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【中文标题】英语：无法回避的语言
【原文标题】English: The Inescapable Language
【登载媒体】美国人
【原文作者】John Steele Gordon
【原文链接】http://www.american.com/archive/2011/august/english-the-inescapable-language
以英语为母语的人有巨大的优势。伏在母亲的膝盖上学习英语，就像刚出生的孩子就懂得代数一样。
几年前的一个晚上，我和一个朋友在布宜诺斯艾利斯共进晚餐。我们用英语交谈，因为他说英语比我说西班牙语流利得多。我为自己蹩脚的外语致歉，并称赞他流利的英语水平。
他说：“这很好理解，毕竟英语很简单，而西班牙语太难了。”
这令我很吃惊。在学校里，西班牙语是必修课，要比法语、德语和拉丁语简单很多。而英语，至少对英语母语的人来说，则非常难，主要原因是其不规则的拼写和发音。我没有验证过这样的假设，但我打赌每个国家的人都会认为自己的母语是最难的。因为外国人学来总是很吃力，所以它一定很难，对吗？
也不一定是这样。很多人都会忽略其母语困难和古怪的一面，同时也对其单纯、简单的一面未加留意，就像鱼会忘记水的存在一样。例如，我的阿根廷朋友就没有留意西班牙语的拼写和发音是绝对规则的。听到一个西班牙语单词就知道如何拼写，看到一个单词就知道如何发音。在西班牙语的学校中没有拼字有戏，因为没人会把单词拼错。
那么英语是很难的一门语言了？是也不是。
英语在历史上属于日尔曼语系，但由于其长期在孤岛上独立演化，它已经和其它日尔曼系语言几乎没有相同的地方了，比如德语、荷兰语、挪威语、瑞典语和丹麦语。尽管它和法语共用某些单词，但两者的语法完全不同。实际上，英语语法与世界上其它任何一种语言的语法截然不同。
这或许给学习英语的人泼了一头冷水，但也有好消息，基础的英语语法极易掌握。法语的动词有三种搭配（就是所谓的三种不定式词尾：er、ir、re），每种搭配对应不同的时态和情态（比如陈述或虚拟）还有不同的词尾。一个典型的法语动词有超过50种词尾，都需要记住。西班牙语有三种搭配；葡萄牙语有四种；拉丁语有五种；德语有两种。
英语则只有一种搭配，大部分的词尾在800年前古代英语向中世纪英语转化时都消失了。所以，一个规则的英语动词总共只有四种形式：walk、walks、walked和walking。英语中最不规则的动词be总共也只有八种形式：be、am、is、are、was、were、being和been。
在其它很多语言中，例如法语和西班牙语，会频繁使用虚拟语气，而它在英语中几乎已经消失了。（《罗杰斯和哈特》中的歌词“I Wish I Were in Love Again”是我在当代流行文化中唯一能想到使用虚拟语气的例子。）同时消失的还有第二人称宾格（thee和thou），而在其它很多语言中，它会让你在社交场合狼狈不堪。
英语的不规则动词变化就更简单了。它们全部都来自于古代英语，除了be和have之外，它们不规则的方式完全一致：通过词根的变化表达过去式和完成式。例如swim、swam、swum。（英语中只有一个动词要视主语来决定是规则变化还是不规则变化：人被hanged，物被hung。）英语中所有不规则变化动词的不规则形式，可以列在字典最后的一页纸上，而西班牙语需要16页纸来做这件事。
英语的名词同样简单，例如，它们没有性别之分。而法语的名词则要么是阳性的，要么是阴性的。尽管有一些可供参考的规则（一般以tion结尾的名词属阴性，以eau结尾的名词属阳性），但学生们绝大多数情况下必须记住每一个法语名词的性别，而其中毫无规律可循。你或许认为法语中的“军队”和“海军”应当是阳性的，可你错了。有一些法语名词，例如“情人”，在单数时是阳性，在复数时是阴性。
德语和拉丁语把每一个名词分为阳性、阴性和中性，划分的标准同样肆意、武断。德语中的“刀”是中性、“叉”是阴性、“勺”是阳性。在这些语言中，形容词必须要与它修饰的名词的性别和数量保持一致。而英语的形容词是恒定不变的。
我们还是不要深入讨论拉丁语的名词了，它们会根据词性不同而出现不同的词尾（总共有不少于五种情况，被称为“词形”，每个都有不同的词尾）。
一些语言的书写和发音有完全不同的形式。法语的过去式只会出现在书写上，发音没有区别。德语和希腊语的日常口语和正式书面语言似乎是完全没有关系的两种语言。英语则不是这样。
但是，尽管英语被一些语言学家称为“毫无语法的语言”，它对外国人也并非毫无障碍。和西班牙语不同，英语的拼写与发音之间的关联性不强。
这其中存在着三个原因。首先是英语中有很多的音素（组成一门语言的单个独立声音），尤其是非常多的元音。西班牙语只有五个元音，每个元音由一个字母代表。而英语，如果考虑到方言，再加上二元音和三元音，至少有12个元音。另外一个原因是英语就是不喜欢重音符号，很多语言利用它来区分一个单词的不同发音。
