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双语阅读：网络发展如何改变语言
zona(2012/12/19 22:22:21) 点击:44730 回复:0 IP:183.* * *
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Online, English has become a common language for users from around the world. In the process, the language itself is changing.
英语已经在网络上成为全球范围内的通用语言。在此过程中，英语本身也在不断发生着变化。
When America emerged from the ashes of a bruising war with Britain in 1814, the nation was far from united. Noah Webster thought that a common language would bring people together and help create a new identity that would make the country truly independent of the British.
1814年英美战争结束后，当美国从废墟中发展起来时，还是个四分五裂的国家。美国辞典编纂家诺亚-韦伯斯特认为，统一语言将会使人们更有凝聚力，并获得新的身份，这有助于美国真正的脱离英国而独立。
Webster's dictionary, now in its 11th edition, adopted the Americanised spellings familiar today - er instead of re in theatre, dropping the u from colour, and losing the double l from words such as traveller. It also documented new words that were uniquely American such as skunk, opossum, hickory, squash and chowder.
《韦氏词典》现在已经是第11版了，它采用我们现在熟悉的美式拼写——theatre中的re变为er，去掉colour中的u，把一些单词中的两个l如traveller变为一个l。词典中也收录了一些美国独有的新词汇，如skunk（臭鼬）, opossum（负鼠）, hickory（山核桃）, squash（南瓜）和 chowder（杂烩）。
An American Dictionary of the English Language took 18 years to complete and Webster learned 26 other languages in order to research the etymology of its 70,000 entries.
韦伯斯特花了18年时间写成《美国英语词典》，为了研究词典中的70000个单词的词形变化，他学习了26种语言。
The internet is creating a similar language evolution, but at a much faster pace.
互联网为类似的语言演变创造了一个平台，但速度更快。
There are now thought to be some 4.5 billion web pages worldwide. And with half the population of China now on line, many of them are written in Chinese.
现在在全球范围内共有45亿个网页。在中国，如今有一半的人都是网民，他们中很多人使用中文上网。
Still, some linguists predict that within 10 years English will dominate the internet - but in forms very different to what we accept and recognise as English today.
不过一些语言学家预测，10年内英语将成为互联网的主导语言，但形式将和网民今天接受和认可的英语有很大不同。
That's because people who speak English as a second language already outnumber native speakers. And increasingly they use it to communicate with other non-native speakers, particularly on the internet where less attention is paid to grammar and spelling and users don't have to worry about their accent.
这是因为将英语作为第二语言的人数已经超过以英语为母语的人数。而且非英语国家的人进行交流时都使用英语，尤其是在互联网上，人们不太注重语法和拼写，使用者也不用担心口音问题。
"The internet enfranchises people who are not native speakers to use English in significant and meaningful ways," says Naomi Baron, professor of linguistics at American University in Washington DC.
“网络让那些非英语国家的人们在重要和意义重大的场合中更自由的使用英语，”位于华盛顿地区的美利坚大学的语言学教授内奥米-巴伦说。
Users of Facebook already socialise in a number of different "Englishes" including Indian English, or Hinglish, Spanglish (Spanish English) and Konglish (Korean English). While these variations have long existed within individual cultures, they're now expanding and comingling online.
社交网络的用户使不同形式的英语社会化，包括印度英语，西班牙式英语和韩式英语。虽然这些变化一直存在于各国的文化中，但如今网络使它们相互融合。
"On the internet, all that matters is that people can communicate - nobody has a right to tell them what the language should be," says Baron. "If you can talk Facebook into putting up pages, you have a language that has political and social standing even if it doesn't have much in the way of linguistic uniqueness."
“在互联网上，最重要的是人们可以相互交流——没有人有权利规定该使用何种语言，”巴伦说。“如果你能说服脸谱网建立网页，你的语言就有了政治和社会地位，即使它在语言方面并没有太多的独特性。”
Some words are adaptations of traditional English: In Singlish, or Singaporean English, "blur" means "confused" or "slow": "She came into the conversation late and was blur as a result."
