Online, English has become a common language for users from around the world. In the process, the language itself is changing.
在网上，英语变成了一种通用语，被世界各地的用户使用。在此过程中，语言本身也发生着改变。
When America emerged from the ashes of a bruising war with Britain in 1814, the nation was far from united. Noah Webster thought that a common language would bring people together and help create a new identity that would make the country truly independent of the British.
1814年，通过和英国的殊死战争，美国从废墟中建立，但远未实现全国性的统一。诺亚·韦伯斯特（Noah Webster ）认为形成一种通用语能够团结人民，并且形成新的认同感，进而使国家真正独立于大英帝国。
Webster's dictionary, now in its 11th edition, adopted the Americanised spellings familiar today - er instead of re in theatre, dropping the u from colour, and losing the double l from words such as traveller. It also documented new words that were uniquely American such as skunk, opossum, hickory, squash and chowder.
韦伯斯特编写的词典至今已经编辑了11版，采纳当今美国化了的常见拼写形式，比如：theatre（剧院）的结尾用“er”代替“re”，省略colour（颜色）中的“u”，以及，省略traveller（旅行者）中双写“l”中的一个。韦氏词典还收录了美国特有的一些新词汇，比如：skunk（黄鼠狼），opossum（负鼠），hickory（山核桃），squash（鲜果汁）和 chowder（一种用鲜鱼与咸肉,洋葱等煨成的食品）等。
An American Dictionary of the English Language took 18 years to complete and Webster learned 26 other languages in order to research the etymology of its 70, 000 entries.
韦伯斯特花了18年时间完成《美国英语词典》的编写，他学习了26种其它语言来研究词典内七万词条的语源。
The internet is creating a similar language evolution, but at a much faster pace.
同样的，互联网以更快的速度推动着语言进化。
There are now thought to be some 4.5 billion web pages worldwide. And with half the population of China now on line, many of them are written in Chinese.
如今的互联网被认为拥有着45亿网页。因为有半数中国人在上网，多数网页都用中文显示。
Still, some linguists predict that within 10 years English will dominate the internet - but in forms very different to what we accept and recognise as English today.
仍然，有部分语言学家预测，10年内英语将会主导互联网——尽管在形式上和当下被我们接受和认知的英语大相径庭。
That's because people who speak English as a second language already outnumber native speakers. And increasingly they use it to communicate with other non-native speakers, particularly on the internet where less attention is paid to grammar and spelling and users don't have to worry about their accent.
预测的依据是英语作为第二语言的人数已经超过了母语为英语的人数。他们越来越多地使用英语和其它原本也不说英语的人进行交流，尤其是在网上，语法和拼写都不需要太在意，甚至说话带口音也可以不必担心。
"The internet enfranchises people who are not native speakers to use English in significant and meaningful ways, " says Naomi Baron, professor of linguistics at American University in Washington DC.
“互联网解放了母语不是英语的人们，使他们得以更广泛、更丰富地运用英语，” 华盛顿美国大学的语言学教授纳奥米·巴伦（Naomi Baron）如是说。
Users of Facebook already socialise in a number of different "Englishes" including Indian English, or Hinglish, Spanglish (Spanish English) and Konglish (Korean English). While these variations have long existed within individual cultures, they're now expanding and comingling online.
Facebook的用户已经在用大量的各式各样的“英语”进行社交了，包括印度英语，或者印地英语（Hinglish），西班牙英语（Spanglish），韩国英语（Konglish）等。尽管很多英语的变体在各自的文化背景下存在了很长时间，但现在通过互联网得以扩张并相互结合。
"On the internet, all that matters is that people can communicate - nobody has a right to tell them what the language should be, " says Baron. "If you can talk Facebook into putting up pages, you have a language that has political and social standing even if it doesn't have much in the way of linguistic uniqueness."
“在网上，人们只关心如何进行交流——没人有权要求其他人用什么样的语言，” 巴伦教授说，“如果你的言论能够出现在Facebook上的显眼位置，就证明你的语言在政治上和社会上能够得到凸显，即使语言本身并不独特。”
Some words are adaptations of traditional English: In Singlish, or Singaporean English, "blur" means "confused" or "slow": "She came into the conversation late and was blur as a result."
一些词汇转变自传统英语。以新加坡英语（Singlish, or Singaporean English）为例，“blur”意为“困惑”或者“迟缓”，如：“她是后来才加入谈话的，所以显得有些困惑/迟缓（blur）。”
Others combine English words to make something new. In Konglish, "skinship" means intimate physical contact: handholding, touching, caressing.
