Because there is not a linguistic census in France, as there is for Br

but, GMATNinja , in option e, aren't two independent clause connected with a comma? Doesn't that make it wrong?

Because there is not a linguistic census in France, as there is for Britain, there is difficulty in estimating the number of speakers of Brento, a Celtic language.

(A) Because there is not a linguistic census in France, as there is for Britain, there is difficulty in estimating

"census in France" vs. (census) "for Britain" - OUT

(B) Because there is no linguistic census in France, unlike Britain, it is difficult to estimate

"census in France" vs. "Britain" - OUT

(C) Unlike Britain, there is no linguistic census in France, and that fact makes for difficulty in estimating

"Britain" vs. the clause "there is no linguistic census" - OUT

(D) There is not a linguistic census in France, as there is for Britain, a fact making for difficulty in the estimation of

Same as (A)

(E) There is no linguistic census in France, as there is in Britain, a fact that makes it difficult to estimate

BINGO!

SC54561.01

Beware of tunnel vision! Sometimes if you focus too much on one part of the sentence, you miss other issues, particularly in a question like this where the errors are unusually subtle. Take another look:


First, the phrase "for Britain" is odd. Why would we compare a census in France to a census for Britain? Was a census taken somewhere other than Britain, but then delivered to the Brits for analysis?

I also don't like "difficulty in estimating." If there's trouble in Denmark, Denmark is the location of the trouble. But "estimating" clearly isn't a location. I'd much rather see the clearer "difficult to estimate." Still, I know what the writer means, and this isn't a grammar error, so I'm not 100% comfortable eliminating this choice yet.

For now I'll hang on to (A), but everything else is going to have be a complete mess for me to really consider this.


"Like" must compare nouns. Here, it seems to compare the prepositional phrase, "in France" to the noun "Britain." That's a problem. (B) is out.


Another comparison problem. Either we're comparing "Britain" to "there" or we're again comparing "Britain" to "in France." Either way, (C) is no good.


This is like (A), but worse. Again, we have the illogical phrase, "for Britain."

And then the phrase "a fact making for difficulty in the estimation" is a dumpster fire. At first I read "fact making" the way I might have read "fact-finding," an interpretation that makes no sense. And I see no reason to write "difficulty in the estimation" when I could just say "difficult to estimate."

Again, no real grammar issue, but the meaning issues here are even more problematic than they are in (A), so I'm happy to give (D) the boot.


I don't love this, but it's less terrible than the others. Now we're comparing the census in France to the one in Britain. And we have the cleaner, more logical, "difficult to estimate." Both of these constructions are improvement over what we saw in (A).

The only element that gives me pause is the "it," but, as the always-wise notes in a previous post, this seems to be a rare instance of a pronoun that doesn't really refer to anything. The sentiment is clear enough. What is difficult? To estimate is difficult. Makes sense.

I may not love (E), but it's the best of the bunch.

I hope that helps!

Hi GMATNinja, could you please go over if there are any issues with "there is no linguistic census" vs "there is not a linguistic census"? Thanks!