【每天一篇经济学人】A language for the world 一种世界性

文章来源：《经济学人》May 27th 2023 期 Culture 栏目 A language for the world

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What country does French belong to? The answer seems obvious: France, as it says on the label. But there are roughly four times as many speakers of French outside France as there are within it. 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. But then 70m people live in African countries in which Portuguese is an official language. Perhaps it belongs to them, too.

法语属于哪个国家？答案似乎很明显：属于法国，亦如其名。但是，在法国境外讲法语的人大约是法国境内的4倍。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。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. 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. 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. Of the estimated billion people who speak English, less than half live in those core English-speaking countries.

英国人绝不会幻想英语是独属于他们的。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。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。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. 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. In India, calculations range from 60m to 200m. Most such estimates make it the second-biggest Anglophone country in the world.

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。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。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. In the coming century, though, English will do more than borrow words. In these non-Anglophone countries, it is becoming not just a useful second language, but a native one. 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.

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。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。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。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. 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.” 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.

今天，许多学习者仍然以美国或英国标准为目标。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."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. A generation of post-colonial novelists has been mixing native words and phrasings into their English prose, without translation, italics or explanation. 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. 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”. The appropriate local dialect is not British or American but ELF.

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。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。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。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"。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. “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.

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 "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. 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.

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。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. No language has ever reached more speakers than English. 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.

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。使用面积最广的语言是英语。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。