

were closely connected.

【解析】选B。推理判断题。根据第一段中的When the world was still populated by

hunter-gatherers ...they spoke perhaps 12,000 languages between them.可知,在狩猎

时代虽然人口很少,但语言种类很多。

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

x. ed.

ul. .