Reading Comprehension · Question 11 · Medium

As used in the passage, the word 'scarcer' most nearly means

For most of the internet's history, a user in India who did not read English had a narrow choice of things to do online. That has changed quickly. Cheap data plans and inexpensive smartphones brought hundreds of millions of new users online within a few years, and most of them prefer to read, search and shop in languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Bengali or Marathi. Companies that once treated regional languages as an afterthought now design for them first. Voice search has grown particularly fast, partly because typing in Indian scripts on a small keyboard is slow, and partly because speaking feels natural to users who are new to technology. Yet the shift brings its own difficulties. Translation software still struggles with mixed-language speech, in which a single sentence may move between Hindi and English several times. Reliable information on health or government schemes is also scarcer in some languages than in others, which leaves speakers of smaller languages more exposed to rumours. The next phase of India's internet growth, many analysts argue, will depend less on connecting new users than on serving them well in the languages they actually use.

1. more expensive
2. less accurate
3. less plentiful
4. more popular

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