最后一个原因，英语对单词拼写的态度过于保守。当英语引入一个外来词时，我们总是倾向于保留其外来语言的拼写，尽管其发音已经英语化了。我们从希腊语借用了两个单词来组成“photography”，而我们一直保留着希腊语的拼写方式。如果是西班牙语，我们靠直觉就可以拼写出fotografia。
但是，发音与拼写之间缺乏关联依然比不上法语中那些不发音的辅音字母和毫无意义的重音符号。举个例子，法语中的重音符号，比如hôtel，根本不会影响单词的发音。实际上，这个重音符号的意义仅仅是告诉读者这个元音后面曾经跟着一个s，而这个s因为不发音，所以在300年前法语拼写改革时被省略掉了。于是这个音调符号就转移到了s前面的元音头上，告诉读者这里曾经有一个s。这就是法语的逻辑。
在外国人看来，英语更大的一个问题是浩瀚的日常单词量，这是拜英语存在1500年以来其它众多语言所赐。普通的英语人士要比操法语和德语的人士多掌握一半的词汇量。英语中有大量的同义词，在意义上都有细微的差别。这就是为什么同义词典是英语学习的必备工具，而其它语言却鲜见类似工具。了解penniless、broke和impecunious之间的意思和语气差别，说的好听一点，算是一个外国人的例行工作了。
英语中有一件怪事，就是衍生于盎格鲁撒克逊语系的名词，通常都有一个拉丁语或希腊语的形容词与之搭配。这在身体器官方面极为明显，比如ear（耳朵）－aural（听觉的）、heart（心脏）－cardiac（心脏的）、liver（肝）－hepatic（肝脏的）。尽管牲畜的名称通常都源于古代英语，而牲畜的肉却都来自法语。（或许，这是因为在诺曼人征服英国之后，饲养牲畜的都是说英语的农民，而享用肉类的都是说法语的诺曼贵族。）
这种词语的多样性还延伸到前缀上。例如，如果我们要对一个形容词进行否定，一般使用到的前缀包括un-（uninterested）、dis-（dishonest）、in-（inattentive）或者a-（amoral）。具体使用哪一个，要取决于特定词语的词源。但是某些单词可以使用多个前缀施加否定，意思还稍有不同（uninterested和disinterested的意思就不完全相同）。这种无规律可循的肆意安排就像法语名词的性别一样。更麻烦的问题是，这种规律还会随着时间推移而发生变化。杰斐逊在《独立宣言》中用unalienable这个词，而我们今天说inalienable。
当然，英语巨大词汇量的优势是让英语成为一门卓越的文学和科学语言，与其它语言相比，它可以更轻松地描绘出细致、精确的含义。这或许就是英语成为世界科研通用语言的重要原因之一。这同时还让英语变得相当有效率，英语版本的一篇长文通常比其它语言的版本短很多。（译者注：这里可以笑一下。）
除了浩如烟海的词汇量之外，英语另外一个令人发狂的习俗是用同一个词描述不同的意思。例如fly，表示一种讨厌的昆虫、一条裤子的某个部位、剧院里的吊景、一种移动的方式、旗子的边缘、棒球的一种击打方式，以及一种鱼钩。Flyer则可以是一个飞行的人，或者街上发送的印刷广告。Bill的意思可以是鸟的喙、发票、一条立法，或者一个贴在墙上，不是随手发出的印刷广告。
因此，英语对外国人来说，充满了怪异和复杂的因素，作为第二语言，的确很难掌握。但是因为它的语法极为简单，所以无论学生的本土语言是什么，掌握英语的入门技能要比其它语言容易得多。这是我们的幸运，现在谁也无法回避英语了。
在西方世界中，拉丁语在几个世纪以来，携罗马帝国的余威，占据了受教育阶层通用语言的地位。牛顿在1687年用拉丁语，不是英语，完成了他的《自然哲学的数学原理》。到了17世纪，法语成为了通用的外交语言，并一直持续到20世纪。
到了二十世纪，英语成为了世界第二大语言（仅次于中文），同时是世界上最通用的第二语言。这首先要感谢大英帝国的崛起，然后是美国的经济和文化在战后世界上的统治地位。因此英语就成为了世界最新的lingua franca（这里使用一个意大利语，表示通用语言）。
英语统治了互联网，它是航空控制中使用的唯一语言，也是科学界最广泛使用的语言。（即使最重要的法国科研机构巴斯德研究所，最开始也是用英语发表论文，后来才改成法语。）目前，所有学习第二语言的学生中，有60％都在学习英语。在越来越多的国家中，英语成为了必修课。
所以，我们这些以英语为母语的人其实有巨大的优势，伏在母亲的膝盖上学习英语，就像刚出生的孩子就懂得代数一样。但那些不甚走运的人也可以相对容易地掌握英语。无论他们怎么想，熟练掌握这门语言是接触全世界各地教育的必要条件。
原文：
Native speakers of English have a great advantage. Learning English at our mothers’ knee is almost like being born able to do algebra.