有些单词与传统英语出入较大：在新加坡英语中，“blur” 意为“困惑的”或“缓慢的”，例句：“聊天的时候她很迟才加入讨论，因此有些困惑。”
Others combine English words to make something new. In Konglish, "skinship" means intimate physical contact: handholding, touching, caressing.
此外，合成词也可以产生一些新的词汇。在韩式英语中，"skinship"意为身体的亲密接触：握手、抚摸和爱抚。
Technology companies are tapping into the new English variations with products aimed at enabling users to add words that are not already in the English dictionary.
科技公司正在开发英语新变化的相关产品，旨在帮助用户增加现在英语字典中不存在的单词。
And most large companies have English websites, while smaller businesses are learning that they need a common language - English - to reach global customers.
大多数大公司都有自己的英文网站，小企业也意识到他们需要一种通用语言，也就是英语，来争取全球范围内的客户。
"While most people don't speak English as their first language, there is a special commercial and social role for English driven by modern forms of entertainment," says Robert Munro, a computational linguist and head of, a language technology company in California.
“虽然大多数人的母语都不是英语，但现代娱乐方式让英语发挥着特殊的商业和社会作用，” 加利福尼亚一家名为Idibon的语言公司的老总，计算机语言学家罗伯特-芒罗说。
"The prevalence of English movies in regions where there is not much technology other than cell phones and DVDs makes English an aspirational language. People think it's the language of the digital age."
“在一些除了手机和DVD外没有其他什么高科技产品的地区，英语电影的流行让英语成为一种时尚。人们认为这是数字时代的语言。”
In previous centuries, the convergence of cultures and trade led to the emergence of pidgin - a streamlined system of communication that has simple grammatical structure, says Michael Ullman, director of research at Georgetown University's Brain and Language Lab.
过去几个世纪，文化和商贸的融合导致了洋泾浜语的产生，这是一种简洁实用的交流语言，语法结构简单，乔治城大学大脑和语言实验室的主任迈克尔-厄尔曼这样解释道。
When the next generation of pidgin speakers begins to add vocabulary and grammar, it becomes a distinct Creole language. "You get different endings, it's more complex and systematised. Something like that could be happening to English on the web," he says.
下一代的洋泾浜语言使用者还会为其继续增加词汇和语法，它会变成一种截然不同的克里奥尔语。“洋泾浜语会有不同的形式，会更加复杂和系统化。对于英语，这种变化会发生在互联网上，”他说。
注：克里奥尔语（Creole Language）指一种混合多种语言词汇，有时也掺杂一些其他语言文法的一种语言，这个词是用以泛指所有的“混合语”。
Take Hinglish. Hinglish is a blend of Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and English and is so widespread that it's even being taught to British diplomats.
以印式英语为例，印式英语是北印度语、旁遮普语、乌尔都语和英语的混合语，它使用很广泛，甚至被教给英国外交官。
Mobile phone companies are also updating their apps to reflect its growing use.
移动电话公司也在不断更新应用程序，以体现他们日益增多的功能。
In Hinglish, a co-brother is a brother-in-law; eve-teasing means sexual harassment; an emergency crew responding to a crisis might be described as 'airdashing', and somewhat confusing to football fans, a 'stadium' refers to a bald man with a fringe of hair. There's even a new concept of time - "pre-pone", the opposite of postpone, meaning "to bring something forward".
在印式英语中，co-brother意为姐夫、妹夫或小舅子；eve-teasing意为性骚扰；紧急救援队对突发事件的反应可能会被描述为 airdashing，而令球迷有些困惑的是，stadium指的是头发稀疏的秃顶男人。就连表示时间都有新的概念——pre-pone，延期的反义词，意为“提前”。
The increasing prevalence of the internet in everyday life means that language online is not a zero sum game. Instead, it allows multiple languages to flourish.
互联网在日常生活中的日益普遍意味着语言并非一场零和博弈。相反，它让不同的语言蓬勃发展。
"Most people actually speak multiple languages - it's less common to only speak one," says Mr Munro. "English has taken its place as the world's lingua franca, but it's not pushing out other languages."
“实际上，很多人都会说多种语言，只会说一种语言的人是很少见的。” 芒罗先生说。“英语已经成为世界的通用语，但它并不排挤其他语言。”
Instead, other languages are pushing their way into English, and in the process creating something new.
