Single correct option
The passage below is followed by four summaries. Choose the one that best captures its essence.
Most languages spoken today will not survive the century. Linguists estimate that of the roughly seven thousand languages currently in use, a large majority have fewer than ten thousand speakers, and many of these are spoken predominantly by older generations, with children increasingly raised in a dominant regional or national language instead. Once a language ceases to be transmitted to children, its revival becomes exceedingly difficult, since fluent, native command of a language's full grammar and idiom is rarely acquired in adulthood. Documentation efforts, recording vocabulary, grammar and oral literature before the last fluent speakers die, can preserve a record of a language, but a recorded language is not the same as a living one, spoken, argued in, joked in, and passed unreflectively from parent to child.
Most languages spoken today will not survive the century. Linguists estimate that of the roughly seven thousand languages currently in use, a large majority have fewer than ten thousand speakers, and many of these are spoken predominantly by older generations, with children increasingly raised in a dominant regional or national language instead. Once a language ceases to be transmitted to children, its revival becomes exceedingly difficult, since fluent, native command of a language's full grammar and idiom is rarely acquired in adulthood. Documentation efforts, recording vocabulary, grammar and oral literature before the last fluent speakers die, can preserve a record of a language, but a recorded language is not the same as a living one, spoken, argued in, joked in, and passed unreflectively from parent to child.
- A. Documentation projects have successfully reversed language loss in most of the world's endangered languages.
- B. Most of the world's languages are at risk of disappearing because children are no longer learning them natively, and while documentation can preserve a record, it cannot substitute for a living, natively transmitted language.
- C. Only languages with fewer than ten thousand speakers are worth documenting, since larger languages face no risk of extinction.
- D. Adults can easily achieve native fluency in an endangered language if given sufficient time and resources.
Show answer and solution
Answer: (B) Most of the world's languages are at risk of disappearing because children are no longer learning them natively, and while documentation can preserve a record, it cannot substitute for a living, natively transmitted language.
The passage's central argument is that intergenerational transmission failure threatens most languages, and that documentation, while valuable, cannot replace a living language. B captures both points precisely. A contradicts the passage's own caveat about documentation's limits; C introduces an unsupported value judgment; D directly contradicts the passage's claim that adult acquisition of full native fluency is rare.
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