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  3. Typically, the death of a language is discussed in the same vein as the disappearance of moas and passenger pigeons. The problem

Typically, the death of a language is discussed in the same vein as the disappearance of moas and passenger pigeons. The problem

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问题     Typically, the death of a language is discussed in the same vein as the disappearance of moas and passenger pigeons. The problem is actually more rampant than species attrition: A hundred years from now, today’s 6,000 languages will likely number only 600.
    But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
    Now, to be clear, as someone who has taught himself languages as a hobby since childhood, I hardly rejoice when a language dies. Languages can put concepts together in ways more fascinatingly different from English than most of us are aware. Yet supposing that we could keep 6,000 languages alive is like supposing that we could stop, say, ice from getting soft under the sun.
    As people speaking many indigenous languages migrate to cities, inevitably they learn globally dominant languages like English and use them with one another. Their children may use their parents’ indigenous languages at home. But they never knew the lifestyle that those languages were born to express, and will be more comfortable in the public language of the world in which they grow up. They will speak mostly the public one to their own children. This is how languages die.
    Many hope that we can turn back the tide with programs to revive indigenous languages, but the sad fact is that this will almost never be seriously effective. I once taught a class of Native Americans their ancestral language in a summer program. This had the positive effect of helping them feel connected to their ancestors, but there was no possible way they were going to be able to converse in the language.
    In any case, language death is actually a healthy outcome of diversity. If people speaking different languages truly come together, as the Beatles urged us, then they need to speak a common language. Then the age-old process begins: The first generation is more comfortable in the old language, the second uses it as an at-home language and the third knows only some words and phrases. But cultural diversity persists despite the common language.
    When people use their distinct language down the generations, It’s usually bad, indicating discrimination or segregation—precisely what "diversity" fans would otherwise consider a scourge. Jews in shtetls spoke Yiddish at home and other languages elsewhere because they lived in Jewish ghettos, not because they delighted in being bilingual.
    I hope that dying languages can be recorded and described, but their individual deaths are not something to be mourned. Indeed a single "world" language would not be in itself catastrophic.
The underlined word "attrition" in the first paragraph most probably means______.
选项 A、reduction
B、alteration
C、evolution
D、variation
答案A
解析 根据第一段前两句之间的逻辑关系，第二句中的“species attrition”应与第一句中的“thedisappearance of moas and passenger pigeons”意思一致。A应为答案。
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