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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 one 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 that American administrators often had not the slightest idea that the Aleuts were clandestinely reading and writhing 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.
Which of the following statements about the religious beliefs of the Aleuts can be inferred from the passage?
选项 A、Prior to the Russian occupation they had no religious beliefs.
B、American traders’ and adventurers forced them to abandon all religious beliefs.
C、At no time in their history have the Aleuts had an organized religion.
D、The Russians forced Aleuts to become members of the Russian Orthodox Church.
答案D
解析 俄国人迫使阿留申人成为俄国东正教会的成员。作者在第二段指出，阿留申人不得不学习古斯拉夫语，以便参加宗教仪式。是哪种宗教呢?一定是下一段提到的、俄国的东正教。我们怎样才能知道阿留申人被迫改变信仰?教会成员必须熟悉古斯拉夫语，在俄国人征服阿留申期间，如果阿留申人不熟悉古斯拉夫语，他们就无法成为该宗派的成员。因此，我们可以推断，俄国征服者们迫使阿留申人成为俄国东正教的信徒。
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