《经济学人》双语：全球各地的人在学习英语，也在改变英语

原文标题：Johnson
A language for the world
By learning English, people around the globe are changing it, too
约翰逊专栏
一种世界性语言
全球各地的人们在学习英语，也在改变英语

As it spreads across the world, who owns English?Or, for that matter, French or Portuguese?
英语在世界各地传播很广，英语属于哪个国家呢？同样地，法语和葡萄牙语又属于哪个国家呢？

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WHAT COUNTRY does French belong to? The answer seems obvious: France, as it says on the label.

法语属于哪个国家？答案似乎很明显：属于法国，亦如其名。

But there are roughly four times as many speakers of French outside France as there are within it.

但是，在法国境外讲法语的人大约是法国境内的4倍。

Who does Portuguese belong to? You might now hesitate to blurt out “Portugal”, remembering that Brazil’s population is about 20 times bigger than Portugal’s. Maybe Portuguese belongs jointly to them both.

葡萄牙语属于哪个国家？你现在可能会犹豫是否要脱口而出 "属于葡萄牙"，因为巴西的人口大约是葡萄牙的20倍。也许葡萄牙语同时属于他们两个国家。

But then 70m people live in African countries in which Portuguese is an official language. Perhaps it belongs to them, too.
但是，有7千万人生活在非洲国家，葡萄牙语是这些国家的官方语言。也许它也属于他们。

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The English can be under no illusion that the language of the same name is exclusively theirs.

英国人绝不会幻想英语是独属于他们的。

The small matters of the other nations in the British Isles, and of the superpower across the Atlantic, make clear that it is joint property.

不列颠群岛其他国家以及大西洋彼岸的超级大国（美国）的小事实表明，英语属于共同财产。

But these countries—along with Canada, Australia and other Anglophone peoples—must at some point come to terms with the fact that, even collectively, their language no longer belongs to them.

但是，这些国家--以及加拿大、澳大利亚和其他英语国家的人--必须在某个时候接受这样一个事实：虽然是共同财产，但英语并不属于他们。

Of the estimated billion people who speak English, less than half live in those core English-speaking countries.
在约10亿讲英语的人中，只有不到一半的人生活在这些核心英语国家。

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Every day, the proportion of English-speakers born outside the traditional Anglosphere grows.

每天，以非传统英语系国家为出生地的讲英语人数比例不断增加。

Perhaps 40% of people in the European Union speak English, or about 180m—vastly more than the combined population of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

在欧盟，也许有40%的人讲英语，或大约1.8亿人--大大超过了英国、加拿大、澳大利亚和新西兰的人口总和。

In India, calculations range from 60m to 200m. Most such estimates make it the second-biggest Anglophone country in the world.
在印度，有6千万到2亿的人讲英语。这使印度成为世界上第二大英语国家。

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English-speakers pride themselves on the spread of the language, and often attribute that to an open, liberal-minded attitude whereby it has happily soaked up words from around the world.

说英语的人对英语的传播感到自豪，并经常将其归因于一种开放、自由的态度，这使英语愉快地吸收了世界各地的词汇。

In the coming century, though, English will do more than borrow words.

不过，在下个世纪，英语不仅仅会有借用词语，还会有更多变化。

In these non-Anglophone countries, it is becoming not just a useful second language, but a native one.

在这些非英语国家，它不仅成为一种有用的第二语言，也会成为一种母语。

Already it is easy to find children in northern Europe who speak as though they come from Kansas, the product of childhoods immersed in subtitled films and television in English, along with music, gaming and YouTube.
在北欧，你会容易找到那些说着美国堪萨斯州口音的孩子，他们的童年沉浸在英语字幕的电影和电视中，以及音乐、游戏和油管中。

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Today, many learners still aim for an American or British standard.

今天，许多学习者仍然以美国或英国标准为目标。

Textbooks instruct Indian English-speakers to avoid Indianisms such as “What is your good name?” for “What is your first name?”, or “I am working here for years” instead of “I have been working here for years.”

印度英语教科书避免使用印度语，如将 "What is your good name？"改为 "What is your first name？"或将 "I am working here for years "改为 "I have been working here for years."

A guide to avoiding Europeanisms has long circulated in European Union institutions, to keep French- or German-speakers from (for example) using “actual” to mean “current”, as it does in their languages.
长期以来，一份避免欧式用语的指南一直在欧盟机构中流传，以防止讲法语或德语的人（例如）用 "actual实际 "来表示 "current当前"，法语德语就是这么表达。

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Yet as hundreds of millions of new speakers make English their own, they are going to be less keen to sound British or American.

然而，随着数以亿计新的语言使用者将英语变成自己的语言，他们将不再那么热衷于英式口音或美式口音。

A generation of post-colonial novelists has been mixing native words and phrasings into their English prose, without translation, italics or explanation.

一代后殖民时代的小说家已经在他们的英语散文中混合了本土词汇和短语，没有翻译、斜体或解释。

Academic movements such as “English as a lingua franca” (ELF) have been developing the ideology that speakers—no longer referred to as “non-native” but rather “multilingual”—should feel free to ignore British or American norms.

