The myth of English as a global language
English spelling is notoriously inconsistent, and some have gone further, calling it “the world’s most awesome mess” or “an insult to human intelligence” (both these from linguists, one American, one Austrian). Maybe this is just because our alphabet only has twenty-six letters to represent more than forty phonemes, or distinctive speech-sounds, and some of those – notably q and x – are not pulling their weight, while j is not allowed to (see “John” but also “George”). If we gave s and z a consistent value (“seazon”) and extended this to k and c (“klok” and “sertain”), we could free c up for other duties, such as maybe representing ch, as once it did. But then there are all the vowels . . . .英语拼写不连贯，错误丛生，被评为“世界上最混乱的语言”、“对人类智慧的侮辱”（分别来自美国和奥地利语言学家的戏称）。也许是因为仅仅凭借26个字母来组成40多个音素，具备独立发音。一些字母比如q和x没有区别性特征，而j有（John和George的区别）。如果字母s和z无区别性特征（seazon），同理扩展到k和c(klok、sertain)，那么字母c没有其他区别特征，比如与ch的差异。最后只剩下元音字母了。
How did this unsystematic system come about? And is it really that bad? Some say that there are only a few hundred deeply irregular words, but the trouble is that most of them are common. Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle even went so far as to claim that we have “close to an optimal system”, though that takes a deal of argument to convince. The History of English Spelling does not, in any case, try to resolve the dispute. It is based on a very large collection of data made by the late Christopher Upward – much of which has had to be excluded, though available from www.historyofenglishspelling.info – put in order by George Davidson. Successive chapters look at the way words were spelled in Old and Middle English, how Franco-Latin and other words were dealt with, before going on to “The Exotic Input”. Each chapter is organized by letters, in alphabetical order. This is not, in other words, a book easily read. The most convenient way to use it may be to look up individual words for their histories in the forty-page word index. It is concerned to correct what the author sees as an interlocking and mutually reinforcing system of myths about English
这不成体系的体系是如何形成的？真的那么糟糕吗？有人认为，其中只有约几百个不规则单词，大部分是规则的。语言学者乔姆斯基和哈雷甚至宣称，英语体系已经“将近理想化”，虽然其观点颇受争议。无论如何，《英语发音史》试图正名。这本书是根据克里斯多夫晚年收集的大量数据，乔治·戴维森整理可用数据（虽然大部分不可用）写就。其中，连载了中古英语单词发音方式，法式拉丁及其他单词的运用，外来词汇的引入等。每一章节由字母排序。这并非一本通俗易懂的书，最简便的阅读方式也许是从这本40多页的书里，查找每个单词各自的历史。
Richard J. Watts’s Language Myths and the History of English has a much more evident polemical and narrative structure. It is concerned to correct what the author sees as an interlocking and mutually reinforcing system of myths about English, which have been deployed in the service of elitist and often nationalist ideology. The trouble is, one person’s myth is someone else’s securely established datum, and vice versa.
李察·瓦茨的《语言之谜》和《英语史》有更为辩证有力的叙述结构。书里试图纠正作者把英语之谜当作相互作用的效应体系的错误。认为作者是将英语置身于精英主义和民族意识形态里，而没有独立看待。问题是，一方的谜题是另一方的既定标准。
One can agree that there are some familiar metaphors applied to language generally, and sometimes more particularly to English, which should not be taken too far. Watts notes the metaphor of language as a human being – which means it can have qualities applied to it, like “noble” or “healthy” or “diseased” – and also language as family member (French as a “daughter” of Latin), or language as geological formation (so English has “strata”). The dangerous one as regards English, I would suggest, is language as threatened female, whose “purity” is continually being “violated” or “polluted” by vulgarisms, Americanisms, anything one doesn’t happen to like. If one pursued this image, one would have to say that English, far from being a pure maiden, looks like a woman who has appeared out of some distant fen, had more partners than Moll Flanders, learned a lot in the process, and is now running a house of negotiable affection near an international airport. But metaphors can be taken too far.
