填空题
Can we save the world"s
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languages? The Hadza community lives in Tanzania. Their language—Hadza—is unique. However the language may not be
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for long. There are now fewer than 1,000 Hadza
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. The number will continue to
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and their sing-song tongue,
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with clicks and glottal stops, is no longer being learned by all Hadza children. The language is in danger of being
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.
The Hadza are not alone in facing the loss of their
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tongue. Every
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days a language dies. Over half of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken on the planet may
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by the end of the 20th century. Eighty percent of the
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languages have no
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form.
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the last speaker dies, so does the language. But eighty percent of the world"s population now speak just
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of its languages. So, will the languages on the
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be reduced to a
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of tongues?
Not if some people have their way, who are fighting back to
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rarer tongues successfully. Perhaps the most successful example is
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, which was dead two centuries ago but is a living language now. Other languages have also been brought back from the brink of
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through the sheer will and determination of their communities. Language preservation works best when the language, culture and
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of minority-speaker communities are
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by national governments.