Mauritius was a British colony for almost 200 years,

[BTGmoderatorDC]

Mauritius was a British colony for almost 200 years, excepting for the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.

(A) excepting for
(B) except in
(C) but except in
(D) but excepting for
(E) with the exception of

OA C

Source: Official Guide

[ceilidh.erickson]

In this sentence, we have 2 independent clauses in the non-underlined portions:
1. "Mauritius was a British colony"
2. "the English language was never really spoken"

In the original sentence, these clauses are joined only with a comma. This is what we call a comma splice or run-on sentence.

In order to correctly connect 2 independent clauses, we must have one of the following:
1. a conjunction (e.g. and, or, but)
2. a semicolon
3. a coordinating conjunction (i.e. something that makes the 2nd clause dependent, e.g. "though" or "despite", etc)


Mauritius was a British colony for almost 200 years, excepting for the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.

(A) excepting for
- comma splice
- the correct preposition is "in" --> we speak English *in* certain domains

(B) except in
- comma splice

(C) but except in
- correct!

(D) but excepting for
- this fixes the comma splice, but is not idiomatic

(E) with the exception of
- comma splice

The correct answer is C.