The desire to use language as a sign of national identity is a very natural one, and in result language has played a 【B1】 ______ prominent part in national moves. Men have often felt the 【B2】 ______ need to cultivate a given language to show that they are distinctive from another race whose hegemony they resent. 【B3】 ______ At the time the United States split off from Britain, for 【B4】 ______ example, there were proposals that independence should be linguistically accepted by the use of a different language from 【B5】 ______ those of Britain. There was even one proposal that Americans 【B6】 ______ should adopt Hebrew. Others favoured the adoption of Greek, though, as one man put it, things would certainly be simpler for Americans if they stuck on to English and made 【B7】 ______ the British learn Greek. At the end, as everyone knows, the 【B8】 ______ two countries adopted the practical and satisfactory solution of carrying with the same language as before. 【B9】 ______ Since nearly two hundred years now, they have shown 【B10】 ______ the world that political independence and national identity can be complete without sacrificing the enormous mutual advantages of a common language. 【B1】