2018全国卷I阅读C篇外刊原文解析：濒危语言（2）
高考英语真题全国卷I阅读C篇选择了外刊原文的第4-7段，删去一些句子，替换了几个超纲词汇，共314词 。这篇就简单来分享真题前两段，看看选为高考阅读内容的难度如何。
2018高考英语全国卷I阅读C篇外刊原文解析：濒危语言
第四段：Languages have been coming and going for millennia(thousands of years), but in recent times there has been less coming and a lot more going. When the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers, small, tightly knit groups developed their own patterns of speech independent of each other. Some linguists (language experts)reckon(believe) that 10,000 years ago, when the world had just 5m-10m people, they spoke perhaps 12,000 languages between them.
come and go ：来来去去；millennia ：millennium的复数，相当于thousands of years；millennium一千年，千年期（尤指公元纪年）；千禧年；举例： the second millennium AD 公元第二个千年populate：一般用被动态，居住于；生活于；构成…的人口；词根-popul-人民
densely/heavily/highly/thickly populated人口密集的sparsely/thinly/lightly populated人口稀少的hunter-gatherer 游猎采集部族成员，采猎者patterns of speech 语言模式；independent of：表示not connected with or influenced by sth “与...无关，不受...影响的”；linguist 语言学家；通晓数国语言的人；词根助记：lingu-语言，-ist后缀表示人；例如：bilinguist 通晓两种语言的人，lingual语言的；linguistic语言学的；reckon认为；估计，高考试题使用believe替换句子结构分析：
①When the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers, ②small, tightly knit groups developed their own patterns of speech ③independent of each other.
②是句子主干，①是时间状语，③是形容词短语作后置定语。其中“When the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers”直译为“当世界上仍居住着采猎者时”，也就是说“在狩猎采集社会”。
①Some linguists reckon that ② 10,000 years ago, ③when the world had just 5m-10m people, ④they spoke perhaps 12,000 languages between them.
①是句子主干的主谓部分，②③④整体作为宾语从句，是谓语动词reckon的宾语，其中④是宾语从句的主句，②③是宾语从句的时间状语。
参考译文：几千年来，一直都有新的语言出现，也一直都有某些语言消失，但在当今时代，出现新语言的情况越来越少，而消失的语言则与日俱增。在狩猎采集社会，关系紧密的小族群发展出了各自独立的语言模式。一些语言学家认为，在一万年前，世界上只有500万到1000万人口，他们之间可能说着12000种语言。
第五段
Soon afterwards many of those people started settling down to become farmers, and their languages too became more settled and fewer in number. In recent centuries, colonization, trade, industrialisation, the development of the nation-state and the spread of universal compulsory education, among other things, have helped to extirpate many languages that had previously prospered in isolation. And in the past few decades, thanks to（especially） globalisation and better communications, the rate of attrition has greatly accelerated, and dominant languages such as English, Spanish and Chinese are increasingly taking over.
soon afterwards 不久以后settle down (在某地) 定居下来settled 稳定的，固定的；colonization 殖民；殖民地化；高考并没有考到这个词nation-state 单一民族的独立国家；compulsory education 义务教育among other things：之前在另一篇文章说过among这个介词，表示“在...中间”，通常有两种用法，①among=one of，例如：He was among the last to leave. 他是最后离开者之一。②among=besides，就如本段的among other things，又如：At the meeting they discussed, among other things, recent events in Japan. 会上除其他议题外，他们还讨论了日本近来发生的事件。extirpate : to completely destroy something that is unpleasant or unwanted消灭，根除;经典文学《简·爱》里有一个经典句子： I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now,at the first renewed view of him,they spontaneously arrived,green and strong!He made me love him without looking at me. “我曾竭力想要从我的心灵深处将刚刚崭露头角的爱情之苗连根拔掉。但是现在,在重新见到他的第一眼时,它们又自动复苏了,既青翠,又茁壮!他甚至没有看我一眼，就使我爱上了他.”
in isolation孤立地；同义词有：separately, individually;举例：China cannot develop in isolation from the Asia Pacific while the Asia Pacific cannot prosper without China. 中国发展离不开亚太，亚太繁荣也离不开中国。
attrition消耗，消磨；例如a war of attrition 消耗战;也表示“自然减员，〔人员的〕自然流失”；举例：Staff reductions could be achieved through attrition and early retirements. 减少员工数量可以通过自然减员和提前退休来实现。
take over接替，取代，占上风；参考译文：不久之后，许多采猎者开始定居下来，成了农民，他们使用的语言也固定下来，数量也减少了。在最近几个世纪,殖民化、贸易往来、工业化、民族国家发展和义务教育普及，都是促使许多语言消失的重要因素，而在以前，这些语言都纷纷盛行过。在过去的几十年里,全球化和便捷的通讯大大加快了语言流失的速度,而像英语、西班牙语和汉语这样的主流语言越来越吃香。
以上。
译文仅供参考；若有不准确之处，还请温柔提点。