1. What may new urban hybrid languages help to do while many rural languages are going extinct?
2. According to the passage, what are losing their practical use?
3. How many of journal literature in some scientific fields is printed in English?
4. Scott Montgomery- a Seattle-based geologist and of The Chicago Guide to Science—shows that English has itself as the world language for science.
5. Montgomery the future will almost certainly see a continued of English use in science, in international settings, though not to the final of other tongues.
6. More and more scientists who are non-native of English will need to multilingual," Montgomery said. " This an educational burden in some sense, but one that has much precedent in the cases of Greek, medieval Latin, and medieval Arabic.
Background Information 背景信息
依據美國剛剛出版的《世界年鑒及事件》,在全球十大語言中,北京普通話是全球使用人數最多的語言,約有八億七千四百萬人,印度語以三億六千六百人排第二,英語則以三億四千萬人排第三。隨后是西班牙語的三億兩千兩百萬人,孟加拉語兩億零七百萬人,阿拉伯語兩億零一百萬人,葡萄牙語一億七千六百萬人,俄語一億六千七百萬人,日語一億兩千五百萬人及德語一億人。
英語居聯合國的五種官方語言之首,也是世界上的通用語言,由于普遍流行,經常被誤認為是當今世界上使用人口最多的語種。
Words & Phrases
詞匯與短語
Words:
diversity 差異,多樣性
geologist 地質學者
hybrid 混合的
medieval 中世紀的
multilingual 使用多語種語言的
precedent 先例
preferred 首選的
solidarity 團結
spawn 大量生產;產卵
Phrases:
around the world 全世界
go extinct 趨于滅絕
in some sense 在某種意義上