有人认为，有些常用比喻普遍适用于各种语言，有些只特用于英语。瓦茨认为语言的比喻就像人类世界，有普遍适用的品质，比如高贵、健康、病态，也有家族亲疏（法语是拉丁语的女儿），有地质构造差异（英语分阶层）。而我认为，英语的危险，像一名受到威胁的女性，其纯洁性被美式俚语等脏话所玷污。我的观点有人同意，有人又认为英语远不如处女纯洁，而是像摩尔·弗兰德（笛福的小说女主人公，饱经沧桑 包括早期诱惑、职业、犯罪和卖淫 信念盗窃等），生于离乱，经历种种，才能获得救赎。当然，语言的比喻有更深远的内涵。
Watts’s first assaults are on the myths of English as ancient, and of the unbroken tradition of English. He seems in neither case to be on sure ground. The first straw men set up to be demolished are Richard Chenevix-Trench (1855) and Thomas KingtonOliphant (1878), neither of them any longer authoritative. In any case I cannot see what objection there is to the former’s belief that “the beginnings of Old English go well back into the past beyond the written evidence we possess”. Of course they do. Just as every creature now alive has an ancestry going back to the primordial ooze – if it didn’t have such an ancestry, it wouldn’t be there – so every language in the world (except maybe the artificially invented ones like Esperanto) has an ancestry going far back into prehistory. Along the way, there have been continual changes, mutations, even speciation – the question of where Vulgar Latin turns into French, or Early Runic becomes Old Norse, is a judgement call. However, one powerful reason for calling the language Anglo-Saxons spoke “Old English”, a custom Watts rejects, is that that’s what they called it: first englisc, and then ald englis.
瓦茨首先攻击古英语的旧观念。他的观点看上去面面俱到。矛头首先指向《Richard Chenevix-Trench》（1855）和《Thomas Kington Oliphant》（1878）。无疑，这两本书不再权威；但是，瓦茨的观点与之前的信条其实并不矛盾。之前认为“古英语的开端需追溯到无记录阶段”。现存每种生物都能追溯到原始祖先——如果没有原始祖先，不会繁衍生息至今——所以，世界上任何语言（也许除了人工发明的世界语等）都能追溯到史前时代。随着社会发展，发生突变或渐变，形成新的种类——古拉丁语蜕变成法语，古北欧文演变成古斯堪迪纳维亚语等现象。瓦茨反对的是一种定义：盎格鲁-撒克逊族对“古英语”（englisc->ald englis->Old English）定义的转变。
One would have to say that English, far from being a pure maiden, looks like a woman who has appeared out of some distant fen, had more partners than Moll Flanders, learned a lot in the process, and is now running a house of negotiable affection near an international airportWatts furthermore thinks that the core of the “English is ancient” myth is the status of Beowulf, and that the poem is just not ancient: “there is no evidence at all to suggest a later date for Beowulf than the first decade of the eleventh century”. Both beliefs are mistaken. No one thinks that Beowulf is the oldest English text. Quite what is, is a good question. The runic inscription on the Ruthwell Cross? The long but still mostly undeciphered inscription, also in runes, on Bewcastle Waste not far away, which commemorates a forgotten victory? Perhaps the lines of verse, again in runes, on the Franks Casket? Or the Corpus and Épinal glosses? The point is that historical linguists have a good deal of information to work with, and, ever since Jakob Grimm, have been able to build up a cohesive chronology of linguistic change. This is, certainly, “only a theory”, as creationists always say about evolution. But both theories succeed in integrating enormous amounts of data, and have proved capable of continuous refinement.
更深入一步，瓦茨认为，古英语之谜的核心是史诗《贝奥武夫》的地位。其实，史诗并非古代，“根本没有证据证明《贝奥武夫》的出现在11世纪10年代之前（他认为有更早的记录）”。瓦茨关于古英语定义和史诗的观点过于武断。《贝奥武夫》并非古英语最早记录。那什么是最早记录呢？是鲁斯韦尔十字碑上的北欧古碑文，还是附近布由塞废墟上类似庆祝伟大胜利的铭文，还是弗兰克斯棺材上镌刻的诗文，还是库普斯和埃皮纳的装饰纹？历史学家资料繁多，雅克布·格林已经建立了较为全面的语言变迁年代学。而这仅仅是一种理论，就好象创世论者经常鼓吹进化。这些理论只是在归纳提炼大量数据的基础上得出的。
As for the date of Beowulf, conviction sags as soon as one reads Watts’s translation of Humfrey Wanley’s words in 1705. Wanley wrote, “In hoc libro . . . descripta videntur bella quæ Beowulfus . . . gessit contra Sueciæ Regulos”, which Watts translates as, “In this book . . . can be seen fine descriptions in which Beowulf . . . performs against the princes of Sweden”. This does not make sense even in modern English. Performs what against the princes of Sweden? But in any case, readers of the TLS, remembering bellum gerere and bellum as the textbook neuter noun declension paradigm, will need no further gloss to see it is not Wanley here who is “grossly misleading”.
