LSAT 149 | Section 2 | Reading Comprehension: Q2

RC Question 2 Explanation

DISCUSSION: The start of the second paragraph says that most of the unique vocabulary in San Francisco Chinese is for two things:

• US Geography
• Stuff that’s in the US but not in China

In both cases, San Francisco Chinese people needed new words for these things. So, a conversation with a Cantonese speaker from China would be difficult if it talked about US things. They, however, be fine talking so long as those local US words were not used.

___________

1. People in China can talk about news from China just fine, so there wouldn’t be any unexpected vocabulary here.
2. People in China could talk about their relatives in San Francisco without knowing local Chinese words for things. “How is Uncle Smith doing?”. You don’t need geographical words for that.
3. CORRECT. This could get complicated. Even a sentence like “I went to Oracle Park in San Francisco to watch the ball game” might have words unfamiliar or different in regular Chinese.
    
   Oracle is the name of a local company, Oracle Park is a baseball stadium, San Francisco is a place name, and ball game is mild slang: it’s possible there are different words for that in SF and in China.
4. This is tempting, but feelings are universal and probably use old Chinese words. And when you talk about the US in general, you don’t need to say things like “downtown” and “labor day”.
5. This is an easy subject of discussion, as Chinese traditions clearly exist in China, so Chinese has words for them. The passage is clear that when words already existed, SF Chinese used those same words.