Prashant10692 wrote:
What is wrong with C?
It even carries the meaning and intent of the original sentence.
How to know when parallelism is sneaking in between the meaning.
Quote:
On a Chippewa reservation in Wisconsin, young members of the tribe are using computers for learning their ancient language that was nearly forgotten.
(A) for learning their ancient language that was nearly forgotten
(B) for learning their ancient language that they nearly forgot
(C) to learn their ancient language, which they nearly forgot
(D) to learn their ancient and nearly forgotten language.
(E) to learn their language that was ancient and nearly forgotten
You can eliminate (A) and (B) easily enough based on the idiom error, but there's actually a pretty huge meaning difference between (C), (D), and (E).
In (C): "they" refers back to "young members of the tribe," so we have: "... young members of the tribe are using computers to learn their ancient language, which [young members of the tribe] nearly forgot." Wait -- that's suggesting that the problem is that the ancient Chippewa language was forgotten
by the young members of the tribe.But that's not what the sentence is trying to say: the heart of the sentence is that the ancient language has nearly been forgotten
in general -- not just by young members of the tribe -- and that's why it's noteworthy that young Chippewas are learning the language on computers now. (D) conveys that meaning much more clearly.
I don't think anybody was all that worried about (E), but for what it's worth: it doesn't make sense to use the past tense in the phrase "their language that
was ancient", since "ancient" is a general characteristic of the language -- not a characteristic that was only true in the past.
I hope this helps!