Tracing missing persons can take much patient detective work. But a special kind of “private eye” can trace the missing ancestors of whole peoples by studying the clues buried by words. __1__ These philologists, such as the language detectives are called, have traced __2__ the word trail back from peoples in Europe, India, South Africa, the Americas,and the Pacific islands in a tiny nameless, and forgotten tribe that roamed central __3__ Eurasia 5000 to 6000 years ago, before the dawn of writing history. __4__ Since a long time scholars have been puzzled over the striking __5__ difference of words in different languages. In Dutch, vader; in Latin, pater;in __6__ old Irish, athir; in Persian, pidar;in the Sanskrit of distant India, pitr.

These words all sounded likely and meant the same thing—“father” __7__ Where did it happen that widely separated peoples used such __8 close related sound symbols? The problem baffled linguists for years. The more so __9__ because “father” was but one of a host of such coincidences. Towards the end of the 18 century it dawned on scholars that perhaps all these words stemmed __10__ from some common language.

答案:

1 将by改为in。(be) buried in 意思为 “被…所掩盖,掩蔽于…”

2 将such去掉。在这里as是连词,引导状语从句.

3 将第一个and改为to (这个句子长,小心上当呀)。以便和前文的from构成搭配 “from…to…”,表示 “从……到……”.

4 将writing改为written`。“有文字记载的历史”英语为 “written history”.

5 将Since改为 For。因为since做介词, 表示 “自从……起” 之意时,后面一般不跟表示一段时间的名词.

6 将difference改为similarity。从后面的例子我们可以看出,作者在这里讲述的是文字的惊人的相同之处,而不是不同之处.

7 将likely改为alike。likely 意思为 “很可能的”,不做 “相同的,相似的”解.

8 将where改为why。这里不是问地点而是问原因,从后面的because也可以看出.

9 将close改为副词closely。因为形容词close不能修饰过去分词related.

10 将18改为 18th.。The more so because “father” was but one of a host of such coincidences.

这句话的the more so because是什么意思呢, 以为人家出版社错了,不过看两本资料都这么写. 有谁看得懂么?还是说真的是出错了.原来the more so because意思为: 更何况.