Question

Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

• A. Boa Senior, who lived through the 2004 tsunami, the Japanese occupation and diseases brought by British settlers, was the last native of the island chain who was fluent in Bo.
• B. The indigenous population has been steadily collapsing since the island chain was colonised by British settlers in 1858 and used for most of the following 100 years as a colonial penal colony.
• C. Taking its name from a now-extinct tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human settlement of southeast Asia.
• D. The last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the Andaman Islands, breaking a 65,000 -year link to one of the world's oldest cultures.
• E. Though the language has been closely studied by researchers of linguistic history, Boa Senior spent the last few years of her life unable to converse with anyone in her mother tongue.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

Identifying the Odd Sentence 

In this task, we aim to identify the sentence that does not fit contextually with the others to form a coherent paragraph.

Given Sentences:

1. Boa Senior, who lived through the 2004 tsunami, the Japanese occupation and diseases brought by British settlers, was the last native of the island chain who was fluent in Bo.
2. The indigenous population has been steadily collapsing since the island chain was colonised by British settlers in 1858 and used for most of the following 100 years as a colonial penal colony.
3. Taking its name from a now-extinct tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human settlement of southeast Asia.
4. The last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the Andaman Islands, breaking a 65,000-year link to one of the world's oldest cultures.
5. Though the language has been closely studied by researchers of linguistic history, Boa Senior spent the last few years of her life unable to converse with anyone in her mother tongue.

Theme Analysis:

• Sentences 1, 3, 4, and 5 revolve around the death of Boa Senior, the extinction of the Bo language, and its historical significance.
• Sentence 2 discusses the historical impact of colonization on the island’s population, which deviates from the main theme focused on language and Boa Senior.

Conclusion:

Sentence 2 is the odd one out as it shifts the focus from linguistic and cultural extinction to colonial history.