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  3. The status of English as an international language appears unassailable. It is simultaneously preeminent in science, politics, b

The status of English as an international language appears unassailable. It is simultaneously preeminent in science, politics, b

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问题     The status of English as an international language appears unassailable. It is simultaneously preeminent in science, politics, business and entertainment. And unlike any of its lingua franca predecessors, it has all this on a truly worldwide scale. There is no challenger comparable to it: Chinese has more native speakers, but every schoolchild in China now studies English. And India, set to overtake China in population by 2050. is avidly trading on its English expertise.
    But English is not thereby immune to the principles of language survival. Above all, it is notable that beyond the 330 million or so native speakers, perhaps twice as many more use it as a second language. And this community of over 600 million second-language speakers, who make English preeminent as a world language, also make it vulnerable in the long term.
    In 5,000 years of recorded language history, a few dozen languages have achieved the status of lingua franca, a language of wider communication among people whose mother tongues may be quite different. But this status does not come about by some utilitarian reckoning, or democratic selection. There is always a reason, be it conquest, trade, religious mission or social aspiration, which has selected a language to have this wider role, and that reason is hard to forget—and ultimately often hard to forgive.
    This is seldom clear—at first to native speakers. They naturally see their mother tongue as a simple blessing for the wider world. But neither Latin nor French would have spread across Western Europe if their use had not once upon a time been imposed—by forces other than lucidity and charm.
    There was status or wealth to be gained from knowing these languages, and in their heyday, no one believed they might one day go out of use. After all, they seemed not only useful, but also such exceptional languages.
    But far from being disinterested aids to thought and communication, every lingua franca continues to bear the badge of its original spread; and this is often the cause of its ultimate undoing. This moral is as clear and well-established as the recorded history of the lingua franca phenomenon.
    English will not decline as a first language: Indeed for the foreseeable future it will be among the five major mother tongues of the world. Spread out worldwide, it may even change and ultimately split into a family of languages. But it would go against the pattern of world history if alien peoples patronized English for very much longer than necessary.
    In sum, the world in the next few generations is likely to see greater multilingualism and less English-backed bilingualism. We can learn the long view from language history, but it may be a hard lesson.
The author argues that the future of English is
选项 A、bleak
B、definite
C、uncertain
D、foreseeable
答案A
解析 根据第六段中的“But far from being disinterested aids to thought and communication，everylingua franca…spread；and this is often the cause of its ultimate undoing”和第七段中的“But it wouldgo against the pattern of world history if alien peoples patronized English for very much longer thannecessary”，A应为答案。
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