如何看待：The death of English death, The, English

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说明：英国金融时报网站发表Henry Hitchings先生（《文字的秘密：揭密英语发迹史》(The Secret Life of Words: How English became English一书的作者）文章，题目是The death of English（英语之死），评述尼古拉斯•奥斯特勒(Nicholas Ostler)所著《最后的通用语言：巴别塔重现前的英语》(The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel)一书。奥斯特勒认为，到2050年前后，世界将不再需要英语这种全球性的通用语言。从很大程度来说，这要归功于科技发展，比方说随着机器翻译能力的提高，越来越多的语言之间可以实现互通。

   《最后的通用语言：巴别塔重现前的英语》(The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel)：尼古拉斯•奥斯特勒(Nicholas Ostler)著，Allen Lane出版，建议零售价：20英镑，313页。

     以英语为母语的人老是沾沾自喜于它一枝独秀的地位，认为英语无法替代——如今它在商业界、科技界以及娱乐界独领风骚。然而，在《最后的通用语言：巴别塔重现前的英语》一书中，作者尼古拉斯•奥斯特勒对盎格鲁中心主义思想(Anglo-centrism)以及常见的目光短浅的狂热爱国主义情绪进行了大胆纠正。
      作为濒危语言基金会(Foundation for Endangered Languages)主席的奥斯特勒（他是位英国人）在书中开篇就语出惊人：“当英语语言开始衰落时，将会是波澜不惊”。这里的关键字是“当”；奥斯特提出的不是什么没有把握的假设，而是大胆的论断。他的观点是，任何世界通用语从本质上说都应该是方便使用的语言，并且要不了多少时间，国际性的英语将不再方便使用，“会从神坛上跌落，没有任何仪式，也激不起多少哀怨”。
      奥斯特勒向读者讲述了世界其它主要语言跌宕起伏的命运。事实说明每种语言的“唯我独尊”到最后均是不堪一击。拿波斯语来说，它差不多花了1000年才确立通用语的地位，但在短短的16年里就沦为了寻常语言。奥斯特勒说，如果我们臆想英语至高无上的地位会永远持续下去，就是犯了“失忆症”与“典型的想象力缺乏症”。被过滤广告

     众所周知，如今英语就好比是“通往国际高管俱乐部(Executive Club)的入场券”。但是，怀疑论者指出：英语会让人联想起过去大英帝国大肆扩张的历史以及现在美国人在政治上到处指手画脚的爱好，这无疑会成为其未来发展道路上的污点。
忧天者则断言，英语的大肆传播必将导致其最终的衰落：英语会朝各个方向发展演变，最终各种新变体相互之间会变得难以沟通理解。
奥斯特勒则认为，未来可能会出现完全不同的图景：在新的世界语言格局中，随着中国、印度、俄罗斯以及巴西在经济上逐渐变得举足轻重，它们会发现即使不借助英语，同样能巩固自身在全球市场中的地位。国际性的语言将不复存在，英语会重新成为寻常语言，只有英语发源国家与地区才会继续使用它，届时那些国家与地区在政治上和经济上都将不再举足轻重。
通常说来，持英语地位不稳论观点的人认为其它某种语言——西班牙语和汉语的可能性最大——最终将取而代之。但奥斯特勒的观点是：到2050年前后，世界将不再需要全球性的通用语言。从很大程度来说，这要归功于科技发展，比方说随着机器翻译能力的提高，越来越多的语言之间可以实现互通。
     在阐述上述论点时，奥斯特勒展示出的博学多才令人敬佩。他旁征博引，引经据典，几乎贯穿于全书始终。
正如奥斯特勒在2005年出版的鸿篇巨著《语言帝国：世界语言史》(Empires of the Word)中所展示的：他在多种文化与语言间游刃有余，总是让人拍案叫绝，无比信服。全书文笔简洁流畅，引人入胜，但也时不时出现一些专业性过强的篇章，成堆晦涩的概念与望而生畏的冗词赘句让读者不知所云。
     这成了反对者反唇相讥的理由：看得出来，在他那些无忧无虑、只会说英语的同胞面前，通晓多种语言的奥斯特勒很是失意。我们应该坦然接受多种语言并存的局面。《最后的通用语》一书的基本观点就是文明的发展必将呈现多种语言齐头并进的态势。母语是英语的国民应该走出孤芳自赏式的固步自封。
     奥斯特勒的论点说服力强、令人警醒。然而，他也给了我们某种有益的启迪：尽管如今的世界变得越来越扁平与同质化，每两周就有一种语言从地球消失，但很多独具特色的方言仍然顽强地存续着，而且借由这些方言，千姿百态的丰富传统、历史以及民族性格的细微差异均得以传承。
     亨利•希金斯是《文字的秘密：揭密英语发迹史》(The Secret Life of Words: How English became English)一书的作者，该书由John Murray出版社出版。

