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TIPS
主持人嘉宾都需要听写！
HINTS
David Graddol
Hindi
dominance
underestimates
Tamil
Malay
Just 10 years ago, native English speakers were second only to Chinese in number. But British language scholar David Graddol says English will probably drop in dominance by the middle of this century to rank, after Chinese, about equally with Arabic, Hindi, and Urdu, a south-Asian tongue closely related to Hindi. He points out that the decline will not be in total numbers of English speakers, but in relative terms.
The number of people speaking English as a first language continues to rise, but it isn't rising nearly as fast as the numbers of many other languages around the world simply because the main population group has been largely in the lesser developed countries where languages other than English have been spoken.
In a recent article in the journal Science, Mr. Graddol noted that three languages not now near the top of the list of the most widely spoken might be there soon. These are Bengali, Tamil, and Malay spoken in south and southeast Asia.
But another expert on the English language says Mr. Graddol underestimates the future of its dominance. |
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发表于 2016-8-2 13:13:24