One night years ago when I was visiting Buenos Aires, I had dinner with an acquaintance. We were speaking in English because he spoke my language far better than I did his. I apologized for my inadequacy in Spanish and complimented him on his bilingualism.
He replied, “That’s understandable. After all, English is so easy to learn and Spanish is very difficult.”
I was stunned. In school, Spanish had been regarded as the gut course among foreign languages, far easier than French, German, or Latin. And English, at least among English-speakers, was thought very difficult, with its irregular spelling and pronunciation given as the usual reason. I have never tested this hypothesis, but I bet every culture regards its native tongue as difficult to learn. After all, foreigners always struggle with it, so it must be difficult, right?
Not necessarily. Most people are oblivious to the oddities and weirdnesses of their native tongue—as well as its simplicities—for precisely the same reason that fish are oblivious to water. My Argentinian friend, for instance, had no idea that Spanish spelling and pronunciation are absolutely regular. To hear a Spanish word is to know how to spell it and to see one is to know how to pronounce it. There are no spelling bees in Spanish-speaking schools because there are no bad spellers among native speakers of the language.
So, is English actually hard to learn? Well, yes and no.
Historically, English is one of the Germanic languages but because of its insular evolution it now bears little resemblance to the other Germanic languages, such as German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish. And while there is some overlap in vocabulary with French, the two grammars are very different. Indeed, English grammar is quite unlike any other language in the world.
That’s the bad news for foreigners. The good news is that basic English grammar is ridiculously easy to master. In French there are three conjugations of verbs (the so-called -er, -ir, and -re verbs, after their infinitive endings). Each conjugation has its own set of endings for each tense and each mood (such as the indicative and subjunctive). A typical French verb has more than 50 endings that must be learned. Spanish also has three conjugations. Portuguese has four, Latin five, German two.
English has only one conjugation. And most of the endings (“inflections” is the linguistic term) disappeared with the transition from Old English to Middle English 800 years ago. So a regular English verb has a grand total of only four forms: walk, walks, walked, and walking. The most irregular verb in the language, to be, has only eight forms: be, am, is, are, was, were, being, and been.
And while many other languages, such as French and Spanish, make frequent use of the subjunctive mood, it has nearly disappeared in English. (The Rodgers and Hart song “I Wish I Were in Love Again” is the only instance in popular culture I can think of that uses the subjunctive.) Also vanished is the second person singular (thee and thou), which in many other languages is booby-trapped with social nuance.
Even English irregular verbs are simple. They all come from Old English and, except for to be and to have, are all irregular in the same way: they change the radical to express the past and perfect tenses. Thus swim, swam, swum. (There’s one verb in English that is either regular or irregular depending on the subject of the sentence. People are hanged, but other things are hung.) All the irregular forms of all the irregular verbs in English can be listed on less than a page of a paperback dictionary. It takes 16 pages to do that with Spanish irregular verbs.
English nouns are equally easy to deal with. They have no gender, for instance. French nouns, however, are all either masculine or feminine. And while there are a few helpful rules (French nouns ending in -tion are almost always feminine, those that end in -eau are almost always masculine) most of the time the student of French simply has to memorize which gender a French noun belongs to, and it is maddeningly arbitrary. You might think that the French words for army and navy would be masculine, but you’d be wrong. A few French nouns, amour, for instance, are masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural.
German and Latin divide nouns into masculine, feminine, and neuter with an equal arbitrariness. The German words for knife, fork, and spoon are, respectively, neuter, feminine, and masculine. In these languages adjectives must agree with the noun they modify in both gender and number. English adjectives are invariable.
And let’s not even get into Latin nouns, which have endings to mark what part of speech they are being used as (and are divided into no fewer than five different groups, called “declensions,” each with its own set of endings.)
Some languages, but not English, have very different written and spoken forms. French has a past tense that is only written, not spoken, while casual spoken German and Greek are practically different languages from the formal written versions of those tongues.
But English, of course, while known to linguists as the “grammarless language,” is hardly without its difficulties for foreigners. English spelling and pronunciation are, unlike Spanish, not well coordinated.
