C

Throughout history, people have been interested in knowing how language first began, but no one knows exactly where or how this happened. However, we do know a lot about languages, the languages of today and also the languages of earlier times. There are probably about three thousand languages in the world today. Chinese is the language with the most speakers. English, Russian and Spanish are also spoken by many millions of people. On the other hand, some languages in the world have less than one hundred speakers.

There are several important families of languages in the world. For example, most of the languages of Europe are in one large family called Indo-European. The original( 最初的 ) language of this family was spoken about 4,500 years ago. Many of the present day languages of Europe and India are modern forms of the language of 4,500 years ago.

Languages are always changing. The English of today is very different from the English of 500 years ago. In time some even die out completely. About 1,000 years ago English was a little –known relative of German spoken on one of the borders (边界)of Europe.

If a language has a lot of speakers or if it is very old, there may be differences in the way it is spoken in different areas. That is, the language may have several dialects. Chinese is a good example of dialect differences. Chinese has been spoken for thousands of years by many millions of speakers. The differences between the dialects of Chinese are so great that speakers of Chinese from some parts of China cannot understand speakers from other parts.

64. The first paragraph mainly tells us that_______.

A. most people in the world speak Chinese

B. there are thousands of languages in the world today

C. man has much knowledge about languages

D. some people know sever al languages

65. Many European and Indian languages ______.

A. will soon die out completely B. were once a relative of English

C. are the same as before D. come from the same family

66. _____ seems to have changed a lot

A. Chinese B. English C. Spanish D. German

67. The word dialect in the last paragraph means ____.

A. a special language spoken by Chinese

B. the sign used by the Chinese people in a special area

C. the difference between the old and today’s Chinese

D. the form of a language used in one part of the country

D

When I was 16 years old, I made my first visit to the United States. It wasn’t the first time I had been abroad. Like most of English children I learned French at school. And I had often been to France, so I was used to speaking a foreign language to people who didn’t understand French. But when I went to America I was really looking forward to having a nice easy holiday without any language problems.

How wrong I was. The misunderstanding began at the airport. I was looking for a public telephone to give my friend Danny a call and tell her that I had arrived. A friendly old man saw me looking lost and asked if he could help me.

“Yes”, I said. “I want to give my friend a ring.”

“Well, that’s nice,” he said. “Are you getting married? But aren’t you a bit young?”

“Who is talking about marriage?” I replied. “I only want to give my friend a ring to tell her I’ve arrived. Can you tell me where there’s a phone box?”

“Oh!” he said, “there’s a phone downstairs.”

When at last we met, Danny explained the misunderstandings to me.

“Don’t worry,” she said to me, “I had so many difficulties at first. There are lots of words which the Americans use differently in meaning from British. You will soon get used to all the funny things they say. Most of the time British and American people understand each other!”

68. Where was the writer from?

A. America. B. France. C. England. D. China

69. The writer wanted ______.

A. to buy a ring for his friend B. to make a call to his friend

C. to go to the telephone company D. his friend to see him off

70. From the passage we can see that “give somebody a ring” ______.

A. has the same meaning in America as in England

B. means “call somebody” for the old man

C. has two different meanings

D. means “be going to get married” in England

71. In the last paragraph, the underlined word “they” refers to ______.

A. the old man and the boy B. the Americans

C. the British D. the French