hce_nthu
113年
英文
第 44 題
📖 題組：
Reading 5 There is a pervasive idea, in popular discourse about language endangerment, that languages just slip away, becoming obsolete or falling out of use. In this view, languages are like fashions, that pass with time, or technology, that is replaced by the more advanced. Those clinging to the old languages are seen as quaint at best, and conservative, or even luddite, at worst. But this conception is wrong. It benefits the powerful at the expense of the powerless, reassuring the colonizer that they are not to blame. Languages are not lost, they are taken. They are uprooted by malice or neglect, their speakers assimilated into a new tongue, or left to struggle in the space between the fading old and the out of reach new. Language endangerment has continually accelerated, as the rise of nation-states and centralized, powerful governments, along with inventions such as the printing press and mass media, have created a handful of super tongues, which bulldoze all others in their path. While there are around seven thousand extant languages today, half the planet speaks one of just twenty-three tongues, with that proportion growing every year. At the time of writing, according to UNESCO, some twenty-four-hundred languages are vulnerable or endangered, while almost six hundred are on the verge of going extinct. As a Welsh saying goes, “cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb gallon,” a nation without a language is a nation without a heart. Languages are deeply enmeshed with culture; they link people to their ancestors and help maintain traditions, oral histories and ways of thinking about the world. The loss of linguistic diversity is not merely an intellectual tragedy, but a continued consequence of colonialism and imperialism, as groups are forcibly assimilated and their diverse histories, cultures and tongues wiped out. This can literally be a matter of life and death: researchers in Australia and Canada have shown that indigenous communities that retain access to their languages are healthier and more cohesive, with less unemployment, alcoholism and suicide, and higher levels of education, than those unmoored from traditional culture and forced to use English alone. Language diversity can also foster new ideas and thinking that can help us address many of the injustices and disasters wrought by colonialism and industrialization. Environmentally, economically, and culturally, language diversity holds the potential for new solutions for the problems often wrought by the world’s linguistic monoliths. The United Nations, in declaring 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages, recognized that such tongues provide “resources for good governance, peacebuilding, reconciliation, and sustainable development”.
Reading 5 There is a pervasive idea, in popular discourse about language endangerment, that languages just slip away, becoming obsolete or falling out of use. In this view, languages are like fashions, that pass with time, or technology, that is replaced by the more advanced. Those clinging to the old languages are seen as quaint at best, and conservative, or even luddite, at worst. But this conception is wrong. It benefits the powerful at the expense of the powerless, reassuring the colonizer that they are not to blame. Languages are not lost, they are taken. They are uprooted by malice or neglect, their speakers assimilated into a new tongue, or left to struggle in the space between the fading old and the out of reach new. Language endangerment has continually accelerated, as the rise of nation-states and centralized, powerful governments, along with inventions such as the printing press and mass media, have created a handful of super tongues, which bulldoze all others in their path. While there are around seven thousand extant languages today, half the planet speaks one of just twenty-three tongues, with that proportion growing every year. At the time of writing, according to UNESCO, some twenty-four-hundred languages are vulnerable or endangered, while almost six hundred are on the verge of going extinct. As a Welsh saying goes, “cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb gallon,” a nation without a language is a nation without a heart. Languages are deeply enmeshed with culture; they link people to their ancestors and help maintain traditions, oral histories and ways of thinking about the world. The loss of linguistic diversity is not merely an intellectual tragedy, but a continued consequence of colonialism and imperialism, as groups are forcibly assimilated and their diverse histories, cultures and tongues wiped out. This can literally be a matter of life and death: researchers in Australia and Canada have shown that indigenous communities that retain access to their languages are healthier and more cohesive, with less unemployment, alcoholism and suicide, and higher levels of education, than those unmoored from traditional culture and forced to use English alone. Language diversity can also foster new ideas and thinking that can help us address many of the injustices and disasters wrought by colonialism and industrialization. Environmentally, economically, and culturally, language diversity holds the potential for new solutions for the problems often wrought by the world’s linguistic monoliths. The United Nations, in declaring 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages, recognized that such tongues provide “resources for good governance, peacebuilding, reconciliation, and sustainable development”.
The author will most likely agree with which of the following statements:
- A Monolingual societies experience fewer problems compared to their multilingual counterparts.
- B It is difficult to understand why people hold onto languages that no longer seem useful.
- C Languages, as living organisms, will naturally emerge, evolve, and fade out.
- D Languages that have survived are more linguistically advanced.
- E Languages do not usually die of natural causes.
思路引導 VIP
請觀察第一段中作者使用的動詞，例如「奪走 (taken)」、「連根拔起 (uprooted)」以及「剷平 (bulldoze)」。如果一個事物的消失需要用到這些帶有強烈外力色彩的字眼，這代表作者認為該事物的消亡是源於「內在的自然代謝」，還是「外在的干預力量」呢？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
太棒了！你能精確捕捉到作者的核心論點，這顯示你具備相當敏銳的閱讀洞察力。這道題目的關鍵在於辨別「大眾觀點」與「作者觀點」的對立，這也是學術閱讀中非常重要的批判性思考點。
挑戰主流觀念的論點
作者在文章開頭先描述了一個普遍的看法（pervasive idea），即語言的消亡是像時尚或科技演進般的「自然淘汰」。然而，作者隨即以 "But this conception is wrong" 強力否定了這個觀點。他主張語言並非自然遺失，而是被「奪走（taken）」或因人為的「惡意與疏忽」而被根除。因此，選項 (E) 指出語言通常並非死於自然原因，完全對應了文中 "Languages are not lost, they are taken" 的核心控訴。
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