2024年4月1日发(作者：)

2018年四川全国卷英语C篇翻译

Languages have been coming and going for thousands of

years,but in recent times there has been less coming and a lot

more the world was still populated by

hunter-gatherers,small,tightly knit(联系)groups developed

their own patterns of speech independent of each

language experts believe that 10,000 years ago,when the world

had just five to ten million people,they spoke perhaps 12,000

languages between them.

Soon afterwards,many of those people started settling down

to become farmers,and their languages too became more settled

and fewer in recent

centuries,trade,industrialisation,the development of the

nation-state and the spread of universal compulsory

education,especially globalisation and better communications

in the past few decades,all have caused many languages to

disappear,and dominant languages such as English,Spanish and

Chinese are increasingly taking over.

语言在数千年的时间里不断出现又消失，但是最近出现的语言少

了，而消失的语言却增加了。当世界上仍然住着采集狩猎者时，紧密

联系的小团体发展了彼此独立的属于自己的语言形式。一些语言学家

认为一万年前，当世界上只有五百万到一千万人口时，他们之间可能

会说12 000种语言。

不久之后，这些人中的许多人开始定居下来，成为农民，而他们

的语言也变得更加稳定，数量也越来越少。近几个世纪以来，贸易、

工业化、单一民族独立国家的发展和全民义务教育的普及，尤其是过

去几十年来的全球化和通讯方式的改良，所有这些因素导致了许多语

言消失，而主要的语言，如英语、西班牙语和汉语，逐渐取得了主导

地位。

At present,the world has about 6,800

distribution of these languages is hugely general

rule is that mild zones have relatively few languages,often

spoken by many people,while hot,wet zones have lots,often

spoken by small has only around 200

languages;the Americas about 1,000;Africa 2 400;and Asia and

the Pacific perhaps 3,200,of which Papua New Guinea alone

accounts for well over median number(中位数)of

speakers is a mere 6,000,which means that half the world’s

languages are spoken by fewer people than that.

目前，世界上约有6 800种语言，这些语言的分布极不均衡。一

般规律是，温和地带的语言相对较少，经常有很多人使用，而炎热、

潮湿的地区有很多语言，经常有少数人使用。欧洲大约只有200种语

言；美洲大约有1 000种；非洲有2 400种；亚洲和太平洋地区大概

有3 200种，其中仅巴布亚新几内亚就占了八百多种。讲某种语言的

人的中位数只有6 000人，这意味着世界上有一半的语言被比其还少

的人说。

Already well over 400 of the total of,6,800 languages are

close to extinction(消亡),with only a few elderly speakers

,at random,Busuu in Cameroon(eight remaining

speakers),Chiapaneco in Mexico(150),Lipan Apache in the United

States(two or three)or Wadjigu in Australia(one,with a

question-mark):none of these seems to have much chance of

survival.

在总共6 800种语言中，已经有四百多种濒临灭绝，只剩下少数

几个说该语言的老年人。随机挑选喀麦隆的Busuu（剩余8位说该语

言的人）、墨西哥的Chiapaneco（150人）、美国的Lipan Apache（2

或3个人）或澳大利亚的Wadjigu（1人，有疑问）：这些之中似乎没

有一个有太大的生存几率。