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  3. Languages which to be extinct Ever hear someone speak Udihe, Eyak or Arikapu? Odds are you never will. Among the world’s 6,800 l

Languages which to be extinct Ever hear someone speak Udihe, Eyak or Arikapu? Odds are you never will. Among the world’s 6,800 l

admin2009-06-15  56
问题 Languages which to be extinct
Ever hear someone speak Udihe, Eyak or Arikapu?
Odds are you never will. Among the world’s 6,800 languages, half to 90 percent could be extinct by the end of the century.
One reason is that half of all languages are spoken by fewer than 2,500 people each, according to the Worldwatch Institute, a private organization that monitors global trends.
Languages need at least 100,000 speakers to pass from generation to generation, says UNESCO. War and genocide, fatal natural disasters, the adoption of more dominant languages such as Chinese and Russian, and government bans on language also contribute to their extinction.
The outlook for Udihe, Eyak and Arikapu, spoken in Siberia, Alaska and the Amazon jungle, respectively, is particularly depressing. About lif0 people speak Udihe, six speak Arikapu, and Eyak is down to one, Worldwatch says.
Marie Smith, 83, of Alaska, says she’s the last speaker of Eyak, a claim verified by linguists. "It’s horrible to be alone," Smith said.
It’s becoming a struggle, too, to find many who can say "thank you" in the Navajo language of the American Indian tribe (ahehee), or "hello" in the Maori language of New Zealand(kiaora).
The losses ripple foar beyond the affected communities. When a language dies, inguists, anthropologists and others lose rich sources of material for their work documenting a people’s history, finding out what they knew and tracking their movements from region to region. And the world, linguistically speaking, becomes less diverse.
Eight countries account for more than half of all languages. They are, in order, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Nigeria, India, Mexico, Cameroon, Australia and Brazil.
That languages die isn’t new; thousands are believed to have disappeared already. The distinguishing thing is it’s happening at such an alarming rate right now. Linguists believe 3,400 to 6,120 Languages could become extinct by 2100.
While a few languages including Chinese, Greek and Hebrew, are more than 2,00 years old, others are coming back from the dead, so to speak.
In 1983, Hawaiians created the Aha Punana Leo organization to reintroduce their native language throughout the state, including its public schools. The language nearly became extinct when the United States banned schools from teaching in Hawaiian after incorporating the then independent country in 1898.
Some 7,000 to 10,000 Hawaiians currently speak their native tongue, up from fewer than 1,000 in 1983, said Luahiwa Namahoe, the organization’s spokeswoman.
选项 A、Around 6,800.
B、Around 680.
C、About 680 to 3,400.
D、Around 2,500.
答案C
解析 根据文章第二段可知现存6,800种语言，根据倒数第四段的最后一句话可知到2100年有3,400—6,120种语言将灭绝。因此得出答案。
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