TEXT E In every cultivated
language there are two great classes of words which, taken together, comprise
the whole vocabulary. First, there are those words with which we become
acquainted in ordinary conversation, which we learn, that is to say, from the
members of our own family and from our familiar associates, and which we should
know and use even if we could not read or write. They concern the common things
of life, and are the stock in trade of all who speak the language. Such words
may be called "popular" since they belong to the people at large and are not the
exclusive possession of a limited class. On the other hand, our
language includes a multitude of words which are comparatively seldom used in
ordinary conversation. Their meanings are known to every educated person, but
there is little occasion to employ them at home or in the market-place. Our
first acquaintance with them comes not from our mother’s lips or from the talk
of our schoolmates, but from books that we read, lectures that we hear, or the
more formal conversation of highly educated speakers, who are discussing some
particular topic in a style appropriately elevated above the habitual level of
everyday life. Such words are called "learned", and the distinction between them
and "popular" words is of great importance to a right understanding of the
linguistic process. The difference between popular and learned
words may be easily seen in a few examples. We may describe a girl as "lively"
or as "vivacious". In the first case, we are using a native English formation
from the familiar noun life. In the latter, we are using a Latin derivative
which has precisely the same meaning. Yet the atmosphere of the two words is
quite different. No one ever got the adjective lively out of a book. It is a
part of everybody’s vocabulary. We cannot remember a time when we did not know
it, and we feel sure that we learned it long before we were able to read. On the
other hand, we must have passed several years of our lives before learning the
word vivacious. We may even remember the first time that we saw it in print or
heard it from some grown-up friend who was talking over our childish heads. Both
lively and vivacious are good English words, but lively is "popular" and
vivacious is "learned". The main idea of the passage is that ______.
A．the two kinds of words, popular and learned words, are both important in a cultivated language B．it is easy to learn popular words in a language C．we must make great efforts to learn learned words D．learned words are more important than popular words