文章來源：《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人》May 27th 2023 期 Culture 欄目 A language?for?the?world

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What country does French belong to? The answer seems obvious: France, as it says on the label. But there are roughly four times as many speakers of French outside France as there are within it. Who does Portuguese belong to? You might now hesitate to?blurt out?“Portugal”, remembering that Brazil's population is about 20 times bigger than Portugal's. Maybe Portuguese belongs jointly to them both. But then 70m people live in African countries in which Portuguese is an official language. Perhaps it belongs to them, too.

法語屬于哪個(gè)國家？答案似乎很明顯：屬于法國，亦如其名。但是，在法國境外講法語的人大約是法國境內(nèi)的4倍。葡萄牙語屬于哪個(gè)國家？你現(xiàn)在可能會(huì)猶豫是否要脫口而出 "屬于葡萄牙"，因?yàn)榘臀鞯娜丝诖蠹s是葡萄牙的20倍。也許葡萄牙語同時(shí)屬于他們兩個(gè)國家。但是，有7千萬人生活在非洲國家，葡萄牙語是這些國家的官方語言。也許它也屬于他們。

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The English can be under no illusion that the language of the same name is exclusively theirs. The small matters of the other nations in the British Isles, and of the superpower across the Atlantic, make clear that it is?joint property. But these countries—along with Canada, Australia and other?Anglophone?peoples—must at some point come to terms with the fact that, even collectively, their language no longer belongs to them. Of the estimated billion people who speak English, less than half live in those core English-speaking countries.

英國人絕不會(huì)幻想英語是獨(dú)屬于他們的。不列顛群島其他國家以及大西洋彼岸的超級(jí)大國（美國）的小事實(shí)表明，英語屬于共同財(cái)產(chǎn)。但是，這些國家--以及加拿大、澳大利亞和其他英語國家的人--必須在某個(gè)時(shí)候接受這樣一個(gè)事實(shí)：雖然是共同財(cái)產(chǎn)，但英語并不屬于他們。在約10億講英語的人中，只有不到一半的人生活在這些核心英語國家。

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Every day, the proportion of English-speakers born outside the traditional Anglosphere grows. Perhaps 40% of people in the European Union speak English, or about 180m—vastly more than the combined population of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In India, calculations range from 60m to 200m. Most such estimates make it the second-biggest Anglophone country in the world.

每天，以非傳統(tǒng)英語系國家為出生地的講英語人數(shù)比例不斷增加。在歐盟，也許有40%的人講英語，或大約1.8億人--大大超過了英國、加拿大、澳大利亞和新西蘭的人口總和。在印度，有6千萬到2億的人講英語。這使印度成為世界上第二大英語國家。

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English-speakers pride themselves on the spread of the language, and often attribute that to an open, liberal-minded attitude whereby it has happily soaked up words from around the world. In the coming century, though, English will do more than borrow words. In these non-Anglophone countries, it is becoming not just a useful second language, but a native one. Already it is easy to find children in northern Europe who speak as though they come from Kansas, the product of childhoods?immersed?in subtitled films and television in English, along with music, gaming and YouTube.

說英語的人對(duì)英語的傳播感到自豪，并經(jīng)常將其歸因于一種開放、自由的態(tài)度，這使英語愉快地吸收了世界各地的詞匯。不過，在下個(gè)世紀(jì)，英語不僅僅會(huì)有借用詞語，還會(huì)有更多變化。在這些非英語國家，它不僅成為一種有用的第二語言，也會(huì)成為一種母語。在北歐，你會(huì)容易找到那些說著美國堪薩斯州口音的孩子，他們的童年沉浸在英語字幕的電影和電視中，以及音樂、游戲和油管中。

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Today, many learners still aim for an American or British standard. Textbooks instruct Indian English-speakers to avoid Indianisms such as “What is your good name?” for “What is your first name?”, or “I am working here for years” instead of “I have been working here for years.” A guide to avoiding Europeanisms has long circulated in European Union institutions, to keep French- or German-speakers from (for example) using “actual” to mean “current”, as it does in their languages.

