The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Languages become endangered and die out for many reasons. Sadly, the physical annihilation of communities of native speakers of a language is all too often the cause of language extinction. In North America, European colonists brought death and destruction to many Native American communities. This was followed by US federal policies restricting the use of indigenous languages, including the removal of native children from their communities to federal boarding schools where native languages and cultural practices were prohibited. As many as 75 percent of the languages spoken in the territories that became the United States have gone extinct, with slightly better language survival rates in Central and South America ...
Even without physical annihilation and prohibitions against language use, the language of the "dominant" cultures may drive other languages into extinction; young people see education, jobs, culture and technology associated with the dominant language and focus their attention on that language. The largest language "killers" are English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, Hindi, and Chinese, all of which have privileged status as dominant languages threatening minority languages.
When we lose a language, we lose the worldview, culture and knowledge of the people who spoke it, constituting a loss to all humanity. People around the world live in direct contact with their native environment, their habitat. When the language they speak goes extinct, the rest of humanity loses their knowledge of that environment, their wisdom about the relationship between local plants and illness, their philosophical and religious beliefs, as well as their native cultural expression (in music, visual art and poetry) that has enriched both the speakers of that language and others who would have encountered that culture ...
As educators deeply immersed in the liberal arts, we believe that educating students broadly in all facets of language and culture ... yields immense rewards. Some individuals educated in the liberal arts tradition will pursue advanced study in linguistics and become actively engaged in language preservation, setting out for the Amazon, for example, with video recording equipment to interview the last surviving elders in a community to record and document a language spoken by no children.
Certainly, though, the vast majority of students will not pursue this kind of activity. For these students, a liberal arts education is absolutely critical from the twin perspectives of language extinction and global citizenship. When students study languages other than their own, they are sensitized to the existence of different cultural perspectives and practices. With such an education, students are more likely to be able to articulate insights into their own cultural biases, be more empathetic to individuals of other cultures, communicate successfully across linguistic and cultural differences, consider and resolve questions in a way that reflects multiple cultural perspectives, and, ultimately extend support to people, programs, practices, and policies that support the preservation of endangered languages.
There is ample evidence that such preservation can work in languages spiraling toward extinction. For example, Navajo, Cree, and Inuit communities have established schools in which these languages are the language of instruction, and the number of speakers of each has increased.
In the context of the passage, which one of the following hypothetical scenarios, if true, is NOT an example of the kind of loss that occurs when a language becomes extinct?
The question asks us to identify the hypothetical scenario that does not reflect the kind of loss described in the passage. The passage discusses cultural, ecological, and intellectual losses caused by language extinction, including the loss of:
We need to identify a scenario that doesn’t align with these themes. Let us examine the options based on this understanding -
Option A: This scenario reflects the loss of unique cultural knowledge - in this case, the ability to describe the “20 different moods of the ocean,” which likely represents detailed ecological and environmental understanding.
Option B: This scenario focuses on some form of administrative or statistical change in a government list; the focus is not on the cultural, ecological, or intellectual loss emphasised in the passage. Therefore, the option does not reflect the deeper, humanity-wide loss described in the passage.
Option C: This scenario aligns with the loss of unique cultural concepts and the emotional depth tied to a word or phrase. In the author’s perspective, losing this concept would diminish humanity's understanding of the complexity of human relationships.
Option D: This scenario reflects the loss of ecological knowledge about snow textures, which likely has practical implications for living in the Arctic environment. This aligns with the passage's discussion of losing environmental wisdom when languages die.
Hence, Option B is the correct choice.
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