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So first there's speech, and then writing comes along as a kind of artifice.
所以首先是語音，然后文字作為一種技巧出現了。
Now don't get me wrong, writing has certain advantages.
大家不要誤會，文字寫作確實有它自己的優勢。
When you write, because it's a conscious process,
當你寫字的時候，因為這是一個有意識的過程，
because you can look backwards,
因為你可以回顧過去，
you can do things with language that are much less likely if you're just talking.
你可以用書面語言來完成一些說話時不會表達的事情。
For example, imagine a passage from Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
比如，讓我們看看愛德華?吉本（英國歷史學家）在羅馬帝國衰亡史一書中的一段（取自第二十四章），
The whole engagement lasted above twelve hours,
整個戰爭持續了至少12小時，
till the graduate retreat of the Persians was changed into a disorderly flight, of which the shameful example was given by the principal leaders and the Surenas himself.
直到波斯人紛紛倉皇潰退，其中表現最可恥的是他們的指揮官們以及蘇雷納斯(最高統帥）本人。
That's beautiful, but let's face it, nobody talks that way.
寫的真的很美，但是，說實話，沒人這么說話。
Or at least, they shouldn't if they're interested
或者至少，如果真感興趣的話也不該這樣重復。
in reproducing. That—is not the way any human being speaks casually.
這－不是人們平常說話時候的樣子。
Casual speech is something quite different.
日常對話是非常不同的。
Linguists have actually shown that when we're speaking casually in an unmonitored way,
語言學家實際上已經指出當我們在輕松的對話時，
we tend to speak in word packets of maybe seven to 10 words.
我們每句話會用大概7到10個字。
You'll notice this if you ever have occasion to record yourself or a group of people talking.
你會注意到這點，如果你有機會錄下來自己或者一組人說話。
That's what speech is like.
這就是語言對話的形式。
Speech is much looser. It's much more telegraphic.
語言對話更松散。也更簡潔得多。
It's much less reflective—very different from writing.
和書面文字表達非常不同，它少了思考性。
So we naturally tend to think, because we see language written so often, that that's what language is,
所以因為我們經?？吹綄懗鰜淼恼Z言，我們就很自然地認為，那就是語言，
but actually what language is, is speech. They are two things.
但實際上語言是言語對話。這是兩個不同的事物。
Now of course, as history has gone by,
當然，隨著歷史的演進，
it's been natural for there to be a certain amount of bleed between speech and writing.
在言語對話和書面文字表達之間有些交集也是很自然的事情。
