Question

【題目】 Although you can possibly get by as a tourist in weeks, mastering a language is a long-term commitment taking years, not months. The FSI has classified languages in degrees of difficulty for English speakers. Chinese takes approximately 88 weeks or 2,200 hours ranking top 5 along with Arabic, Korean and Japanese.

Each Chinese dialect is effectively another language but Mandarin(Putonghua in Chinese, which means the common language)is considered the official tongue in modern China. They all share roughly one evolving writing system, referred to as written language invented for administering a large, diverse empire.

To complicate(使復(fù)雜)the matter further, there are two main types of written Chinese characters under the same writing system: the traditional Chinese used in Hong Kong and Taiwan and the simplified Chinese in mainland China. For example, fly is written as 飛 in traditional Chinese and 飛 in simplified Chinese. They’re basically the same character written in two different ways but pronounced differently when spoken in different dialects.

Each written word when spoken is mutually incomprehensible between a Mandarin speaker in Beijing and a Cantonese speaker in Hong Kong. If you think that’s odd, consider our number system: the symbol “9” is universally recognized but it’s pronounced “nine” in English and “devet” in Slovenian.

Every word must be memorized separately as you can’t guess its pronunciation from the script-but one could say the same of English if you consider plough, dough and tough.

Meanwhile, dictionaries list words according to stroke(筆畫)count. These go from one to over 60 strokes. The archaic character zhé- which appropriately, means “verbose” - has 64 strokes.

And then there are the pronunciation challenges. There are four tones in Mandarin: high pitch (say G in a musical scale), rising pitch(like from C to G), falling(from G to C)and falling low then rising(C to B to G)- and if you think that’s difficult, there are nine tones in Cantonese. In Mandarin, there is a whole poem, “The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den” with just the syllable “shi” repeated 107 times in various tones. In other words, if you are tone-deaf you might as well give up now.

【1】What do all Chinese dialects have in common?

A.They were invented by the emperor.

B.They have the same writing system.

C.They evolve in the same way.

D.They serve the same purpose.

【2】Why does the author mention the symbol “9” in Paragraph 4?

A.To prove different pronunciations of Chinese dialects

B.To indicate the similarities in all languages.

C.To show that Chinese is an odd language.

D.To compare English with Slovenian.

【3】What challenge does the author think is difficult to overcome?

A.Complicated scripts and strokes.

B.Different types of characters.

C.Various tones.

D.Too many dialects.

【4】What is the main idea of this passage?

A.Chinese has different dialects.

B.Chinese is very difficult to learn.

C.Chinese is an ever-developing language.

D.Chinese sounds like music and poems.

Answer 1

【答案】

【1】B

【2】A

【3】C

【4】B

【解析】

本文屬于說明文。文章主要講了漢語是一門非常難學(xué)的語言。

【1】

細節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)第二段They all share roughly one evolving writing system, referred to as written language invented for administering a large, diverse empire.（它們都有大致相同的書寫體系，被稱為書寫語言，用來管理一個龐大而多樣的國度。）由此可知，所有的中國方言的共同之處在于它們有相同的書寫體系。故選B。

【2】

推理判斷題。根據(jù)第四段Each written word when spoken is mutually incomprehensible between a Mandarin speaker in Beijing and a Cantonese speaker in Hong Kong. If you think that’s odd, consider our number system: the symbol “9” is universally recognized but it’s pronounced “nine” in English and “devet” in Slovenian.（在北京說普通話的人和在香港說廣東話的人，說出來的每一個字都是彼此無法理解的。如果你覺得這很奇怪，想想我們的數(shù)字系統(tǒng):“9”是公認的符號，但它在英語中發(fā)音為“nine”，在斯洛文尼亞語中發(fā)音為“devet”。）由此推斷出，作者在第四段提到符號“9” ，是為了證明漢語方言的不同發(fā)音。故選A。

【3】

細節(jié)理解題。文章最后一段And then there are the pronunciation challenges. There are four tones in Mandarin: high pitch (say G in a musical scale), rising pitch(like from C to G), falling(from G to C)and falling low then rising(C to B to G)- and if you think that’s difficult, there are nine tones in Cantonese.（然后還有發(fā)音的挑戰(zhàn)。普通話有四個音調(diào):高音(比如音階中的G)、升音(比如從C到G)、降音(從G到C)、降低音再升音(從C到B到G)——如果你覺得這很難，廣東話有九個音調(diào)。）以及In other words, if you are tone-deaf you might as well give up now.（換句話說，如果你是音盲，你最好現(xiàn)在就放棄。）由此可知，作者認為不同的音調(diào)的挑戰(zhàn)是難以克服的。故選C。

【4】

主旨大意題。作者在第一段就點明了全文主題Chinese takes approximately 88 weeks or 2,200 hours ranking top 5 along with Arabic, Korean and Japanese.（漢語、阿拉伯語、韓語和日語排在前五名需要大約88周(2200小時)的時間。）并且作者在結(jié)尾段也對主題做出了呼應(yīng)，In other words, if you are tone-deaf you might as well give up now.（換句話說，如果你是音盲，你最好現(xiàn)在就放棄。）結(jié)合全文內(nèi)容，可知這篇文章主要講了中文很難學(xué)。故選B。