2018全国卷I阅读C篇外刊原文解析：濒危语言（3）

2018年高考英语全国卷I阅读C篇的原文是来自《经济学人》2004年的一篇专题报道，我们已经分享了前面几段，今天继续分享出现在高考试题的最后两段。
前两篇传送门：
2018高考英语全国卷I阅读C篇外刊原文解析：濒危语言
2018全国卷I阅读C篇外刊原文解析：濒危语言（2）

第六段
At present the world has about 6,800 distinct languages (and many more dialects), according to Ethnologue, a database maintained by the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Dallas. The distribution of these languages is hugely uneven. The general rule is that temperate【mild 】zones have relatively few languages, often spoken by many people, whereas【while】 hot, wet zones have lots, often spoken by small numbers. Europe has only around 200 languages; the Americas about 1,000; Africa 2,400; and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3,200, of which Papua New Guinea alone accounts for well over 800. The median number of speakers is a mere 6,000, which means that half the world"s languages are spoken by fewer people than that.