評論
打印
As we listen today to the arguments about bilingual education, we ought to think ourselves back into the shoes of the Saxon peasant. The new ruling class had built a cultural barrier against him by building their French against his own language. There must have been a great deal of cultural humiliation felt by the English when they revolted under Saxon leaders like Hereward the wake. "The King's English"-if the term had existed then-had become French. And here in America now, 900 years later, we are still the heirs to it.
當我們今天聽著有關雙語教育問題的爭論時，我們應該設身處地替當時的撒克遜農民想一想，新的統(tǒng)治階級把法語用來對抗撒克遜農民自己的語言，從而在農民周圍筑起一道文化障礙。當英國人在像覺醒者赫里沃德這樣的撒克遜領袖領導下起來造反時，他們一定深深地感受到了文化上的屈辱。"標準英語"--如果那時候有這個名詞的話-已經變成法語。而九百年后我們在美國這兒仍然繼承了這種影響。
So the next morning, the conversation over, one looked it up. The phrase came into use some time in the 16th century. "Queen's English" is found in Nash's "Strange Newes of the Intercepting Certaine Letters" in 1593, and in 1602, Dekker wrote of someone, "thou clipst the Kinge's English." Is the phrase in Shakespeare? That would be the confirmation that it was in general use. He uses it once, when Mistress Quickly in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" says of her master coming home in a rage, "here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the King's English," and it rings true.
那晚閑聊過后，第二天一早便有人去查閱了資料。這個名詞在16世紀已有人使用過。納什作于1593年的《截獲信函奇聞》中就有過"標準英語"(Queen's English)的提法。1602年德克寫到某人時有句話說："你把'標準英語'(King's Engligh)簡化了"。莎士比亞作品中是否也出現過這一提法呢?如出現過，那就證明這個詞在當時即已通用。他用過一次，在《溫莎的風流娘兒們》中，快嘴桂嫂在講到她家老爺回來后將會有的盛怒情形時說，"……少不了一頓臭罵，罵得鬼哭神愁，倫敦的官話(即"標準英語")不知要給他糟蹋成個什么樣子啦。"(朱生豪譯)后來的事實果然被她說中了。
One could have expected that it would be about then that the phrase would be coined. After five centuries of growth, of tussling with the French of the Normans and the Angevins and the Plantagenets and at last absorbing it, the conquered in the end conquering the conqueror. English had come royally into its own.
我們有理由認為這個詞語就是那個時期產生的。經過前后五百年的發(fā)展和與諾曼底人、安茹王朝及金雀花王朝的法語的競爭，英語最終同化了法語。被征服者變成了征服者，英語取得了國語的地位。
