Cam 与4 test 2 p1.doc

Cambridge 4 test 2 Reading passage 1 Lost for Words 语言的消失 Many minority language are on the danger list 许多少数名族语言濒临灭绝 In the Native American Navajo nation, which sprawls across four states in the American south-west, the native language is dying. 对于居住在美国西南部四州的那瓦霍人来讲，他们的语言正在遭遇灭顶之灾。 Most of its speakers are middle-aged or elderly. 大多数说那瓦霍语的人要么是中年人，那么就是垂垂老者。 Although many students take classes in Navajo, the schools are run in English. 尽管有许多学生都在学习该门语言，可是学校却是用英文授课的。 Street signs, supermarket goods and even their own newspaper are all in English. 路牌，超市商品甚至他们自己的报纸全部是英文的。 Not surprisingly, linguists doubt that any native speakers of Navajo will remain in a hundred years time. 因此语言学家怀疑在百年之后还会不会有人会说这门语言也就不足为奇了。 Navajo is far from alone. Half the worlds 6,800 languages are likely to vanish within two generations - thats one language lost every ten days. 那瓦霍语决不是惟一会有此厄运的语言。再经历两代人的时间，全球6,800种语言当中的半数就有可能从世界上彻底消失——这就相当于平均每十天就有一种语言小时。 Never before has the planets linguistic diversity shrunk at such a pace. 地球上语言的多样性从未以如此惊人的速度降低过。 At the moment, we are heading for about three or four languages dominating the world, says Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading. “现在，我们面临的将是两三种语言支配整个世界。”雷丁大学的进化生物学家Marl Pagel说。 Its a mass extinction, and whether we will ever rebound from the loss is difficult to know. “这就是语言的大规模灭绝，而且我们很难知道能否从这种灭绝当中恢复过来。” Isolation breeds linguistic diversity: as a result, the world is peppered with languages spoken by only a few people. 封闭产生了语言的多样性。结果整个世界就布满了只有几个人说的语言。 Only 250 languages have more than a million speakers, and at least 3.000 have fewer than 2,500. 只有250种语言拥有超过100万的使用者，而至少有3000种语言使用者不足2500人。 It is not necessarily these small languages that are about to disappear. 那些将消失的小语种并非命该如此。 Navajo is considered endangered despite having 150,000 speakers. 尽管仍有15万人在使用那瓦霍语，但这种语言还是上了濒危名单。 What makes a language endangered is not just the number of speakers, but how old they are. 判断一种语言是否濒危的标准不是使用者的数量，而是使用者的年龄。 If it is spoken by children