听力原文：M: Good evening. Today, we invited Professor Lynch, an expert on Arabian culture

to tell us some facts about the language that we may not really know.

W: Hi, good evening. It's my honor to be here to share my knowledge with everybody.

M: So, professor, I wonder if all the Arabs speak the same language, Arabic, just like people living in North America all speak English.

W: It is generally thought that Arabic is a single language, spoken, written and understood by people in countries as widely separated as Iraq, Egypt and Morocco, but this is not so. It is only written Arabic (that is, the classical Arabic of the Koran and the modern Arabic of contemporary literature, journalism and broadcasting), that is more or less common to the whole of the Arab world. The colloquial Arabic, which is spoken in the different Arab societies today, differs as widely between Arab countries as do Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

M: That's surprising! So you mean all the Arabs from different countries can understand others' written language, but not the spoken language？

W: You are partly right. In the Arab world, written Arabic acts as a kind of Esperanto, providing a means of communication between educated people of different Arab nationalities. Written Arabic is, paradoxically, spoken too: on the radio and television, in public speeches, as well as between Arabs from different countries. We could call it pan-Arabic. It is used in rather the same way as Latin was used by educated people in Europe in the Middle Ages.

M: It seems as if there are a lot of differences between written Arabic and colloquial Arabic. Shall we say that they belong to one language？

W: It's a little complicated to explain. As we all know, even in English, of course, there are differences of grammar and vocabulary between the written and spoken language, but this difference is far less than that between the artificial pan-Arabic and the living colloquial language of any Arab country. Moreover, both written and spoken English are recognized in English- speaking countries as belonging to one living language, and both are taught in schools. Colloquial Arabic, on the other hand, is not regarded by the people who speak it as "proper" Arabic. Unlike colloquial English, it is not taught in schools, and it is not written; indeed, there is a strong feeling in Arab societies that it should not be used in a written form.

M: So what language, pan-Arabic or colloquial Arabic, does an Arab, say, an Egyptian, use mainly in his everyday life？

W: An educated Egyptian uses pan-Arabic to talk to equally educated Iraqis, Saudis and Moroccans. No reasonable man, however, wishes to talk like a book or a newspaper, and the language that the same educated Egyptian uses with his family and with other Egyptians is quite different. This language is wholly Egyptian, and it is only spoken.

Questions:

11. What mistaken view do most people hold about Arabic？

12.According to the interview, which language is more or less common to the whole of the Arab world？

13.How is pan-Arabic similar to Esperanto？

14.Which of the following is NOT taught in schools？

15.Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the interview？

(31)

A．That colloquial Arabic is the everyday spoken language, which varies from country to country.

B．That Arabic is just one language that all Arabs understand, speak and write.

C．That classical Arabic and modern Arabic are two different kinds of written Arabic.

D．That pan-Arabic provides a means of communication between educated people of different Arab nationalities.