相反，其他语言正在融入英语当中，在此过程中也在不断产生新的东西。
英语已经在网络上成为全球范围内的通用语言。在此过程中，英语本身也在不断发生着变化。
When America emerged from the ashes of a bruising war with Britain in 1814, the nation was far from united. Noah Webster thought that a common language would bring people together and help create a new identity that would make the country truly independent of the British.
1814年英美战争结束后，当美国从废墟中发展起来时，还是个四分五裂的国家。美国辞典编纂家诺亚-韦伯斯特认为，统一语言将会使人们更有凝聚力，并获得新的身份，这有助于美国真正的脱离英国而独立。
Webster's dictionary, now in its 11th edition, adopted the Americanised spellings familiar today - er instead of re in theatre, dropping the u from colour, and losing the double l from words such as traveller. It also documented new words that were uniquely American such as skunk, opossum, hickory, squash and chowder.
《韦氏词典》现在已经是第11版了，它采用我们现在熟悉的美式拼写——theatre中的re变为er，去掉colour中的u，把一些单词中的两个l如traveller变为一个l。词典中也收录了一些美国独有的新词汇，如skunk（臭鼬）, opossum（负鼠）, hickory（山核桃）, squash（南瓜）和 chowder（杂烩）。
An American Dictionary of the English Language took 18 years to complete and Webster learned 26 other languages in order to research the etymology of its 70,000 entries.
韦伯斯特花了18年时间写成《美国英语词典》，为了研究词典中的70000个单词的词形变化，他学习了26种语言。
The internet is creating a similar language evolution, but at a much faster pace.
互联网为类似的语言演变创造了一个平台，但速度更快。
There are now thought to be some 4.5 billion web pages worldwide. And with half the population of China now on line, many of them are written in Chinese.
现在在全球范围内共有45亿个网页。在中国，如今有一半的人都是网民，他们中很多人使用中文上网。
Still, some linguists predict that within 10 years English will dominate the internet - but in forms very different to what we accept and recognise as English today.
不过一些语言学家预测，10年内英语将成为互联网的主导语言，但形式将和网民今天接受和认可的英语有很大不同。
That's because people who speak English as a second language already outnumber native speakers. And increasingly they use it to communicate with other non-native speakers, particularly on the internet where less attention is paid to grammar and spelling and users don't have to worry about their accent.
这是因为将英语作为第二语言的人数已经超过以英语为母语的人数。而且非英语国家的人进行交流时都使用英语，尤其是在互联网上，人们不太注重语法和拼写，使用者也不用担心口音问题。
"The internet enfranchises people who are not native speakers to use English in significant and meaningful ways," says Naomi Baron, professor of linguistics at American University in Washington DC.
“网络让那些非英语国家的人们在重要和意义重大的场合中更自由的使用英语，”位于华盛顿地区的美利坚大学的语言学教授内奥米-巴伦说。
Users of Facebook already socialise in a number of different "Englishes" including Indian English, or Hinglish, Spanglish (Spanish English) and Konglish (Korean English). While these variations have long existed within individual cultures, they're now expanding and comingling online.
社交网络的用户使不同形式的英语社会化，包括印度英语，西班牙式英语和韩式英语。虽然这些变化一直存在于各国的文化中，但如今网络使它们相互融合。
"On the internet, all that matters is that people can communicate - nobody has a right to tell them what the language should be," says Baron. "If you can talk Facebook into putting up pages, you have a language that has political and social standing even if it doesn't have much in the way of linguistic uniqueness."
“在互联网上，最重要的是人们可以相互交流——没有人有权利规定该使用何种语言，”巴伦说。“如果你能说服脸谱网建立网页，你的语言就有了政治和社会地位，即使它在语言方面并没有太多的独特性。”
Some words are adaptations of traditional English: In Singlish, or Singaporean English, "blur" means "confused" or "slow": "She came into the conversation late and was blur as a result."
有些单词与传统英语出入较大：在新加坡英语中，“blur” 意为“困惑的”或“缓慢的”，例句：“聊天的时候她很迟才加入讨论，因此有些困惑。”
Others combine English words to make something new. In Konglish, "skinship" means intimate physical contact: handholding, touching, caressing.
