Text 10A2-II

It was the middle of the afternoon, and my son, as he often does, wanted to watch Paw Patrol. “Pups Save a Humsquatch"?” he pleaded, rattling off episode titles. “No, „Pups Save the Bears." No, „Pups and the Stinky Bubble Trouble"!” I hesitated, the first sign of defeat. We"d settled into a virtuous no-TV-on-schoolnights routine, but it wasn"t a school night, and my husband and I had already done everything there was to do with a 6-year-old on a below-freezing Chicago Saturday — made pancakes, drawn pictures, counted and written numbers up to 100, read stories, played hide-and-seek (which became tickle-and-run), practiced piano, gone to Sky Zone, eaten chicken and rice, played computer games at the library, transformed an errant cardboard box into a tube for our dog, pulled out his new kids" cookbook and cooked up chocolate pudding on the stove. What more was there? TV. There was TV! Deep down, parents know that plopping your young child in front of the TV feels bad. Of course, there are even more malevolent screens lurking. In an age of YouTube Kids and artificial intelligence chatbots and when a 2025 Pew survey showed that among parents of children 12 and under, more than half reported daily YouTube consumption, worrying about the cartoons my kindergartner streams may sound quaint. But my son is, for now, too young for the perils of the Internet and adequately distracted by streaming shows, which doesn"t make me feel any better about leaning on them to keep him occupied.

Internet: http://www.nytimes.com/(adapted).

Text 10A2-II

It was the middle of the afternoon, and my son, as he often does, wanted to watch Paw Patrol. “Pups Save a Humsquatch"?” he pleaded, rattling off episode titles. “No, „Pups Save the Bears." No, „Pups and the Stinky Bubble Trouble"!” I hesitated, the first sign of defeat. We"d settled into a virtuous no-TV-on-schoolnights routine, but it wasn"t a school night, and my husband and I had already done everything there was to do with a 6-year-old on a below-freezing Chicago Saturday — made pancakes, drawn pictures, counted and written numbers up to 100, read stories, played hide-and-seek (which became tickle-and-run), practiced piano, gone to Sky Zone, eaten chicken and rice, played computer games at the library, transformed an errant cardboard box into a tube for our dog, pulled out his new kids" cookbook and cooked up chocolate pudding on the stove. What more was there? TV. There was TV! Deep down, parents know that plopping your young child in front of the TV feels bad. Of course, there are even more malevolent screens lurking. In an age of YouTube Kids and artificial intelligence chatbots and when a 2025 Pew survey showed that among parents of children 12 and under, more than half reported daily YouTube consumption, worrying about the cartoons my kindergartner streams may sound quaint. But my son is, for now, too young for the perils of the Internet and adequately distracted by streaming shows, which doesn"t make me feel any better about leaning on them to keep him occupied.

Internet: http://www.nytimes.com/(adapted).

Text 10A2-II

It was the middle of the afternoon, and my son, as he often does, wanted to watch Paw Patrol. “Pups Save a Humsquatch"?” he pleaded, rattling off episode titles. “No, „Pups Save the Bears." No, „Pups and the Stinky Bubble Trouble"!” I hesitated, the first sign of defeat. We"d settled into a virtuous no-TV-on-schoolnights routine, but it wasn"t a school night, and my husband and I had already done everything there was to do with a 6-year-old on a below-freezing Chicago Saturday — made pancakes, drawn pictures, counted and written numbers up to 100, read stories, played hide-and-seek (which became tickle-and-run), practiced piano, gone to Sky Zone, eaten chicken and rice, played computer games at the library, transformed an errant cardboard box into a tube for our dog, pulled out his new kids" cookbook and cooked up chocolate pudding on the stove. What more was there? TV. There was TV! Deep down, parents know that plopping your young child in front of the TV feels bad. Of course, there are even more malevolent screens lurking. In an age of YouTube Kids and artificial intelligence chatbots and when a 2025 Pew survey showed that among parents of children 12 and under, more than half reported daily YouTube consumption, worrying about the cartoons my kindergartner streams may sound quaint. But my son is, for now, too young for the perils of the Internet and adequately distracted by streaming shows, which doesn"t make me feel any better about leaning on them to keep him occupied.