今天，許多學(xué)習(xí)者仍然以美國或英國標(biāo)準(zhǔn)為目標(biāo)。印度英語教科書避免使用印度語，如將 "What is your good name？"改為 "What is your first name？"或?qū)?"I am working here for years?"改為 "I have been working here for years."長(zhǎng)期以來，一份避免歐式用語的指南一直在歐盟機(jī)構(gòu)中流傳，以防止講法語或德語的人（例如）用 "actual實(shí)際 "來表示 "current當(dāng)前"，法語德語就是這么表達(dá)。

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Yet as hundreds of millions of new speakers make English their own, they are going to be less keen to sound British or American. A generation of post-colonial novelists has been mixing native words and phrasings into their English?prose, without translation,?italics?or explanation. Academic movements such as “English as a?lingua franca” (ELF) have been developing the ideology that speakers—no longer referred to as “non-native” but rather “multilingual”—should feel free to ignore British or American norms. Karen Bennett of Nova University in Lisbon says the university website has been translated using words common in southern European English—like “scientific” for “academic”, or “rector” for “vice-chancellor”. The appropriate local dialect is not British or American but ELF.

然而，隨著數(shù)以億計(jì)新的語言使用者將英語變成自己的語言，他們將不再那么熱衷于英式口音或美式口音。一代后殖民時(shí)代的小說家已經(jīng)在他們的英語散文中混合了本土詞匯和短語，沒有翻譯、斜體或解釋。諸如 "英語作為通用語"（ELF）等學(xué)術(shù)運(yùn)動(dòng)一直在發(fā)展一種意識(shí)形態(tài)，即說話者--不再被稱為 "非母語人士"，而是 "多語言人士"--應(yīng)該可以隨意忽略英國或美國的語言規(guī)則。葡萄牙里斯本諾瓦大學(xué)的凱倫.貝內(nèi)特說，該大學(xué)的網(wǎng)站已使用南歐英語常用詞匯進(jìn)行翻譯，如用 "scientific?"代替 "academic"，或用 "rector?"代替 "vice-chancellor"。最合適的當(dāng)?shù)胤窖圆皇怯⑹交蛎朗接⒄Z，而是使用英語作為通用語。

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Given enough time, new generations of native speakers contribute not just words but their own grammar to the language they learn—from older speakers' point of view,?distorting?it in the process. “I am working here for years” is a mistake today, but it is not hard to imagine it becoming standard in the future in culturally confident Anglophone Indian circles.

如果有足夠的時(shí)間，新一代的母語人士不僅會(huì)為英語貢獻(xiàn)詞匯，還會(huì)貢獻(xiàn)他們自己的語法--從老一輩人的角度來看，這個(gè)過程會(huì)扭曲英語。"I am working here for years?"在今天是一個(gè)錯(cuò)誤，但不難想象在不久的將來，它會(huì)成為文化自信的印度英語圈子里的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)句子。

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If this disturbs you, remember that this column is written in a mangled version of Anglo-Saxon, learned badly by waves of Celts, Vikings, Normans and others until it became an unrecognisably different tongue. And take comfort in the fact that such changes usually happen too slowly to affect comprehension in a single lifetime.Written language is less?volatile?than the spoken kind and exerts a stabilising force.

如果這讓你感到不安，請(qǐng)記住，本專欄是用混雜的盎格魯-撒克遜語寫的，被一波又一波的凱爾特人、維京人、諾曼人和其他人改編了，直到它成為一種無法識(shí)別差異的語言。令人欣慰的是，這種變化通常很慢，在一個(gè)人的整個(gè)人生中，都不會(huì)影響他對(duì)語言的理解力。書面語比口語更穩(wěn)定，并能發(fā)揮穩(wěn)定作用。

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But if language is always evolving (true to the point of?cliché), the adaptations are even more?profound?when they come as a result of new speakers hailing from different linguistic worlds. No language has ever reached more speakers than English. It is hard to predict how they will change it, but easy to rule out the notion that they will not change it at all. In the end, it will be theirs too.

然而，如果說語言的演變是一種永恒的過程（如此真實(shí)以至于老生常談），那么當(dāng)新的使用者來自不同的語言背景時(shí)，會(huì)產(chǎn)生更加深刻的改變。使用面積最廣的語言是英語。很難預(yù)測(cè)新的使用者會(huì)如何改變英語，但可以排除英語根本不會(huì)變的想法。最終，英語也將屬于他們。