Задание
Прочитай текст и выполни задания 12–18. В каждом задании запиши в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному варианту ответа.
When considering which foreign languages to study, some people shy away from those that use a different alphabet. Those random looking squiggles seem to symbolise the impenetrability of the language, the difficulty of the task ahead.
So it can be surprising to hear devotees of Russian say that the alphabet is the easiest part of the job. The Cyrillic script, like the Roman one, has its origins in the Greek alphabet. As a result, some letters look the same and are used nearly identically. Others look the same but have different pronunciations, like the p in Cyrillic, which stands for an r sound. For Russian, that cuts the task down to only about 20 entirely new characters. These can comfortably be learned in a week, and soon mastered to the point that they present little trouble. An alphabet, in other words, is just an alphabet. A few tricks aside, other versions do what the Roman one does: represent sounds.
Foreign languages really become hard when they have features that do not appear in your own — things you never imagined you would have to learn. Which is another way of saying that languages slice up the messy reality of experience in strikingly different ways. This is easily illustrated with concrete vocabulary. Sometimes the meanings of foreign words and their English equivalents overlap but don't match exactly. Danish, for instance, does not have a word for "wood"; it just uses "tree" (trae). Or consider colours, which lie on a spectrum that different languages segment differently. In Japanese, ao traditionally refers to both green and blue. Some green items are covered by a different word, midori, but ao applies to some vegetables and green traffic lights. As a result, ao is rather tricky to use.
Life becomes tougher still when other languages make distinctions that yours ignores. Russian splits blue into light (goluboi) and dark (sinii). Plenty of other "basic" English words are similarly broken down in their foreign corollaries. "Wall" and "corner" seem like simple concepts until you learn languages that sensibly distinguish between a city's walls and a bedroom's (in the German language), interior corners and street corners (in the Spanish language), and so on.
These problems are tractable on their own; you don't often have to refer to a corner in casual conversation. But when other languages make structural distinctions missing from your native tongue, the mental effort seems never-ending. English has verbs-of-all-work that seem straightforward enough until you try to translate them. In languages like German, "put" is divided into verbs that signify hanging, laying something flat and placing something tall and thin. "Go" in Russian is a nightmare, with a suite of verbs distinguishing walking and travelling by vehicle, one way and round trips, single and repeated journeys, and other niceties. You can specify all these things in English if you want to; the difference is that in Russian, you must.
Sometimes verb systems force choices on speakers not only for individual verbs, but for all of them. "Evidential" languages require a verb ending that shows how the speaker knows that the statement made is true. Turkish is one of them. Others, such as a cluster in the Amazon, have particularly complex — and obligatory — evidentiality rules.
In the end, the "hard" languages to learn are not those that do what your own language does in a new way. They are the ones that make you constantly pay attention to distinctions in the world that yours blithely passes over. It is a bit like a personal trainer putting you through entirely new exercises. You might have thought yourself fit before, but the next day you will wake up sore in muscles you never knew you had.
12. What does the word "squiggles" refer to (paragraph 1)?
1) Signatures.
2) Curved lines.
3) Unusual letters.
4) Doodles.
13.People learning the Russian language say that…
1) the differences in the alphabet make learning harder.
2) despite the difference in letters, the alphabet is not a problem.
3) the Cyrillic alphabet does not come close to the Roman alphabet.
4) 20 letters in the Russian alphabet are impossible to learn.
14.The word "this" in the 3rd paragraph refers to the fact that...
1) languages can change your reality.
2) you could not imagine learning foreign languages.
3) all foreign languages are difficult to learn.
4) some foreign languages have concepts that your language does not.
15.Which of the following statements is TRUE?
1) People often ignore differences in languages.
2) Foreign languages make us notice differences that we haven't seen before.
3) Learning a foreign language is harder when you can't tell the difference between the walls of a city and those of a bedroom.
4) Russians do not understand the difference between light blue and dark blue.
16. The word "put" in German...
1) is expressed by three different verbs.
2) is a universal word.
3) does not exist in other languages.
4) is easy for Russians to learn.
17. In "evidential" languages, you must...
1) know the truth about everything.
2) present evidence to prove your statement.
3) speak only when you are absolutely sure of what you are saying.
4) distinguish whether you are certain or uncertain that the statement is true.
18. In the last paragraph, the author concludes that…
1) all languages are difficult to learn.
2) differences in languages make learning easier.
3) sports help in learning foreign languages.
4) new languages force us to consider differences in reality.