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Books and arts
來源于《圖書與藝術》版塊
Johnson
約翰遜語言專欄
First among equals
同儕之首
Which is the best language? You decide
哪種語言最好？你來決定
Maurice Druon of the French Academy once proposed that French should be made the principal legal language of the European Union. He argued that its logic and precision rendered it the judicial language par excellence. Others chortled. How very French of him!
法國科學院的莫里斯·德魯昂曾提議，應使法語成為歐洲聯盟的主要法律語言。他認為，法語的邏輯性和精確性使其成為最優秀的司法語言。其他人則一笑置之。他真是個地道的法國人！
The French are hardly alone in believing that their language is especially poetic, emotional, logical, precise, accessible or rich. But it turns out that the things people prize in their own languages can often be the same things foreign learners hate. Take the formal-informal distinction in words for “you”. German and French have du and tu for friends and family, and Sie and vous for unknown adults and formal speech. Natives of those languages miss that distinction when speaking English. Those whose languages (like English) don’t make it in the first place often resent having this choice forced on them in French or German.
并非只有法國人認為自己的語言特別富有詩意、情感豐富、邏輯嚴密、通俗易懂并且內容豐富。但事實證明，人們在母語中珍視的東西往往與外國學習者討厭的東西是一樣的。以“你”一詞的正式和非正式區別為例。德國人和法國人對朋友和家人使用du和tu，用Sie和vous表示不知名的成年人和正式講話。母語為德語和法語的人在講英語時忽略了這一區別。那些母語(如英語)一開始就沒有排在第一的人，往往在法語或德語中被迫做選擇感到不滿。
A dictum among linguists is that languages differ not in what they can express, but in what they must. Given the time and willingness to explain or coin basic terms, any language could be used to talk about anything. But they vary wildly in what they insist speakers say, with the tu-vous distinction just the tip of an iceberg. Washo, a native language of Nevada, has four past and three future tenses, depending on how distant an event is in time. Tariana, from Brazil, has “evidentiality”: speakers choose one of five verb-endings to show how they know what they aver to be true. Jarawara, also from Brazil, distinguishes “we (including you)” and “we (without you)”.
語言學家的一個格言是，語言的差異不在于它們能表達什么，而在于它們必須表達什么。只要有時間和意愿解釋或創造基本術語，那么任何語言都可以用來談論任何事情。但他們在堅持講話人的用詞方面有很大不同，而 tu-vous 之間的區別也只是冰山一角。Washo是內華達州的一種本土語言，有四種過去時態和三種將來時態，具體取決于事件發生的時間間隔。來自巴西的塔利亞娜有一個明顯的特點：說話者從五個動詞尾中選擇一個來表明他們知道自己所斷言的是正確的。同樣來自巴西的查拉瓦拉將“我們(包括你)”和“我們(沒有你)”區分開來。
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
