評論
打印
Culture
文藝版塊
Book review
書評
Language
語言
The babble and the beyond
咿呀學語之外
Bye Bye I Love You. By Michael Erard.
《拜拜我愛你》，邁克爾·埃拉德著。
Babies come into the world seeking out comfort, so their first word is often “mama”.
嬰兒來到世界上時會尋求撫慰，所以他們發出的第一個詞往往是“媽媽”。
It is easy to say and reflects the bond of mother and child.
這個詞很容易發音，也反映了母親和孩子之間的紐帶。
Meanwhile those leaving this world often make a philosophical statement, reveal a long-hidden truth or even utter a witticism.
與此同時，即將離開這個世界的人常常會發表一些富有哲理的言論，揭示一個隱藏已久的真理，甚至說出一句俏皮話。
“Either those curtains go or I do,” Oscar Wilde supposedly said on his deathbed.
“要么這窗簾去死，要么我去死。”據說奧斯卡·王爾德臨終時這樣說。（注：王爾德在一間廉價旅館房間里去世，他認為旅館條件很差。）
All this, including Wilde’s quip, is dubious, argues Michael Erard, an American journalist who has written several books about language.
美國調查記者邁克爾·埃拉德著有幾本關于語言的書，他認為所有這些，包括王爾德的這句俏皮話，都是可疑的。
In “Bye Bye I Love You” he dismantles many long-held beliefs about utterances at both the beginning and end of life.
在《拜拜我愛你》中，他打破了許多關于生命開始和結束時人們所說的話的固有認識。
He finds first and last words to be similar in many ways—such as how they are created by expectant listeners as much as by their speakers.
他發現人們的第一句話和最后一句話在很多方面都很相似——比如這些話既由說話人，也有心懷期待的傾聽人共同創造。
Sounds like mama and dada or papa recur in many of the world’s words for “mother” and “father”.
在世界上許多表示“母親”和“父親”的詞中，“媽媽”和“大大”或“爸爸”的發音反復出現。
But about as many parental words lack these common sounds; in some languages the word for “mother” features rare consonants that children master only later.
但是也有幾乎同樣多的表示父母的詞沒有這些常見的發音，在一些語言中，“母親”這個詞具有罕見的輔音，孩子們只有在以后才能掌握。
“Mama” is what Mr Erard calls a “cultural first word”, fussed over by those who have learned to look out for it or even elicit it from little ones.
埃拉德把“媽媽”稱為“文化第一詞”，一些人很留意這個詞，甚至從小孩口中引出這個詞，并對此大做文章。
Things are very different elsewhere.
其他地方的情況大不相同。
Among the Beng people of Ivory Coast, a baby is not supposed to utter his first word too precociously.
在科特迪瓦的邦族人中，嬰兒不應該過早地說出第一個字。
To do so is a bad omen, involving a “cosmic rebalancing”, and a grandparent might die in compensation.
說話太早是一個壞兆頭，涉及到“宇宙的重新平衡”，而且一位祖父母可能會因此去世。
Among speakers of Tayap in Papua New Guinea babies are expected to be defiant; people listen out for “oki” and “aiata”, meaning “I’m getting out of here” and “stop it”.
巴布亞新幾內亞的泰雅普語使用者認為，嬰兒應該具有反抗精神，人們會注意聽oki和aiata這兩個詞，意思分別是“我要離開這里”和“停下”。
A similar belief holds among Samoans, for whom “tae” is expected to be many babies’ first word, short for “ai tae” (“eat shit”).
薩摩亞人也有類似的認識，他們認為tae是許多嬰兒說出的第一個詞，這是aitae（“吃屎”）的縮寫。
In industrialised societies early linguistic development is big business.
在工業化社會中，早期語言發展是一項大生意。
Unusual and varied early words are meant to be a sign of a gifted child who will reap the rewards of being brainy later on.
很早說出不尋常的各種各樣的詞意味著這個孩子有天賦，并將在以后獲得天資聰明的回報。
Baby books encouraging parents to report on their children’s first words made their appearance in the late 19th century along with an increasingly professional, managerial approach to parenting—child-rearing as optimisation.
鼓勵父母記錄孩子的第一句話的嬰兒書籍在19世紀后期出現，與之同時出現的是一種日益專業化、管理化的育兒方式——優化式育兒。
Rich-world parents are thus keen to elicit speech from their children as early as they can.
富裕國家的父母們因此熱衷于讓孩子盡早開口說話。
Mr Erard is not the first to point out that industrialisation has changed not only childhood, but old age, too.
埃拉德并不是第一個指出工業化不僅改變了童年，也改變了老年的人。
Medical advances in wealthy countries have led to more protracted declines and deaths at older ages; in earlier centuries violence, accidents and catastrophic illnesses claimed many young, otherwise healthy people.
富裕國家的醫學進步延長了老年人的衰老期、推遲了死亡年齡，在之前的幾個世紀里，暴力、事故和災難性疾病奪走了許多年輕、原本健康的人的生命。
That has had an effect on last words.
這對臨終遺言產生了影響。
Popular culture has conditioned loved ones to expect some final truth or profundity in the last utterance of the dying.
流行文化使親人們期望臨終者的最后遺言中包含一些終極真理或深刻的見解。
But moments of sudden lucidity, with clear, meaningful and memorable last words, are very much the exception in those who die today (and offer reason to be sceptical of many of the famous last words collected in anthologies).
但是在如今去世的人中，那些突然清醒、留下清晰、有意義、令人難忘的遺言是很少見的情況（這也讓人們有理由懷疑收錄在選集里的許多著名遺言）。
By far the most common process by which people die in the modern rich world is a slow breakdown of physical and mental faculties, “neurochemical commotion” that gradually robs people of the ability to say anything at all.
到目前為止，在現代富裕世界中，人們最常見的死亡過程是身體和精神功能的緩慢崩潰，“神經化學物質混亂”逐漸剝奪了人們說話的能力。
Indeed, in another link between first and last words, Mr Erard argues that dying people lose their verbal faculties in a way resembling the child’s language learning but in reverse.
的確，埃拉德認為，第一句話和最后一句話之間的另一個聯系是，垂死之人失去語言能力的方式類似于孩子學習語言的方式，但方向相反。
Though language acquisition is well studied, language attrition is not.
雖然語言習得有深入的研究，但語言退化卻沒有。
Mr Erard is elegiac as he describes glances, hand squeezes and gestures, and the sometimes upsetting cries, moans and delirious talk that are often the final communication of the dying.
埃拉德在描述臨終者的眼神、握手和手勢，以及他們有時令人不安的哭泣、呻吟和譫妄的話語時，充滿了哀悼之情，這些常常是臨終者最后的交流。
This is why some cultures—many Hindus and Muslims among them—prepare and practise declarations for the moment of death long before it arrives.
這就是為什么一些文化——包括許多印度教徒和穆斯林——會在真正的死亡到來之前很久就準備和進行死亡宣告。
(Christians once did so, too.)
（基督徒也曾這樣做。）
A book ending with so much death may sound like a hard read.
以如此多的死亡結尾的書可能聽起來很難讀下去。
Instead, it is a beautiful and even strangely comforting one, with Mr Erard as a pensive, patient guide.
相反，這本書很優美，甚至莫名給人慰藉，埃拉德也是一個沉思、耐心的向導。
(He is training to be an end-of-life doula.)
（他正在接受臨終關懷陪護的培訓。）
The end must come; unrealistic expectations about final messages need not.
最終的死亡必會到來，但對最終遺言的不切實際的期望則不必出現。
