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Taka Posted 19 years ago
Grammar

they collide

0 01i00The American, living in this vast country and able to traverse three thousand miles east to west using the same language, needs to hear languages as 01font00they collide 02font00in Europe, Africa, and Asia.02br
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02i00What does 'they' refer to and how do you interpret the 'collide' above?02br
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00One book of mine says 'they' refers to the American people and the 'collide' means 'encounter'. Another says 'they' are 'languages' and 'collide' is similar to 'are excanged'...0-
  

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4 Answers
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0I have an inclination to believe that they refers to languages.02br
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00IMO, the sentence is ambigious.02br
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00collide means colliding cultures like colliding colors (they do not match, diverse, different), something like that.0-
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0 01blockquote
01cite10Taka12cite11i10The American, living in this vast country and able to traverse three thousand miles east to west using the same language, needs to hear languages as 11font10they collide 12font10in Europe, Africa, and Asia.12br
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12i10What does 'they
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0'they' refers to the different languages. To collide is to bump into something. The point the writer is making is that in Europe, for example, you can pass through French, Dutch, German or Italian-speaking areas in just a few hundred miles, in comparison with the three thousand miles of America which is only English-speaking.0-
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0 Glad my interpretation was the same as yours!02br
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00Thank you very much!0-
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