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LSAT Preptest 149, Section 2, Question 4

Passage 1: Chinese Dialects

Explanation

A. (Correct Response) The passage indicates that, despite the introduction of new terms and the adoption of words from American English, the core of the language brought to the U.S. by Chinese people has remained intact. It suggests that normal conversations can be conducted fairly readily between Chinese-speaking Chinese Americans and new arrivals from China, provided they speak the same traditional Chinese dialect.


B. The passage does not state that traditional Chinese dialects eventually merge with other Chinese dialects.


C. There is no mention in the passage of subtle changes in sound and grammatical structure.


D. The passage does not indicate that traditional dialects are often abandoned for the Cantonese dialect.


E. The passage suggests that while new vocabulary has been added, including transliterated American English terms, this has supplemented but not supplanted the traditional language in the traditional dialects. It does not claim that much of the traditional vocabulary is lost.

The passage supports the idea that the traditional Chinese dialects spoken by immigrants in the U.S. have fundamentally remained the same over time, even with the addition of new terms from American English.

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