Babbel, which makes a popular language- learning app, has collected a host of climate-related neologisms from European languages. Flygskam is perhaps the most likely to be permanently adopted into English: “flight-shame”, from Swedish, was popularised by Ms Thunberg’s rise. It also has a nifty corollary: tagskryt, or “train-boasting”, from those who advertise their flygskam by taking ground transport and letting the world know. (Dutch has an equivalent: treintrots.)
Babbel是一款頗受歡迎的語言學習應用程序，它從歐洲語言中收集了大量與氣候相關的新詞。Flygskam可能是英語中最可能被永久采用的單詞:“flight-shame（搭機羞羞臉）”，源于瑞典語，隨著桑伯格的影響擴大而流行起來。它還有一個俏皮的推演詞: tagskryt, 英語為“train-boasting（跑火車）”，來自那些通過乘坐地面交通工具、讓全世界都知道他們飛行表演的人。（荷蘭語有一個類似的詞:treintrots。）
The march of the climate-protest movement has led to the coining of disparaging terms by its critics. Italian, for example, has gretini: allegedly mindless followers of Ms Thunberg (-ini is a diminutive suffix, and the word echoes cretini, or “idiots”). The Danish Language Council and Denmark’s national broadcaster jointnot ly chose a similar term as their Word of the Year for 2019: klimatosse, or “climate fool”, used dismissively by Pia Kjaersgaard, a right-wing Danish politician, to explain her party’s poor election performance. Being Danish, she hastened to add that her party is itself concerned about the climate, but that the klimatosser who voted for other parties apparently care about nothing else.
抗議氣候變化運動的進行引起了批評者們的輕蔑言辭。例如，意大利語中就有gretini：據說是桑伯格女士的盲目追隨者(-ini是一個小后綴，與cretini這個詞相呼應，英語是“idiots（白癡）”。丹麥語言委員會和丹麥國家廣播公司選擇了一個類似的詞作為他們2019年的年度詞匯：klimatosse，英語為“climate fool（氣候傻瓜）”，丹麥右翼政治家皮婭⋅克亞斯高對她的政黨在選舉中的糟糕表現不屑一顧。作為丹麥人，她急忙補充說，她的政黨本身就關心氣候，但是投票給其他政黨的“klimatosser（氣候傻瓜）”顯然不關心其他事情。
Compared with its European cousins, English has not been creative. Oxford Dictionaries declared its word of the year to be “climate emergency”. Collins, another dictionary-publisher, nominated the slightly more imaginative “climate strike”, originally coined to denote the schooldays that climate activists such as Ms Thunberg began skipping as a protest. (Klimaatspijbelaar, “climate-school skipper”, was number three in Van Dale’s Dutch vote.)
與歐洲的同類語言相比，英語缺乏創造性。牛津詞典將其年度詞匯定為“climate emergency（氣候緊急事件）”。另一家詞典出版商柯林斯提名了稍微更富想象力的“climate strike（氣候罷工）”，這個詞最初是用來表示學生時代的，那時像桑伯格女士這樣的氣候活動人士開始逃課以示抗議。（Klimaatspijbelaar, “climate-school skipper（氣候罷課者）”在范達拉出版社的荷蘭投票中名列第三。）
Words of the year are a way for lexicographical types to grab a rare slice of the spotlight, boost interest in language and have a bit of fun. All the same, the pessimistic trajectory of the outcomes suggests a darkening global mood. The American Dialect Society will vote for its word of 2019 at its annual meeting in New Orleans in January. Its previous three choices were “tender-age shelter” (a euphemism for places where America’s border forces keep children separated from their parents), “fake news” (often, these days, meaning real news that powerful people would like to dismiss) and “dumpster fire”. Whether or not it picks a climatic word as an emblem of the bygone year, it is hard to see the society choosing anything upbeat.
年度詞匯是詞典編纂者抓住少數關注焦點、提高對語言的興趣和獲得樂趣的一種方式。盡管如此，這些結果的悲觀軌跡表明，全球情緒正日益低迷。美國方言學會將于明年1月在新奧爾良舉行的年會上投票選出2019年的年度詞匯。它之前的三個選擇是“tender-age shelter（兒童庇護所）”(美國邊境部隊將兒童與父母分開的地方的委婉說法)，“fake new（假新聞）”(如今通常指的是有權勢的人想要忽視的真實新聞)和“dumpster fire（垃圾箱火災）”。不管它是否選擇一個氣候詞匯作為過去一年的象征，我們都很難看到這個社會選擇任何樂觀的詞匯。
Perhaps Dictionary.com captured the feeling best with its word of the year for 2019. Neither new nor fancy, it was foreboding nonetheless: “existential”.
也許Dictionary.com用2019年年度詞匯捕捉到了這種感覺。它既不新鮮，也不新奇，但它是一種預兆:“existential（存在主義）”。
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