Save the endangered languages 拯救濒临消失的语言

蒋建平

隨着越来越多的人说汉语、英语、西班牙语和法语，有些语言正慢慢消失。根据联合国教育、科学及文化组织（UNESCO）的统计，当今世界所使用的语言中，有一半可能在下个世纪消亡。拯救濒临消失的语言迫在眉睫。

1 As more and more people speak the global languages of Chinese， English， Spanish， and French， other languages are rapidly disappearing. In fact， half of the languages spoken around the world today will likely die out by the next century， according to United Nations Educational， Scientific and Cultural Organization （UNESCO）.

2 In an effort to prevent language loss， scholars from a number of organizations—UNESCO and National Geographic among them—have for many years been documenting dying languages and the cultures they reflect. Mark Turin， a scientist at the MacMillan Center Yale University， who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas， is following that tradition. His recently published book， A Grammar of  the Thangmi Language with an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture， grows out of his experience of living， working， and raising a family in a village in Nepal.

3 Documenting the Thangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin， who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayan reaches of India， Nepal， Bhutan， and China. But he is not satisfied to simply record these voices before they disappear without a record. At the University of Cambridge， Turin discovered a wealth of important materials， including photographs， films， tape recordings， and field notes， which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection. Now， through the two organizations that he has founded， the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project， Turin has started a campaign to make such documents， for the world available not just to scholars but to the younger generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet， Turin's notes， the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.

Reading  Check

Choose the best answers according to the text.

Detail 1. Many scholars are making efforts to                   .

A. set up language research centers

B. rescue disappearing languages

C. search for new languages

D. save global languages

Vocabulary 2. What does the underlined phrase “that tradition” in paragraph 2 refer to？

A. Having full records of dying languages.

B. Writing books on language teaching.

C. Telling stories about language users.

D. Living with the native speakers.

Detail 3. What is Turin's book based on？

A. The cultural studies.

B. His experience in Nepal.

C. The documents available at Yale.

D. His language research in Bhutan.

Inference 4. Which of the following can best reflect Turin's work？

A. Write， sell and donate.

B. Record， repair and reward.

C. Collect， protect and reconnect.

D. Design， experiment and report.

Language  Study

Discover the difficult sentence in the text

As more and more people speak the global languages of Chinese， English， Spanish， and French， other languages are rapidly disappearing. 随着越来越多的人说汉语、英语、西班牙语和法语这些全球性的语言，其他语言正在迅速消失。

【点石成金】本句是一个主从复合句，other languages are rapidly disappearing是主句，As more

and more...Spanish， and French是As引导的时间状语从句。

Cutural  Background

世界上有多少种语言？

根据德国出版的《语言学及语言交际工具问题手册》，现在世界上已查明的有5，651种语言。在这些语言中，约有1，400种还没有被人们承认是独立的語言，或者是正在衰亡的语言。在4，200多种已被承认的独立的语言中，能得到很好的研究的仅有500种，而有1，500种几乎还没被研究过。