23/01/20 22:02:35.14 vX5vdhSS0.net
>>434
それは東大の過去問の一節のようですね。
段落全体を引用すると、
There are estimated to be about 5,000 languages currently spoken in
the world today, depending on which you count as dialects and which
as distinct languages. To these, you can perhaps add a handful of
‘dead’ languages that are still taught in schools (ancient Greek
and Latin) or used in religious services (Sanskrit and Ge’ez).
Linguists expect that well over half of all these languages will become
extinct, in the sense of having no native speakers, within the next
half-century. They are mostly languages which currently have fewer
than a thousand native speakers, most of whom are already elderly.
The time may come, it has even been suggested, when the world will
be dominated by just two languages; on present performance, these
will almost certainly be English and Chinese. The loss of all these
languages will, of course, be a pity. As we lose them, we lose
fragments of our past, for languages represent the history of peoples,
the accumulation of their experiences, their migrations and the
invasions they have suffered.
です。
（続く）