2024年4月23日发(作者：)

Some languages resist the introduction of new words. Others, like English, seem to welcome them.

Robert MacNeil looks at the history of English and comes to the conclusion that its tolerance for

change represents deeply rooted ideas of freedom.

有些语言拒绝引入新词。另一些语言，如英语，则似乎欢迎新词的引入。罗伯特·麦

克尼尔回顾英语的历史，得出结论说，英语对变化的包容性体现了根深蒂固的自由思想。

The Glorious Messiness of English

Robert MacNeil

1 The story of our English language is typically one of massive stealing from other

languages. That is why English today has an estimated vocabulary of over one million words,

while other major languages have far fewer.

英语中绚丽多彩的杂乱无章现象

罗伯特·麦克尼尔

我们的英语的历史是典型的大量窃取其它语言的历史。正因为如此，今日英语的词汇

量据估计超过一百万，而其它主要语言的词汇量都要小得多。

2 French, for example, has only about 75,000 words, and that includes English expressions

like snack bar and hit parade. The French, however, do not like borrowing foreign words because

they think it corrupts their language. The government tries to ban words from English and declares

that Walkman is not desirable; so they invent a word, balladeur, which French kids are supposed to

say instead -- but they don't.

例如，法语只有约75,000个单词，其中还包括像snack bar（快餐店）和 hit parade（流

行唱片目录）这样的英语词汇。但法国人不喜欢借用外来词，因为他们认为这样会损害法语

的纯洁性。法国政府试图逐出英语词汇，宣称Walkman（随身听）一词有伤大雅，因此他

们造了个新词balladeur让法国儿童用——可他们就是不用。

3 Walkman is fascinating because it isn't even English. Strictly speaking, it was invented by

the Japanese manufacturers who put two simple English words together to name their product.

That doesn't bother us, but it does bother the French. Such is the glorious messiness of English.

That happy tolerance, that willingness to accept words from anywhere, explains the richness of

English and why it has become, to a very real extent, the first truly global language.

Walkman一词非常耐人寻味，因为这个词连英语也不是。严格地说，该词是由日本

制造商发明的，他们把两个简单的英语单词拼在一起来命名他们的产品。这事儿我们不介意，

法国人却耿耿于怀。由此可见英语中绚丽多彩的杂乱无章现象。这种乐意包容的精神，这种

不管源自何方来者不拒的精神，恰好解释了英语为什么会这么丰富，解释了英语缘何在很大

程度上第一个成了真正的国际语言。

4 How did the language of a small island off the coast of Europe become the language of the

planet -- more widely spoken and written than any other has ever been? The history of English is

present in the first words a child learns about identity (I, me, you); possession (mine, yours); the

body (eye, nose, mouth); size (tall, short); and necessities (food, water). These words all come

from Old English or Anglo-Saxon English, the core of our language. Usually short and direct,

these are words we still use today for the things that really matter to us.

欧洲沿海一个弹丸小岛的语言何以会成为地球上的通用语言，比历史上任何一种其他

语言都更为广泛地被口头和书面使用？英语的历史体现在孩子最先学会用来表示身份（I,

me, you）、所属关系（mine, yours）、身体部位（eye, nose, mouth）、大小高矮（tall, short），

以及生活必需品（food, water）的词汇当中。这些词都来自英语的核心部分古英语或盎格鲁

－萨克逊英语。这些词通常简短明了，我们今天仍然用这些词来表示对我们真正至关重要的

事物。

5 Great speakers often use Old English to arouse our emotions. For example, during World

War II, Winston Churchill made this speech, stirring the courage of his people against Hitler's

armies positioned to cross the English Channel: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on

the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We

shall never surrender." 伟大的演说家常常用古英语来激发我们的情感。例如，在二战

期间，温斯顿·丘吉尔作了如下的演讲来激励国民的勇气以抵抗屯兵英吉利海峡准备渡海作

战的希特勒的军队：“我们要战斗在海滩上，我们要战斗在着陆场上，我们要战斗在田野和

街巷，我们要战斗在群山中。我们决不投降。”

6 Virtually every one of those words came from Old English, except the last -- surrender,

which came from Norman French. Churchill could have said, "We shall never give in," but it is

one of the lovely -- and powerful -- opportunities of English that a writer can mix, for effect,

different words from different backgrounds. Yet there is something direct to the heart that speaks

to us from the earliest words in our language.

这段文字中几乎每个词都来自古英语，只有最后一个词——surrender 是个例外，来

自诺曼法语。丘吉尔原本可以说：“We shall never give in,”但这正是英语迷人之处和活力所

在，作家为了加强效果可以糅合来自不同背景的不同词汇。而演说中使用古英语词汇具有直

接拨动心弦的效果。

7 When Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 B.C., English did not exist. The Celts, who

inhabited the land, spoke languages that survive today mainly as Welsh. Where those languages

came from is still a mystery, but there is a theory.

尤利乌斯·凯撒在公元前55年入侵不列颠时，英语尚不存在。当时不列颠的居民凯

尔特人使用的那些语言流传下来主要成了威尔士语。这些语言的起源至今仍是个不解之谜，

但有一种理论试图解开这个谜。

8 Two centuries ago an English judge in India noticed that several words in Sanskrit closely

resembled some words in Greek and Latin. A systematic study revealed that many modern

languages descended from a common parent language, lost to us because nothing was written

down.

两个世纪前，在印度当法官的一位英国人注意到，梵文中有一些词与希腊语、拉丁语

中的一些词极为相似。系统的研究显示，许多现代语言起源于一个共同的母语，但由于没有

文字记载，该母语已经失传。

9 Identifying similar words, linguists have come up with what they call an Indo-European

parent language, spoken until 3500 to 2000 B.C. These people had common words for snow, bee

and wolf but no word for sea. So some scholars assume they lived somewhere in north-central

Europe, where it was cold. Traveling east, some established the languages of India and Pakistan,