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First among equals 

語(yǔ)言之首

英文部分選自經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人190921Books and arts版塊

First among equals 

語(yǔ)言之首

Which is the best language? You decide

哪種語(yǔ)言最好？請(qǐng)君自行定奪

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!

法蘭西學(xué)院的莫里斯·德魯昂曾倡議將法語(yǔ)定為歐盟法律文書的首選語(yǔ)言。他認(rèn)為，法語(yǔ)的邏輯性與精準(zhǔn)度使其成為最優(yōu)秀的司法語(yǔ)言。其他人則不以為然。他可真不愧是法國(guó)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.

除了法國(guó)人，還有其他國(guó)家認(rèn)為自己的語(yǔ)言別具詩(shī)意、情感豐富、邏輯嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)、準(zhǔn)確無(wú)誤、簡(jiǎn)單易學(xué)且豐富多彩。但事實(shí)上，正是這些他們眼中的優(yōu)點(diǎn)，往往為外國(guó)學(xué)習(xí)者所痛恨。就拿“你”和“您”來(lái)說(shuō)吧。德語(yǔ)用“du”（你）來(lái)稱呼親人和朋友，稱呼陌生成年人或正式演講時(shí)用“sie”（您）；對(duì)應(yīng)的法語(yǔ)則分別為“tu”和“vous”。以這兩種語(yǔ)言為母語(yǔ)人發(fā)現(xiàn)英語(yǔ)不分“你”和“您”。而對(duì)于那些母語(yǔ)沒有“你”“您”之分（比如英語(yǔ)）的人來(lái)說(shuō)，他們通常很不喜歡在講法語(yǔ)或德語(yǔ)的時(shí)候被迫選擇對(duì)應(yīng)的用詞。 

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)”.

在語(yǔ)言學(xué)家中流行這樣一條準(zhǔn)則，不同語(yǔ)言的區(qū)別不在于如何表達(dá)，而在于該語(yǔ)言必須要怎么表達(dá)。如果表達(dá)和發(fā)明基本術(shù)語(yǔ)的時(shí)間充足、意愿強(qiáng)烈，人們可以用任何語(yǔ)言表達(dá)任何東西。但區(qū)別在于是否有強(qiáng)制性的語(yǔ)法規(guī)則，tu-vous 這樣的例子只是冰山一角。瓦碩語(yǔ)（Washo）是內(nèi)華達(dá)州的一種方言，有四種過(guò)去時(shí)和三種將來(lái)時(shí)，取決于事件發(fā)生的時(shí)間。來(lái)源于巴西的塔利亞納語(yǔ)（Tariana）具有＂言據(jù)性＂：動(dòng)詞有五種后綴，用來(lái)表達(dá)事件不同程度的可信度。在同樣源于巴西的雅拉瓦拉語(yǔ)（Jarawara）中，“我們”這個(gè)詞有包括“你”和不包括“你”的區(qū)別。

The many different things a language can and must do are the subject of “Are Some Languages Better than Others?”, a book from 2016 by R.M.W. Dixon of James Cook University in Australia. Mr Dixon dispels old colonialist prejudices that European languages are sophisticated and indigenous >．

2016年，澳大利亞詹姆斯·庫(kù)克大學(xué)的R·M·W·狄克遜出版了一本名為《語(yǔ)言是否有優(yōu)劣？》的書，該書主要圍繞語(yǔ)言能怎樣表達(dá)，必須怎樣表達(dá)來(lái)展開。在書中，狄克遜先生摒棄了古老的殖民者的偏見，即歐洲語(yǔ)言復(fù)雜精妙，而土著的語(yǔ)言原始簡(jiǎn)單。實(shí)際上，許多最細(xì)微的差別并沒有出現(xiàn)在法語(yǔ)或德語(yǔ)中，卻存在于互相孤立的傳統(tǒng)群體之間。

In answering his title’s provocative question, Mr Dixon finds that requiring distinctions (formal or informal “you”, inclusive or exclusive “we”, evidentiality), is useful. The more information, the better. But not every language can require every distinction: a language that had them all would be too hard for members of the community to learn, to say nothing of outsiders. There may be an outer limit to how complex languages can get, constrained by the brain’s processing power.

在回答書的標(biāo)題個(gè)頗具爭(zhēng)議的問(wèn)題時(shí)，狄克遜發(fā)現(xiàn)有所區(qū)分（正式或非正式的“你”、包容或排斥“你”的“我們”、“言據(jù)性”等等）是有用的。雖然信息越多越好，但并不是每種語(yǔ)言都需要擁有所有類型的區(qū)分，否則使用這一語(yǔ)言的群體成員來(lái)說(shuō)太難學(xué)了，更不用說(shuō)外人。語(yǔ)言的復(fù)雜程度也許存在最大極限，這是由我們大腦的處理能力所決定的。

Into the argument about whether some languages are superior comes a recent paper on information density in speech, by Fran?ois Pellegrino and his colleagues at the University of Lyon. Some languages, like Japanese, have few distinct sounds and tight rules on how syllables may be structured, so that the number of possible syllables is low (think ka, ru, to, etc). Other languages (like English) have fewer constraints, so that a single syllable may be as complicated as strengths. All things being equal, one syllable chosen among English’s thousands will carry more information than one picked from Japanese’s dozens. But the study finds that this imbalance is counteracted by speech rate: speakers of Japanese get in many of their simple syllables more quickly than English-speakers do their complicated ones. Overall information density turns out to be the same across hugely different tongues.