此外，合成词也可以产生一些新的词汇。在韩式英语中，"skinship"意为身体的亲密接触：握手、抚摸和爱抚。
Technology companies are tapping into the new English variations with products aimed at enabling users to add words that are not already in the English dictionary.
科技公司正在开发英语新变化的相关产品，旨在帮助用户增加现在英语字典中不存在的单词。
And most large companies have English websites, while smaller businesses are learning that they need a common language - English - to reach global customers.
大多数大公司都有自己的英文网站，小企业也意识到他们需要一种通用语言，也就是英语，来争取全球范围内的客户。
"While most people don't speak English as their first language, there is a special commercial and social role for English driven by modern forms of entertainment," says Robert Munro, a computational linguist and head of, a language technology company in California.
“虽然大多数人的母语都不是英语，但现代娱乐方式让英语发挥着特殊的商业和社会作用，” 加利福尼亚一家名为Idibon的语言公司的老总，计算机语言学家罗伯特-芒罗说。
"The prevalence of English movies in regions where there is not much technology other than cell phones and DVDs makes English an aspirational language. People think it's the language of the digital age."
“在一些除了手机和DVD外没有其他什么高科技产品的地区，英语电影的流行让英语成为一种时尚。人们认为这是数字时代的语言。”
In previous centuries, the convergence of cultures and trade led to the emergence of pidgin - a streamlined system of communication that has simple grammatical structure, says Michael Ullman, director of research at Georgetown University's Brain and Language Lab.
过去几个世纪，文化和商贸的融合导致了洋泾浜语的产生，这是一种简洁实用的交流语言，语法结构简单，乔治城大学大脑和语言实验室的主任迈克尔-厄尔曼这样解释道。
When the next generation of pidgin speakers begins to add vocabulary and grammar, it becomes a distinct Creole language. "You get different endings, it's more complex and systematised. Something like that could be happening to English on the web," he says.
下一代的洋泾浜语言使用者还会为其继续增加词汇和语法，它会变成一种截然不同的克里奥尔语。“洋泾浜语会有不同的形式，会更加复杂和系统化。对于英语，这种变化会发生在互联网上，”他说。
注：克里奥尔语（Creole Language）指一种混合多种语言词汇，有时也掺杂一些其他语言文法的一种语言，这个词是用以泛指所有的“混合语”。
Take Hinglish. Hinglish is a blend of Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and English and is so widespread that it's even being taught to British diplomats.
以印式英语为例，印式英语是北印度语、旁遮普语、乌尔都语和英语的混合语，它使用很广泛，甚至被教给英国外交官。
Mobile phone companies are also updating their apps to reflect its growing use.
移动电话公司也在不断更新应用程序，以体现他们日益增多的功能。
In Hinglish, a co-brother is a brother-in-law; eve-teasing means sexual harassment; an emergency crew responding to a crisis might be described as 'airdashing', and somewhat confusing to football fans, a 'stadium' refers to a bald man with a fringe of hair. There's even a new concept of time - "pre-pone", the opposite of postpone, meaning "to bring something forward".
在印式英语中，co-brother意为姐夫、妹夫或小舅子；eve-teasing意为性骚扰；紧急救援队对突发事件的反应可能会被描述为 airdashing，而令球迷有些困惑的是，stadium指的是头发稀疏的秃顶男人。就连表示时间都有新的概念——pre-pone，延期的反义词，意为“提前”。
The increasing prevalence of the internet in everyday life means that language online is not a zero sum game. Instead, it allows multiple languages to flourish.
互联网在日常生活中的日益普遍意味着语言并非一场零和博弈。相反，它让不同的语言蓬勃发展。
"Most people actually speak multiple languages - it's less common to only speak one," says Mr Munro. "English has taken its place as the world's lingua franca, but it's not pushing out other languages."
“实际上，很多人都会说多种语言，只会说一种语言的人是很少见的。” 芒罗先生说。“英语已经成为世界的通用语，但它并不排挤其他语言。”
Instead, other languages are pushing their way into English, and in the process creating something new.
相反，其他语言正在融入英语当中，在此过程中也在不断产生新的东西。
