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  3. The Aleuts, residing on several islands of the Aleutian Chain, the Pribilof Islands, and the Alaskan Peninsula, have possessed a

The Aleuts, residing on several islands of the Aleutian Chain, the Pribilof Islands, and the Alaskan Peninsula, have possessed a

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问题    The Aleuts, residing on several islands of the Aleutian Chain, the Pribilof Islands, and the Alaskan Peninsula, have possessed a written language since 1825, when the Russian missionary Ivan Veniaminov selected appropriate characters of the Cyrillic alphabet to represent Aleut speech sounds, recorded the main body of Aleut vocabulary, and formulated grammatical rules. The Czarist Russian conquest of the proud, independent sea hunters was so devastatingly thorough that tribal traditions, even tribal memories, were almost obliterated. The slaughter of the majority of an adult generation was sufficient to destroy the continuity of tribal knowledge, which was dependent upon oral transmission. As a consequence, the Aleuts developed a fanatical devotion to their language as their only cultural heritage.
   The Russian occupation placed a heavy linguistic burden on the Aleuts. Not only were they compelled to learn Russian to converse with their overseers and governors, but they had to learn Old Slavonic to take an active part in church services as well as to master the skill of reading and writing their own tongue. In 1867, when the United States purchased Alaska, the Aleuts were unable to break sharply with their immediate past and substitute English for any one of their three languages.
   To communicants of the Russian Orthodox Church a knowledge of Slavonic remained vital, as did Russian, the language in which 0ne conversed with the clergy. The Aleuts came to regard English education as a device to wean them from their religious faith. The introduction of compulsory English schooling caused a minor renascence of Russian culture as the Aleut parents sought to counteract the influence of the schoolroom. The harsh life of the Russian colonial rule began to appear more happy and beautiful in retrospect.
   Regulations forbidding instruction in any language other than English increased its unpopularity. The superficial alphabetical resemblance of Russian and Aleut linked the two tongues so closely that every restriction against teaching Russian was interpreted as an attempt to eradicate the Aleut tongue. From the wording of many regulations, it appears the American administrators often had not the slightest idea that the Aleuts were clandestinely reading and writing their own tongue or even had a written language of their own. To too many officials, anything in Cyrillic letters was Russian and something to be stamped out. Bitterness bred by abuses and the exploitations the Aleuts suffered from predatory American traders and adventurers kept alive the Aleut resentment against the language spoken by Americans.
   Gradually, despite the failure to emancipate the Aleuts from a sterile past by relating the Aleut and English languages more closely, the passage of years has assuaged the bitter misunderstandings and caused an orientation away from Russian toward English as their second language, but Aleut continues to be the language that molds their thought and expression.
According to the passage, which of the following was the most important reason for the Aleuts’ devotion to their language?
选项 A、Invention of a written version of their language.
B、Introduction of Old Slavonic for worship.
C、Disruption of oral transmission of tribal knowledge.
D、Institution of compulsory English education.
答案C
解析 这是一道细节题。因为是细节题，有时尽管文字的表达并非与文章的表述完全一致，我们也可从文中找出明显的信息。这个题目的信息就在第一段的最后两句中。俄罗斯人将大多数Aleut的成年人杀害了，所以没有人可以教孩子们Aleut traditions。唯一留下的就是他们小时学到的语言。尽管A的内容在文章中被提到，有一个Russian missionary发明了written form of the Aleut language，但这不是Aleuts热爱他们语言的真正原因。B的内容与文章有一定的关系。我们知道Aleuts学习俄罗斯东正教的Old Slavonic，但这不能说明Aleuts对自己语言的忠诚。D的错误原因与前者相似，其内容发生在Aleuts对其语言的devotion之后。
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