There are three reasons for this. One is that English has a lot of phonemes (the individual sounds that make up a language), and especially a lot of different vowel sounds. Spanish has only five vowel sounds, one for each vowel letter. English, depending on the dialect, has at least twelve, plus diphthongs and even triphthongs. Another reason is that English just doesn’t like diacriticals (accent marks and such) that many languages use to indicate differences in the pronunciation of a letter.
Finally, English is orthographically conservative. When a word is borrowed into English, we tend to maintain the spelling of the foreign word even as we adapt the pronunciation to the English sound structure. We borrowed two Greek words to coin photography and we still spell it in the Greek fashion. In Spanish, they quite sensibly spell it fotografia.
But the lack of coordination between sound and spelling is no worse than, say, French, with its myriad silent consonants and functionless accent marks. For example, the circumflex accent in French, such as in hôtel, doesn’t affect the word’s pronunciation. Indeed, all it tells the reader is that the vowel used to be followed by an unpronounced S, an S that was dropped—because it was silent—300 years ago, when French spelling was reformed. The circumflex was then added to the preceding vowel to let the reader know the S used to be there, as if the reader cared. This is known as French logic.
An even bigger problem with English for foreigners is the fact that its everyday vocabulary is so immense, thanks to the many languages that contributed to it over the 1,500 years of its existence. The average speaker of English has a vocabulary with about half again as many words as the average speaker of, say, French or German. English abounds in synonyms, each with its own slightly different nuance or meaning. That’s why the thesaurus and the dictionary of synonyms are standard reference works in English but seldom found in other languages. Learning the subtle differences in meaning and tone between, say, “penniless,” “broke,” and “impecunious,” is, to put it mildly, a chore for foreigners.
One of the quirks of the English language is that nouns originating from Anglo-Saxon often have associated adjectives that come from Latin or Greek. This is especially true of body parts, such as ear-aural, heart-cardiac, liver-hepatic, etc. While the names of farm animals are usually Old English in origin, the words for their meat are usually from French. (Possibly, this is because after the Conquest the English-speaking peasants cared for the animals, but it was the French-speaking Norman aristocracy who ate them.)
This multiplicity of words even extends to prefixes. To negate an adjective, for instance, one uses un- (as in uninterested), dis- (dishonest), in- (inattentive), or a- (amoral). Which one to use often depends on the particular word’s etymology, but some words take more than one, producing thereby a slight change in meaning (uninterested is not quite the same as disinterested). Equally often, however, it is arbitrary, just as French gender is. It can even vary over time. Jefferson used unalienable in the Declaration of Independence. Today we say inalienable.
The advantage of the huge vocabulary of English, of course, is that it makes English a superb literary and scientific language, able to express fine and precise shades of meaning far more easily than other tongues. This is no small part of the reason English has become the near universal language of science. It also makes English more efficient. The English version of a lengthy text is always substantially shorter than versions in other languages.
But while English has a very large everyday vocabulary, it also has the maddening habit of using the same word to mean many different things. Fly, for instance, means an annoying insect, a part of a pair of trousers, a part of a theater, a means of locomotion, the outer edge of a flag, a type of hit in baseball, and a type of hook for catching fish. A flyer can be either one who flies or a printed advertisement that is handed out. A bill is everything from the jaws of a bird to an invoice to a piece of legislation under consideration to an advertisement that is posted on a wall, not handed out.
So English has its full share of oddities and complications for the foreigner, and is as difficult to fully master as any foreign language. But, thanks to its very simple grammar, it is probably easier to grasp its rudiments, regardless of the student’s native tongue, than any other language not closely related to that native tongue. That’s fortunate, for English is now inescapable.
In the Western world, Latin was the common language of the educated classes for centuries, the last, linguistic, remnant of the Roman Empire. Newton wrote his Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, in Latin, not English. In the seventeenth century, French took over as the language of diplomacy, a position it kept until the twentieth.
By the twentieth century, however, English had become the second-most common native tongue (after only Mandarin Chinese). And it is by far the most common second language, thanks, initially, to the British Empire and then to America’s economic and cultural dominance in the post-war world. Thus English became the world’s new lingua franca (to use an Italian term that literally means “Frankish language”).
English dominates the Internet. It is the only language used in air traffic control. It is the overwhelmingly dominant language of science. (Even the premier French scientific organization, the Institut Pasteur, publishes its papers in English first and only later in French). Sixty percent of all students studying a foreign language today are studying English. It’s a required course in school, starting early on, in an increasing number of countries.
So we native speakers of English have a great advantage. Learning English at our mothers’ knee is almost like being born able to do algebra. Those not so fortunate can still get a handle on it fairly easily, however. That’s lucky for them because, like it or not, acquiring a competence in English is now a necessary part of every serious education around the world.
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发表于 2011-9-7 12:02