诸如 "英语作为通用语"（ELF）等学术运动一直在发展一种意识形态，即说话者--不再被称为 "非母语人士"，而是 "多语言人士"--应该可以随意忽略英国或美国的语言规则。

Karen Bennett of Nova University in Lisbon says the university website has been translated using words common in southern European English—like “scientific” for “academic”, or “rector” for “vice-chancellor”.

葡萄牙里斯本诺瓦大学的凯伦.贝内特说，该大学的网站已使用南欧英语常用词汇进行翻译，如用 "scientific "代替 "academic"，或用 "rector "代替 "vice-chancellor"。

The appropriate local dialect is not British or American but ELF.
最合适的当地方言不是英式或美式英语，而是使用英语作为通用语。

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Given enough time, new generations of native speakers contribute not just words but their own grammar to the language they learn—from older speakers’ point of view, distorting it in the process.

如果有足够的时间，新一代的母语人士不仅会为英语贡献词汇，还会贡献他们自己的语法--从老一辈人的角度来看，这个过程会扭曲英语。

“I am working here for years” is a mistake today, but it is not hard to imagine it becoming standard in the future in culturally confident Anglophone Indian circles.
"I am working here for years "在今天是一个错误，但不难想象在不久的将来，它会成为文化自信的印度英语圈子里的标准句子。

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If this disturbs you, remember that this column is written in a mangled version of Anglo-Saxon, learned badly by waves of Celts, Vikings, Normans and others until it became an unrecognisably different tongue.

如果这让你感到不安，请记住，本专栏是用混杂的盎格鲁-撒克逊语写的，被一波又一波的凯尔特人、维京人、诺曼人和其他人改编了，直到它成为一种无法识别差异的语言。

And take comfort in the fact that such changes usually happen too slowly to affect comprehension in a single lifetime.Written language is less volatile than the spoken kind and exerts a stabilising force.

令人欣慰的是，这种变化通常很慢，在一个人的整个人生中，都不会影响他对语言的理解力。书面语比口语更稳定，并能发挥稳定作用。

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But if language is always evolving (true to the point of cliché), the adaptations are even more profound when they come as a result of new speakers hailing from different linguistic worlds.

然而，如果说语言的演变是一种永恒的过程（如此真实以至于老生常谈），那么当新的使用者来自不同的语言背景时，会产生更加深刻的改变。

No language has ever reached more speakers than English.

使用面积最广的语言是英语。

It is hard to predict how they will change it, but easy to rule out the notion that they will not change it at all. In the end, it will be theirs too.
很难预测新的使用者会如何改变英语，但可以排除英语根本不会变的想法。最终，英语也将属于他们。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量809左右）
原文出自：2023年5月27日《The Economist》Culture版块

精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路

本文翻译整理: Irene本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来自于网络）
不列颠群岛（British Isles）是位于欧洲西北海岸的一个岛屿群，包括了不列颠岛、爱尔兰岛及其周围的小岛。其中不列颠岛被分为英格兰、威尔士、苏格兰和北爱尔兰四个国家，而爱尔兰岛则分为爱尔兰共和国和北爱尔兰两部分。该地区曾经是古罗马的重要领土，后来被盎格鲁-撒克逊人和维京人占领，并形成了今天的文化遗产。现在的英国是指包括英格兰、威尔士、苏格兰和北爱尔兰四个国家的联合王国（United Kingdom），不包括爱尔兰共和国。

在语言学中，"Borrow Words"（借词）指的是一个语言从另一种语言中借用单词并将其整合到自己的词汇中。这些单词通常来自其他语言和文化，因为借入语言缺乏自己的术语或概念，或者为了表达新的概念、技术等。例如，英语中的"karaoke"（卡拉OK）和"sushi"（寿司）就是从日语中借来的词语。这些借词不仅丰富了语言的词汇和表达能力，也反映了语言发展历程中的历史和文化交流。

英语作为通用语（English as a lingua franca，简称ELF）是一个学术运动，旨在研究使用英语作为跨文化交流的媒介时所产生的语言现象。这一概念强调英语不再只是由以英语为母语的国家之间进行交流的工具，而是已经成为世界上许多人之间沟通交流的共同语言。ELF的研究关注英语非母语使用者、不同背景下的发音差异、新兴语法结构等方面，旨在理解英语使用的多变性和趋势，并开发更加适合各种语言背景的英语教学方法和学习策略。ELF运动的背景可以追溯到20世纪80年代，随着全球化的加速和国际交流的增多，英语作为一个跨越文化和语境的桥梁的角色愈加重要。自此以后，ELF在语言学、教育学、社会学等领域得到了广泛的研究和应用，成为当今英语教育中的一个重要议题。

【重点句子】（3个）
The English can be under no illusion that the language of the same name is exclusively theirs.
英国人绝不会幻想英语是独属于他们的。

English-speakers pride themselves on the spread of the language, and often attribute that to an open, liberal-minded attitude whereby it has happily soaked up words from around the world.
说英语的人对英语的传播感到自豪，并经常将其归因于一种开放、自由的态度，这使英语愉快地吸收了世界各地的词汇。

And take comfort in the fact that such changes usually happen too slowly to affect comprehension in a single lifetime.Written language is less volatile than the spoken kind and exerts a stabilising force.
令人欣慰的是，这种变化通常很慢，在一个人的整个人生中，都不会影响他对语言的理解力。书面语比口语更稳定，并能发挥稳定作用。