《贝奥武夫》最早被知晓是在瓦茨1705年翻译的《汉弗莱·温莱的话》上。温莱的拉丁原文，瓦茨翻译道，“在这本书里……关于贝奥武夫……执行瑞典王子的任务……有生动的描述。”翻译造成歧义。在现代英语里，这种说法也不合理。而温莱的错误，堂而皇之，毫无质疑。
Meanwhile, and more significantly, there is powerful evidence for an earlier date of Beowulf, much of it brought together in the conference at Harvard University on the subject last September. But the evidence, much of it historical linguistics again, has been available for years. Watts gives space all but entirely to the theories of Kevin Kiernan. Professor Kiernan’s work on the manuscript of the poem, and the Thorkelin transcripts, has provoked much thought, and remains extremely valuable, but his reign-of-Knut dating has found few converts – except whoever it was who wrote the Wikipedia entry, and that is not compelling. Watts’s belief that if you think the poem older than the manuscript, you have been mesmerized by a myth of ancient-ness, is peremptorily dismissive; his “hunch” that we owe the poem to Scribe B is untenable. Modern editors and translators patch them over, but both Scribe A and Scribe B make too many mistakes, including inability to recognize the names of prominent characters, to be seen as authors or people close to the author.
更重要的是，关于《贝奥武夫》有更早的证据在去年九月在哈佛大学会议上提出。大部分历史学家经过多年考证得出。瓦茨主要反驳凯文·基尔南的理论。基尔南教授是研究史诗手稿的。其中，丹麦锁克林抄本价值巨大，不同凡响，reign-of-Knut年代测定几近完美——不同于琐碎的维基百科条目。瓦茨的观点过于轻率，他认为，如果你认为史诗比手稿更早，那么你已经陷入了古英语之谜中。他宣称，如果我们有了史诗原本A和抄本B的观点不可靠。现代编辑和译者修复版本，力图接近原本，但是版本A、B都错误百出，包括主角名字也无法辨认。
Middle English is not sure ground, either. Once again, translation lets Watts down. In the Peterborough Chronicle, “Hæge sitteð þa aceres dæleth” does not mean “Hedges sit there that separate acres”. It is a proverb, found and contextualized elsewhere, which says “High he sits who deals out land”; and I think it means, if said with a shrug, “It’s all right for some”. Watts argues that the declining status of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle disproves the “myth of unbroken tradition”, and on a literary level, that’s true – but not on a linguistic level. In any case, the breach of literary tradition is self-evident. As for the modern “myth” of Middle English as a creole, space permits only the comment that if one uses evidence drawn from internet chat rooms (or from Wikipedia), one will indeed get some strange results. The whole “creole” discussion has proved a dead end. Going on to Watts’s rejection of “the Great Vowel Shift”, we can agree with Paul Johnston that the evidence indicates a number of vowel shifts, starting earlier than was thought. The “myth” of the GVS remains useful pedagogically, just because the changes it indicates look so consistent – and do a good deal to explain the unhappy state of English spelling.
中世纪英语研究也存在谜团。瓦茨的翻译再次造成歧义。在《彼得堡编年史》中记载的拉丁原文被瓦茨曲解。那是一则其他地区发现的谚语，意为“卖地换权”，也可以理解为“无所谓”。瓦茨却认为，盎格鲁-撒克逊族地位下降，证明古英语传统的虚假性。在文学层面能够自圆其说，但语言学层面不能。相对的，现代中世纪英语之谜——克里奥尔语等现象，只能说明，如果有人从网络聊天室提取证据（或者维基百科），只会得到异常结果。现象本身只是一个怪圈。继续瓦茨反对“伟大的元音大转移”的话题，保尔·杰森的看法比较理智，他认为，大量证据的确能够有力表明元音大转移——“元音大转移”始终保持着教学功能，是因为它的变化有警示作用——为证明英语发音的不良状况作出贡献。
Watts goes on to challenge the “myth” of “English as a global language”, and here one feels like saying ‘well, it is and it isn’t’Professor Watts comes into his own in the modern period, and here his argument is plain, if uncontroversial. He thinks that the “myth of polite language” mutated into the “myth of legitimate language” and is now a “myth of educated language”. He rejects such views as that “All nonstandard forms are corrupt” and that “Those who continue to speak nonstandard forms . . . are politically subversive”. But then, one has to say, so does everybody else. Ever since Grimm, historical linguists have slavered with delight over non-standard forms – some of the Grimms’ favourite fairy tales were in Plattdeutsch. English is also something of a European anomaly in that there has been no possibility of equating language with nation state ever since Yorktown, and Bannockburn before it. English standard English has long had independent competitors.