Internet: http://www.nytimes.com/(adapted).

Text 10A2-I

Everyone ages, but, sometimes, people outlive all predictions. Previous research has uncovered an unlikely factor related to longevity: intelligence. However, intelligence isn"t a simple characteristic. There are many traits that contribute to it that can be tested — from memory to mathematical logic. In a 2024 clinical psychological science study, Paolo Ghisletta, of the University of Geneva, linked longevity specifically to one of those traits: verbal fluency, the measure of one"s vocabulary and their ability to use it. Ghisletta"s research used samples from the Berlin Aging Study, which started collecting data shortly before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. It tracked 516 people aged 70 to 105 from enrollment to their death, over as long as 18 years in some cases. The study measured factors like dental health, stress levels, and economic well-being, as well as cognition. This makes it a “rich and rare data set,” said Ghisletta in an interview.

Internet: http://www.sciencedaily.com/ (adapted).

Text 10A2-I

Everyone ages, but, sometimes, people outlive all predictions. Previous research has uncovered an unlikely factor related to longevity: intelligence. However, intelligence isn"t a simple characteristic. There are many traits that contribute to it that can be tested — from memory to mathematical logic. In a 2024 clinical psychological science study, Paolo Ghisletta, of the University of Geneva, linked longevity specifically to one of those traits: verbal fluency, the measure of one"s vocabulary and their ability to use it. Ghisletta"s research used samples from the Berlin Aging Study, which started collecting data shortly before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. It tracked 516 people aged 70 to 105 from enrollment to their death, over as long as 18 years in some cases. The study measured factors like dental health, stress levels, and economic well-being, as well as cognition. This makes it a “rich and rare data set,” said Ghisletta in an interview.

Internet: http://www.sciencedaily.com/ (adapted).

Text 10A2-I

Everyone ages, but, sometimes, people outlive all predictions. Previous research has uncovered an unlikely factor related to longevity: intelligence. However, intelligence isn"t a simple characteristic. There are many traits that contribute to it that can be tested — from memory to mathematical logic. In a 2024 clinical psychological science study, Paolo Ghisletta, of the University of Geneva, linked longevity specifically to one of those traits: verbal fluency, the measure of one"s vocabulary and their ability to use it. Ghisletta"s research used samples from the Berlin Aging Study, which started collecting data shortly before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. It tracked 516 people aged 70 to 105 from enrollment to their death, over as long as 18 years in some cases. The study measured factors like dental health, stress levels, and economic well-being, as well as cognition. This makes it a “rich and rare data set,” said Ghisletta in an interview.

Internet: http://www.sciencedaily.com/ (adapted).

Text 10A2-I

Everyone ages, but, sometimes, people outlive all predictions. Previous research has uncovered an unlikely factor related to longevity: intelligence. However, intelligence isn"t a simple characteristic. There are many traits that contribute to it that can be tested — from memory to mathematical logic. In a 2024 clinical psychological science study, Paolo Ghisletta, of the University of Geneva, linked longevity specifically to one of those traits: verbal fluency, the measure of one"s vocabulary and their ability to use it. Ghisletta"s research used samples from the Berlin Aging Study, which started collecting data shortly before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. It tracked 516 people aged 70 to 105 from enrollment to their death, over as long as 18 years in some cases. The study measured factors like dental health, stress levels, and economic well-being, as well as cognition. This makes it a “rich and rare data set,” said Ghisletta in an interview.

Internet: http://www.sciencedaily.com/ (adapted).

