IELTS Reading 練習 5 語言滅絕（含題目+詳解）

Language Extinction

IELTS · 雅思備考 · 11 min read · 2026-04-25

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主題: Why minority languages are disappearing
文章重點: Half of the world's 7,000 languages may vanish this century, mostly through economic pressure rather than deliberate suppression; revival is rare, so linguists increasingly focus on documentation.
難度: 進階 · Upper-Intermediate
建議時間: 18 分鐘

重要單字

endangered — at risk of disappearing / 瀕危的
transmission — passing something on to others / 傳遞、傳承
dominant — most powerful or common / 主導的
revitalisation — bringing back to active use / 復興、振興
immersion — being completely surrounded by something / 沉浸
documentation — detailed recording of information / 記錄、文獻

30 秒快速理解 30-second summary

About half of the world's 7,000 languages are likely to disappear before 2100. A language is endangered once children stop learning it as a mother tongue. The driving forces are economic: parents prefer dominant languages tied to opportunity. Lost languages take with them detailed local knowledge. A few revivals such as Hebrew and Maori have succeeded, but most threatened languages can only be documented, not saved.

逐段練習 Read paragraph by paragraph

1 段落 1 — A century of mass extinction for languages

Of the roughly seven thousand languages spoken today, linguists estimate that at least half are likely to disappear before the end of the twenty-first century. A language is typically judged endangered when children in its speech community stop learning it as a mother tongue. Once transmission to the next generation ceases, the language survives only among ageing speakers, and its extinction becomes a matter of decades rather than centuries.

本段重要單字 (3)

endangered — at risk of dying out / 瀕危的
mother tongue — first language learned in childhood / 母語
transmission — passing something on / 傳遞

Quick Check · 隨堂小測

When is a language considered endangered, according to the passage?

A. When fewer than one thousand people still speak it.
B. When children stop learning it as their first language.
C. When it is no longer used in government documents.

看答案 · Show answer

答案：B — B. When children stop learning it as their first language.

The text says a language is judged endangered "when children in its speech community stop learning it as a mother tongue" — i.e. as their first language.

2 段落 2 — Economic, not intentional, decline

The forces driving this decline are usually economic rather than intentional. Governments in many countries promote a single national language in schools and official documents, associating it with opportunity and modernity. Parents, hoping to give their children access to wider employment, choose to raise them in the dominant language rather than the local one. Mass media, migration to cities and the global reach of English reinforce this preference. Within three generations, a healthy minority language may collapse.

本段重要單字 (3)

intentional — done on purpose / 有意的
dominant — strongest or most common / 主導的
reinforce — to make stronger / 強化

Quick Check · 隨堂小測

According to the writer, why do most parents switch their children to a dominant language?

A. Because their government legally bans local languages.
B. Because they hope to give their children better job prospects.
C. Because local languages have no written form.

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答案：B — B. Because they hope to give their children better job prospects.

The paragraph says parents "hope to give their children access to wider employment" — an economic motive, not legal coercion.

3 段落 3 — When a language dies, knowledge dies

The consequences extend beyond sentiment. Languages encode specialised knowledge of local ecosystems, medicinal plants, weather patterns and navigation that is rarely preserved in translation. When the last fluent speaker of Eyak, an Alaskan language, died in 2008, detailed terminology for river ice conditions — vital for safe travel — was lost almost overnight. Similar losses have been recorded across Australia, the Amazon and the Pacific.

本段重要單字 (3)

encode — to store information in a form / 編碼、蘊含
ecosystem — a community of living things and their environment / 生態系統
terminology — specialised words used in a field / 術語

Quick Check · 隨堂小測

Why does the writer mention the death of the last Eyak speaker?

A. To prove that all Alaskan languages are now extinct.
B. To illustrate how practical knowledge can vanish with a language.
C. To show that translation can fully preserve traditional knowledge.

看答案 · Show answer

答案：B — B. To illustrate how practical knowledge can vanish with a language.

Eyak is offered as an example of "specialised knowledge ... rarely preserved in translation"; specifically, terminology for river ice "vital for safe travel" was lost when the last speaker died.

4 段落 4 — Revival, and the turn to documentation

Revitalisation efforts have produced mixed results. The best-known success is Hebrew, which was revived as a spoken language in Palestine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries after nearly two millennia of use solely in religious contexts. On a smaller scale, Welsh, Maori and Hawaiian have stabilised or modestly grown through immersion schooling and government support. Yet most endangered languages lack the institutional backing, written corpus or speaker numbers that such programmes require. Linguists increasingly prioritise detailed documentation — audio recordings, grammars, dictionaries — so that even languages that cannot be saved may remain accessible to future scholars and descendant communities.

本段重要單字 (3)

revitalisation — bringing something back to life / 復興
immersion — full surrounding by a language / 沉浸式
documentation — detailed recording / 記錄

Quick Check · 隨堂小測

What is the main purpose of the final paragraph?

A. To argue that every endangered language can be saved.
B. To explain why linguists now focus on documentation as a priority.
C. To compare the spelling systems of Welsh and Hawaiian.

看答案 · Show answer

答案：B — B. To explain why linguists now focus on documentation as a priority.

After noting that most endangered languages lack the resources for revival, the paragraph ends by explaining that linguists therefore prioritise documentation so the languages remain accessible.

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閱讀前先看 Before you read

30 秒快速理解 30-second summary

逐段練習 Read paragraph by paragraph

1 段落 1 — A century of mass extinction for languages

2 段落 2 — Economic, not intentional, decline

3 段落 3 — When a language dies, knowledge dies

4 段落 4 — Revival, and the turn to documentation

每天 5 分鐘的系統練習

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