Lesson41 Spoken Languages
The human mouth has three major functions． Two of them —eating andbreathing — are shared by members of the animal kingdom． The thirdfunction — speaking — is one of the principal features which distinguishhuman beings from the rest of living creatures．Although primitive man must have had a spoken language， social scientistshave no evidence of written language before the appearance of writtenrecords in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt 5-6 thousand years ago． Present-day linguists can identify over 1500 spoken languages．Chinese is thebiggest language， spoken by more than a billion people． After Chinese，English is the most widely spoken first language， and has become thelanguage of choice in international communication．English has not always been the international language． Two hundred yearsago French was the dominant language．In ancient times， Arabic，Greek andLatin were international languages at different points in time．Many people in history tried to create a common universal language for allpeoples of the world． The most successful of such effort to date wasEsperanto which was spoken by about 750，000 people at one time in the mid-20th century． However， such universal languages always fail in the endbecause of lack of a cultural foundation．
principal 主要的
distinguish ? 区分
primitive ? 原始的
Mesopotamia 美索不达米亚
linguist 语言学家
identify ? 认清，辨认
dominant 占统治地位的，占优势的
universal 通用的
foundation ? 基础
口语
人的嘴有三种主要功能。其中的两项——吃和呼吸，和动物王国的成员一样。第三项——说话，这是人类区别于其他生物的主要特征。
虽然原始人一定有口头语言，但是社会科学家没有证据证明在5到6千年前古美索不达米亚和埃及出现文字记录前人类就有文字了。如今的语言学家可以辨认1500多种口语。中文是最大的语言，有10亿多人说中文。紧随之后的是英语，它是使用最广泛的第一语言，也已经成为了国际交流中人们选择的语言。
英语并不一直是国际语言。两百年前法语是占统治地位的语言。在古代，阿拉伯语、希腊语和拉丁语是不同时期的国际语言。
历史上有许多人试图为世界各地的民族创造一种普遍通用的语言。迄今为止，此类努力中最成功的是世界语，在20世纪中叶曾一度有大约75万人使用它，但是这样的通用语言因为缺乏文化基础，最终都以失败告终。 |