Text 10A1-IV

No two historical epochs, no two social classes, no two localities use words and syntax to signify exactly the same things, to send identical signals of valuation and inference. Neither do two human beings. Each living person draws, deliberately or in immediate habit, on two sources of linguistic supply: the current vulgate corresponding to his level of literacy, and a private thesaurus. The latter is inextricably a part of his subconscious, of his memories so far as they may be verbalized, and of the singular, irreducibly specific ensemble of his somatic and psychological identity.

Part of the answer to the notorious logical conundrum as to whether or not there can be “private language” is that aspects of every language-act are unique and individual. They form what linguists call an “idiolect”. Each communicatory gesture has a private residue. The “personal lexicon” in every one of us inevitably qualifies the definitions, connotations, and semantic moves current in public discourse. The concept of a normal or standard idiom is a statistically-based fiction (though it may, as we shall see, have real existence in machine-translation). The language of a community, however uniform its social contour, is an inexhaustibly multiple aggregate of speech-atoms, of finally irreducible personal meanings.

George Steiner. After babel: aspects of language and translation. London: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 45-6 (adapted).

Text 10A1-IV

No two historical epochs, no two social classes, no two localities use words and syntax to signify exactly the same things, to send identical signals of valuation and inference. Neither do two human beings. Each living person draws, deliberately or in immediate habit, on two sources of linguistic supply: the current vulgate corresponding to his level of literacy, and a private thesaurus. The latter is inextricably a part of his subconscious, of his memories so far as they may be verbalized, and of the singular, irreducibly specific ensemble of his somatic and psychological identity.

Part of the answer to the notorious logical conundrum as to whether or not there can be “private language” is that aspects of every language-act are unique and individual. They form what linguists call an “idiolect”. Each communicatory gesture has a private residue. The “personal lexicon” in every one of us inevitably qualifies the definitions, connotations, and semantic moves current in public discourse. The concept of a normal or standard idiom is a statistically-based fiction (though it may, as we shall see, have real existence in machine-translation). The language of a community, however uniform its social contour, is an inexhaustibly multiple aggregate of speech-atoms, of finally irreducible personal meanings.

George Steiner. After babel: aspects of language and translation. London: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 45-6 (adapted).

Text 10A1-III

Language is not any arbitrary fact of colonialism. We ought to consider it as another form of violence imposed upon cultures by colonial rule, as devastatingly treacherous as any other. Of course, there is an obvious distinction between physical and linguistic subjugation, and the previous claim is not to erase this in any element. Linguistic violence itself persists long past the departure of the colonist, it is a violence committed against a very culture, one from which it may never fully recover. Language is not merely a group of symbols or words; this is clear from the fact that we see it as having been the object of colonial assault. Imperial powers recognized it as anything but arbitrary, or else it would not have even been seen as necessary to subject to the same ravage. We ought not to let the role of language in colonialism slip into the background. Language as a means of colonial dominance has too often been seen as a symptom of a larger colonial pathology, as a side-effect which does not require to be dealt with urgently or with equal dedication as with more wide-spread and common conceptions of colonial violence.

As a defining aspect of culture, language is not only the means by which we pass on culture or share it, but in order to do so it must, and does, carry on its back the entirety of a culture and civilization. Further, it acts as a collective memory bank of a culture"s historical existence and experience. Because of this, the erasure of language is necessarily also the erasure of pre-colonial history. By systematically and aggressively burying a language, also buried with it is every historical event and every person who existed through it. Something as fundamental as it becomes, or rather, has been a way by which we perceive ourselves as well as where and how we exist among others. When one examines the colonial circumstance, they can see the ways in which the linguistic take-over by colonial powers posed an existential threat upon the colonized. To take away one"s language is to take away their means of making themselves visible and perceiving themselves. The forceful imposition of colonial language on the colonized is not simply a matter of easy communication and convenience, it is to impose upon a group the task of supporting the weight of a culture which refuses to recognize them as human.

Ananya Ravishankar. Linguistic imperialism: colonial violence through language. Trinity College Digital Repository, 2020. Internet: (adapted).