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Naturally the young are more inclined to novelty than their eiders and it is in their speech, as it always was, that most of the verbal changes originate. But listening critically to their talk I hear hardly any new words. It is all a matter of using old words in a new way and then copying each other, for much as they wish to speak differently from their parents, they want even more to speak like people of their own age. A new usage once took time to spread, but now a pop star can falsify it across the world in hours. Of course it is not only the young who like to use the latest in-word. While they are describing their idols as smashing, great or cosmic, their parents and the more discriminating of the younger set are also groping for words of praise that are at once apt and fashionable. However, their choice of splendid, brilliant, fantastic and so on will in turn be slightly dimmed by over-use and need replacement.
Magic is a theme that bas regularly supplied words of phrase (and the choice must betray something in our nature). Charming, entrancing and enchanting are all based on it. So also is marvelous, which has been used so much that some of its magic has faded while among teenagers wizard had a great run. Another of this group, though you might not think it, is glamorous, which was all the rage in the great days of Hollywood. Glamour was a Scottish dialect form. of "grammar" or "grammarye", which itself was an old word for enchantment. (Grammar means the study of words, and words have always been at the heart of magic.) The change from "r" to "1" may have come about through the association with words like gleaming and glittering.
On the whole, when a new word takes over the old ones remain, weakened but still in use, so that the total stock increases all the time. But some that start only as slang and never rise above the class can disappear completely. "Did you really say ripping when you were young?" my granddaughter asked me, rather like asking if I ever wore a suit of armor. Of course I did and it was no sillier than smashing, which some of her contemporaries are still saying.
Which of the following is NOT true about young people in their speech?

A. They use words invented by pop stars.
B. They copy the speech of their contemporaries.
C. They give words new meanings.
D. They invent words that older people cannot understand.

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According to the passage which of the following statements is NOT the reason for "Poverty

A. Hot water is a luxury.
B. The poor had no money for soap.
Cold water does not help wash the dishes clean.
D. The children of the poor always make their clothes too dirty to be washed clean.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of the field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate, we can not hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
When was the new nation founded?

A. Forty-seven years ago.
B. Eighty-seven years ago.
C. Twenty-eight years ago.
D. One hundred and seven years ago.

We will continue to teach other languages in some form, and not just for reasons of practicality, Learning a language is good for your mental health; it forces you to understand another cultural and intellectual system. So I hope British education will develop a more rational approach to the foreign languages available to students in line with their political importance. Because so many people believe it's no longer important to know another language, I fear that time devoted to language teaching in schools may well continue to decline. But you can argue that learning another language well is more taxing than, say, learning to play chess well-- it involves sensitivity to a set of complicated rules, and also to context.
Technology will certainly make a difference to the use of foreign languages. Computers may, for instance, alleviate the drudgery that a vast translation represents. But no one who has seen a computer translation will think it can substitute for knowledge of the different languages. A machine will always be behind the times. Still more important is the fact that no computer will ever get at the associations beyond the words associations that may not be expressed but which carry much of the meaning. In languages like Arabic that context is very important. Languages come with heavy cultural baggage too-- in French or German if you missed the cultural references behind a word you're very likely to be missing the meaning. It will be very hard to teach all that to a computer.
All the predictions are that English will be spoken by a declining proportion of the world's population in the 21st century. I don't think foreign languages will really become less important, but they might be perceived to be-- and that would in the end be a very bad thing.
From the first paragraph we can infer that ______.

A. English is the universal language
B. Chinese would become the universal language
C. languages always take kinds of forms
D. English has no variants, but Chinese does

According to the passage, which of the following causes Alzheimer's disease?

A. Sever emotional stress.
B. Nutritional deficiency.
C. The death of nerve cells in the cerebral cortex.
D. Severe head trauma.

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