问答题 Directions: Read the following passages and then answer IN COMPLETE SENTENCES the questions which follow each passage.
Genghis Khan massacred the population of whole cities as he built his Mongol empire. But in 1227, when his son avenged his death by ordering the slaying of the Central Asian Tangut people, he destroyed a whole culture, as the local Tangut language was never again spoken. The world now loses a language every two weeks, a rate unprecedented in history. Of course, not all meet such a violent end. Two lively and accessible new books, Andrew Dalby's Language in Danger and The Power of Babel by John McWhorter, map the intricate combination of politics, genocide, geography and economics that more typically conspire in their demise—and ask whether we are losing a testament to human creativity that rivals great works of art.
Linguists estimate that in 100 years fewer than half the world's 6,000 languages will still be in use. Will this mean a more peaceful, communicative world or an arid linguistic desert, subject to the tyranny of the monoglot yoke? In answering this question, Dalby and McWhorter take us on a fascinating and colorful spin through history, chronicling the rise of empires and crisscrossing the globe to take in the indigenous tribes of west Africa, Tasmania and the Amazon, tracking down itinerant healers in Bolivia, whale hunters off the coast of Germany, Russian immigrants in New York—in short, anyone who can cast light on the unique ways people communicate.
McWhorter likens linguistic change to Darwin's theory of evolution, arguing that languages, like animals and plants, inevitably split into subvarieties, alter in response to environmental pressures and evolve new forms and useless features. In prose that is bold and compelling, he warns against seeing grammar as a repository of culture, arguing that it is more often formed by chance and convenience and does not reflect its speakers' world view any more than "a pattern of spilled milk reveals anything specific about the bottle it came from". His theory is slightly undermined by careless errors, a Latin sentence he has composed, on which his first chapter rests, has four mistakes in nine words. (Later, rather amazingly, he bungles the masculine and neuter forms of illa, the basic word for "that". )
Rather than disassociating languages from the people who speak them, Dalby takes on the difficult but equally rewarding challenge of drawing out the distinct consciousness expressed by each tongue. As Babel becomes homogenized, surviving languages have fewer new words and ideas to draw on. Without Greek there would be no "wine-dark sea". We would not "bury the hatchet" if American Indians hadn't done it already.
Despite these differences, both authors agree that with each language we learn, our ability to comprehend the world is given fresh, new scope. The word for "world" in Yupik, an Eskimo-Aleut language of Alaska, encompasses weather, outdoors, awareness and sense, as compared with its European equivalents, which tend to refer to "people, a crowd, inhabitants", as in the French "du monde", a lot of people, or the classical Greek "he oikoumene", meaning the settled zone. Whereas in English we may simply say "he is chopping trees", Tuyuca speakers in the Amazon rain forest must change their suffixes to specify whether this was told to them, they saw it themselves, they heard the sound or they're simply guessing.
Why are these languages disappearing? Globalization is the modern equivalent of Genghis Khan, both authors argue. English is now competently spoken by about 1.8 billion people worldwide. Parents consider it the key to a more prosperous life. Fearing that without fluency in the languages of the cultures of "tall buildings" their children will be deprived of standardized education and the ability to reap the rewards of international trade, they allow their own tongues to die off with the elderly. Dalby and McWhorter rewrite the script on language change from nearly opposite but equally intelligent perspectives, agreeing on the most significant point, if our rich linguistic heritage is not preserved, even English speakers may find themselves uncomfortably lost for words.

问答题 Introduce briefly Dalby and McWhorter's views about the death of languages and their differences.

问答题 What can be concluded from the discussion about the word "world" and the expression "he is chopping trees" in different languages?

问答题 Explain the sentence "Globalization is the modern equivalent of Genghis Khan" from the last paragraph.

问答题 Millions of elderly Germans received a notice from the Health & Social Security Ministry earlier this month that struck a damaging blow to the welfare state. The statement informed them that their pensions were being cut. The reductions come as a stop-gap measure to control Germany's ballooning pension crisis. Not surprisingly, it was an unwelcome change for senior citizens such as Sabine Wetzel, a 67-year-old retired bank teller, who was told her state pension would be cut by $12.30, or 1% to $1,156.20 a month. "It was a real shock," she says. "My pension had always gone up in the past." There's more bad news on the way. On Mar. 11, Germany's lower house of Parliament passed a bill gradually cutting state pensions—which have been rising steadily since World War Ⅱ—from 53% of average wages now to 46% by 2020. And Germany is not alone. Governments across Western Europe are racing to curb pension benefits. In Italy, the government plans to raise the minimum retirement age from 57 to 60, while France will require that civil servants put in 40 years rather than 37.5 to qualify for a full pension. The reforms are coming despite tough opposition from unions, leftist politicians, and pensioners' groups. The explanation is simple: Europeans are living longer and having fewer children. By 2030 there will only be two workers per pensioner, compared with four in 2000. With fewer young workers paying into the system, cuts are being made to cover a growing shortfall. The gap between money coming in and payments going out could top $10 billion this year in Germany alone. "In the future, a state pension alone will no longer be enough to maintain the living standards employees had before they retired," says German Health & Social Security Minister Ulla Schmidt. Says Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti: " The welfare state is producing too few cradles and too few graves." Of course, those population trends have been forecast for years. Some countries, such as Britain and the Netherlands, have responded by making individuals and their employers assume more of the responsibility for pensions. But many Continental governments dragged their feet. Now, the rapid runup in costs is finally forcing them to act. State-funded pension payments make up around 12% of gross domestic product in Germany and France and 15% in Italy—two percentage points more than 20 years ago. Pensions account for an average 21% of government spending across the European Union. The U.S. Social Security system, by contrast, consumes just 4.8% of GDP. The rising cost is having serious repercussions on key European nations' commitments to fiscal restraint. "Governments have no choice but to make pension reform a priority," says Antonio Cabral, deputy director of the European Commission's Directorate General for Economic & Financial Affairs. Just as worrisome is the toll being exacted on the private sector. Corporate contributions to state pension systems—which make up 19.5% of total gross pay in Germany—add to Europe's already bloated labor costs. That, in turn, blunts manufacturers' competitiveness and keeps unemployment rates high. According to the Institute of German Economics in Cologne, benefit costs reached a record 41.7% of gross wages in Germany last year, compared with 37.4% a decade before. French cement manufacturer Lafarge says pension costs of $121 million contributed to a 9% fall in operating profits last year. To cope, Germany and most of its EU partners are using tax breaks to encourage employees to put money into private pensions schemes. But even if private pensions become more popular, European governments will have to increase minimum retirement ages and reduce public pensions. While today's seniors complain about reduced benefits, the next generation of retirees may look back on their parents' pension checks with envy. What does the author want to tell us from the example of the retired bank teller Sabine Wetzel?