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附：英文对照

People whose first language is English are apt to be complacent about its pre-eminence. English is seen as indomitable – ruling the worlds of business, science and entertainment. Yet in The Last Lingua Franca, Nicholas Ostler serves up a bold corrective to Anglo-centrism and its familiar flag-waving myopia.

Ostler, a Briton who chairs the Foundation for Endangered Languages, opens with the provocative statement that “the decline of English, when it begins, will not seem of great moment”. The key word here is “when”; Ostler is advancing not some tentative hypothesis, but a grand polemic. He maintains that any lingua franca is by its very nature a language of convenience, and that pretty soon international English will cease to be convenient and “will be dropped, without ceremony, and with little emotion”.

Ostler gives an account of the fluctuating fortunes of other major world languages. In each case their majesty has proved fragile. For instance, the might of Persian, established over a period of almost a thousand years, was shaken to its foundations in just 16. If we imagine that the supremacy of English will endure forever, says Ostler, we are guilty of both “memory failure” and a “signal lack of imagination”.

Today, we’re told, English “offers an entry card to the world’s Executive Club”. But sceptics suggest that its prospects are tainted by its association with Britain’s exploitative past and America’s recent taste for political interventionism.

Worriers allege that the diffusion of English must lead to its break-up: it will develop in many directions, its various new forms in the end becoming mutually unintelligible.

Ostler contends that the future promises something quite different: a new linguistic world order, in which China, India, Russia and Brazil, increasingly dominant economically, will discover that they can secure their positions in the global marketplace without recourse to English. The international form of the language will evaporate, and English will revert to being spoken only in its native heartlands. Those heartlands will be less important politically and commercially.

Usually, anyone who argues that English’s position is insecure proposes that some other language – most likely Spanish or Mandarin Chinese – will supersede it. Yet Ostler takes the view that by around 2050 no global lingua franca will be needed. To a large extent, this will be thanks to technology, for example as improved machine translation will make more languages mutually accessible.

In articulating these arguments, Ostler demonstrates a formidable degree of erudition. There is scarcely a page of this book that does not contain some remark-able gobbet of information.

The way Ostler shuttles between different cultures and tongues, as in his brilliant macro-history Empires of the Word (2005), is frequently jaw-dropping and never less than convincing. Yet while he writes with engaging crispness, at times the text becomes forbiddingly technical, and one can lose oneself in a thicket of thorny names and bristling verbiage.

This serves as a kind of rebuke: the polyglot Ostler is palpably frustrated by his blithely monoglot compatriots. We ought to be more comfortable among other languages. The fundamental contention of The Last Lingua Franca is that civilisation is growing more multilingual. Native speakers of English need jolting out of their self-satisfaction.

Ostler’s arguments are cogent and alarming. Yet he leaves us with a salutary thought: while the world can today seem flat and homogenous, and while a language dies out every fortnight, many distinct tongues persist, and in them survives a rich miscellany of traditions, histories and nuances of human character.

fanliuhong

呵呵 看看来了

float

地球越来越小,身边说什么的人都有,到时候不学也会了

草林

很有道理哦。

evaxiaofan

但现在她还是很重要的啊~~我还得学~~

小雅儿

world language may be hot day after day