最近，里昂大學(xué)的弗朗索瓦·佩萊格里諾和他的同事們發(fā)表了一篇關(guān)于語(yǔ)言中信息密度的論文，該論文討論了語(yǔ)言的優(yōu)勢(shì)性。有些語(yǔ)言，比如日語(yǔ)，一個(gè)單詞很少有不同的發(fā)音，音節(jié)結(jié)構(gòu)也有嚴(yán)格的規(guī)則，所以可能的音節(jié)數(shù)量很少（比如ka、ru、to等等）。其他語(yǔ)言（如英語(yǔ)）的限制較少，一個(gè)音節(jié)的發(fā)音可能和重音一樣復(fù)雜。在所有條件相同的情況下，從英語(yǔ)的數(shù)千個(gè)音節(jié)中選擇一個(gè)，所包含的信息比從日語(yǔ)的幾十個(gè)音節(jié)中選擇一個(gè)要多。但研究也發(fā)現(xiàn)，這種不平衡可以通過(guò)語(yǔ)速?gòu)浹a(bǔ)：日語(yǔ)音節(jié)簡(jiǎn)單，英語(yǔ)音節(jié)復(fù)雜，但同一時(shí)間內(nèi)日語(yǔ)說(shuō)出的音節(jié)數(shù)量比英語(yǔ)多。不同語(yǔ)言之間總的信息密度是相同的。

In short, languages are governed by trade-offs. One that avoids making certain information mandatory may be easy to speak, but leaves the listener to fill in the gaps. It may be simple to learn but less expressive. Some languages have lots of redundant elements: in los tres gatos negros están mojados(“the three black cats are wet” in Spanish), all six words indicate a plural. Marking the plural just once (as Chinese does) would be enough. But redundancy has a virtue: emphatic communication is more likely to survive a noisy environment.

簡(jiǎn)而言之，語(yǔ)言的優(yōu)劣性需要多方面權(quán)衡。強(qiáng)制性語(yǔ)法規(guī)則少的語(yǔ)言，可能說(shuō)起來(lái)簡(jiǎn)單，但缺少的信息需要聽話者自行腦補(bǔ)。這種語(yǔ)言學(xué)起來(lái)容易，但是缺乏表現(xiàn)力。有些語(yǔ)言過(guò)于冗余：在los tres gatos negros están mojados（西班牙語(yǔ)：三只黑貓濕了）這句話里，所有六個(gè)單詞都是復(fù)數(shù)形式。僅僅表明一次復(fù)數(shù)（如中文）就足夠了。但是冗余也有好處：強(qiáng)調(diào)的語(yǔ)氣，更有利于在嘈雜的環(huán)境中發(fā)聲。

Languages, Mr Dixon says, are like a Western-style house. There are a few rooms you must have (kitchen, bedroom, living room, bathroom), and some discretionary options (office, guest room). On a fixed budget, you can’t have all the extras. He does not crown a “best” language. In the end, he says, readers should make their own list of desirable features, and then closely examine a few languages to decide whether one has more of them than another. But the list of advantages, he concedes, is itself a matter of judgment. For all his scientific criteria, in the end the verdict is in the ear of the beholder.

狄克遜寫道：語(yǔ)言就像一座西式的房子。有些房間是必備的（如廚房、臥室、客廳、浴室），有些房間是可以自由選擇的（如辦公室、客房）。在預(yù)算一定的條件下，你不可能擁有所有房間。對(duì)于“最佳”的語(yǔ)言，狄克遜沒有下定論。在書的最后，他寫道，讀者應(yīng)該列出自己理想的語(yǔ)言特征，仔細(xì)研究，對(duì)不同的語(yǔ)言是否滿足要求進(jìn)行比較。但他承認(rèn)，優(yōu)勢(shì)清單本身就是主觀判斷。盡管他提出了所有的科學(xué)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，但最終的結(jié)論還是仁者見仁，智者見智。

翻譯組：

Cindy，女，未來(lái)外貿(mào)工，TE粉

Lee ，愛騎行的婦女之友，Timberland粉

校核組：

Nikolai，子承父業(yè)，蛋糕廠員工，AKB49

Helen，女，坐標(biāo)武漢，職業(yè)翻譯，翻碩已畢業(yè)英語(yǔ)二筆二口，愛好陶笛洞簫古詩(shī)詞