Directions:After reading the following passage, you will find 5 questions or unfinished statements numbered 36 to 40. For each question or statement there are 4 choices marked. You should make the correct choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.
How many languages do you speak One,maybe two,you say Wrong! If you speak English, you use words from at least 35 foreign languages. Want proof
Read the next two sentences out loud:
"Jane saw a baby squirrel (松鼠)outside. Although she was still wearing her cotton pajamas, she hurried outside to look at it. "
There. You just spoke five languages—counting English! "Baby" comes from a Dutch word spelled the same way. "Squirrel" is French. "Cotton" was first an Arabic word and "pajamas" was taken right from the Urdu language of India. Surprised
You shouldn’ t be. Tim Morris is an English professor at the University of Texas, Arlington. He says that when we speak English, we’ re using bits and pieces of many languages.
Dr. Morris asks his college English classes to count "loan words" = words we use that were taken directly from other languages. He jokes about the term "loan words. " "It seems unlikely that we’ re going to give these words back after we’ re done with them, "he says. "Imported words" might be a better term.
According to studies done by Morris and others, simple English sentences may contain 15 percent or less of these "loan word. " Complex sentences may be 50 percent or more "imports. " Scientific papers might use mostly loan words. "We use imports constantly," Morris says," generally without any idea we are using them. " From what is said in the passage, we can know that ______.