另一些新词汇来自原有英语单词的组合。在韩国英语中，“skinship”（字面意思为“皮肤关系”）意为亲近的肢体接触，如：握手、触摸和爱抚等。
Technology companies are tapping into the new English variations with products aimed at enabling users to add words that are not already in the English dictionary.
科技公司为了让用户看懂那些连英语字典里都找不到的单词，正在开发能够解释新的英语变体的产品。
And most large companies have English websites, while smaller businesses are learning that they need a common language - English - to reach global customers.
很多公司都有英文网站，而且小商户也开始意识到他们需要使用通用语——英语，来吸引世界各地的客户。
"While most people don't speak English as their first language, there is a special commercial and social role for English driven by modern forms of entertainment, " says Robert Munro, a computational linguist and head of Idibon, a language technology company in California.
“尽管英语对多数人而言不是母语，但在现代娱乐方式的驱动下，以特殊的形式影响着贸易和社交，” 加利福尼亚一家名为Idibon的语言技术公司的老总、计算机语言学家罗伯特·芒罗（Robert Munro）说道。
"The prevalence of English movies in regions where there is not much technology other than cell phones and DVDs makes English an aspirational language. People think it's the language of the digital age."
“在除了移动电话和DVD机以外没有其他科技设备的地区，英文电影的传播使得英语成为了备受瞩目的语言。人们认为这就是数字时代的语言。”
In previous centuries, the convergence of cultures and trade led to the emergence of pidgin - a streamlined system of communication that has simple grammatical structure, says Michael Ullman, director of research at Georgetown University's Brain and Language Lab.
几个世纪以来，文化和贸易的汇聚促成了混杂语言的出现。这种混杂语言就是乔治华盛顿大学脑和语言实验室主任迈克尔·厄尔曼（Michael Ullman）所说的简单语法结构组成的流线型语言体系。
When the next generation of pidgin speakers begins to add vocabulary and grammar, it becomes a distinct Creole language. "You get different endings, it's more complex and systematised. Something like that could be happening to English on the web, " he says.
当混杂语言使用者的下一代开始添加词汇和语法的时候，特征明确的克里奥语言就出现了。厄尔曼说：“这过程很复杂，并且具有系统性，由此可以导致很多不同的结果。网络英语也会像这样发展下去。”
Take Hinglish.
以印地英语为例：
Hinglish is a blend of Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and English and is so widespread that it's even being taught to British diplomats.
印地英语结合了印度语（Hindi），旁遮普语（Punjabi），乌尔都语（Urdu）和英语，并且得到了广泛的传播，甚至连英国外交官都开始学习这种语言。
Mobile phone companies are also updating their apps to reflect its growing use.
移动电话公司也在更新他们的应用程序，以应对新语言变体的出现。
In Hinglish, a co-brother is a brother-in-law; eve-teasing means sexual harassment; an emergency crew responding to a crisis might be described as 'airdashing', and somewhat confusing to football fans, a 'stadium' refers to a bald man with a fringe of hair. There's even a new concept of time - "pre-pone", the opposite of postpone, meaning "to bring something forward".
在印地英语中，co-brother（字面：合作-兄弟）意为“姐（妹）夫”；eve-teasing（字面：前夕-调戏）意为“性骚扰”；airdashing（字面：飞行速度）被用来形容处理紧急情况的队员；还有容易引起球迷误会的词语stadium（字面：体育场），在印地英语中被用来指代“地中海”发型。甚至还出现了新的描述时间的概念词“pre-pone”，与postpone（推迟）相对，意为“提前”。
The increasing prevalence of the internet in everyday life means that language online is not a zero sum game. Instead, it allows multiple languages to flourish.
网络在日常生活中的不断普及说明了网络语言并不是零和游戏。相反，它带来了多种语言的繁荣。
"Most people actually speak multiple languages - it's less common to only speak one, " says Mr Munro. "English has taken its place as the world's lingua franca, but it's not pushing out other languages."
“实际上，多数人说着多种语言——只会一门语言的反而少，” 芒罗先生说，“英语已经成为了全球通用语，但是它并没有取代其它语言。”
Instead, other languages are pushing their way into English, and in the process creating something new.
相反，其它语言也在融入英语，与此同时，创造着新的语言变体。
|