瓦茨在在现代语言学研究方面，融入主流。他认为，“礼貌用语之谜”可以演变成“合法用语之谜”，以及现在的“文明用语之谜”。同时，他反对“不标准即腐坏堕落”、“说话不规范即反政治分子”等观点。从格林姆开始，历史语言学家对不规范用语兴趣大增——格林姆最喜欢的童话是德式英语。而德式英语在约克镇、班诺克本使用之前，绝不可能将之作为国家级语言。所以，英语标准一直都在竞争中发展演变。
The real and serious issue must be the use of Standard English, and Standard American, to “strengthen social elitism and exclusion” in the present time, and here there are two views. To speak personally, I was once present at a lecture urging the use of “Ebonics” (African American Vernacular English) as a teaching medium in predominantly black American schools. At the end of the lecture an African American stood up and said, in Standard American, that he was a lawyer specializing in defending African Americans in the courts; and that if he did this in AAVE rather than Standard American, his acquittal rate would be much lower. So, stick to one’s principles, and see young men sent to jail? Lament the prejudice which creates such a situation, and do nothing? Or accept bidialectalism? It’s easy for linguists – writing, of course, in perfect Standard English, or else they wouldn’t get published – to take the high moral line.
真正的问题在于标准英语和美语的运用，确实“增强了社会精英主义和排他主义”（现在有这两种观点）。我曾经参加过一个讲座，关于“黑人英语”（美籍非裔使用的英语方言）作为美国黑人学校启蒙教学工具。讲座最后，一位美籍非裔站起来，说一口流利的标准美语。他是保护美籍非裔权利的律师，如果他在法庭上的辩护使用黑人英语而非标准美语，案件的成功率也会降低。难道为了坚持个人原则而眼睁睁看着同胞入狱？对这种偏见的畸形后果，我们该哀悼还是麻木？还是接受双语？对语言学家来说是简单的——用标准英语书写，否则连书也无法出版——并且遵守一种平等开放的道德准则。
One can then agree with Watts’s strictures over the Kingman Report, the Cox Report, the querelle over John Honey’s work in the 1980s and 90s, remarking only (as has been done several times in this journal) that much of the trouble came and comes from the fact that, by “grammar”, far too many educated English-speakers still mean a small set of trivial shibboleths. Watts goes on to challenge the “myth” of “English as a global language”, and here one feels like saying “well, it is and it isn’t”. Lots of people don’t speak English, but it is very widely used in science and in finance, and it is spread even more widely through films and pop music. One can concede that this is pure accident, a result of American power and influence, that it says nothing about the inner nature of the language, and that it is bound to be temporary.
你可以同意瓦茨对金曼报告、考克斯报告、20世纪80、90年代约翰·哈尼报告等的非难，但是仅供研讨（本文多次提到）。无数问题源自于“语法”，也许只是玩笑。瓦茨继续挑战英语作为国际语言之谜，但是这并非一个绝对的答案。很多人不说英语，但是英语广泛用于科学和金融，更渗透于电影和流行音乐。你可以承认这是一种偶然，一种美国影响力的体现，但是与语言本身无关，文化总是境随时转。
Two final points of agreement may be these. Triumphalism is always ugly, and there is indeed a vein of it in too many histories of English. And the discussion of social issues to do with language has been regularly vitiated in Britain and America by an unusually low level of linguistic knowledge even among the most educated English-speakers. Watts’s attempted rewrite of premodern language history, however, is fatally skewed by the wish to make it fit a modern thesis. Things back then were more interesting and more diverse than he allows.
最后该达成共识的是，第一，必胜信念总是过于天真，前车可鉴。英美社会上关于语言的讨论常常被扭曲，即使一名良好英语演说家，如果缺乏语言学知识，也会适得其反。第二，瓦茨试图重写前现代化语言学历史，但是当适应现代论文体制之际，已经造成致命的错误。事实上，世界是变化发展的多元化进程。
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