英語和新的全球精英崛起

The world’s most popular YouTuber is probably PewDiePie. Ostensibly, his videos offer his thoughts on video games, but they also provide a philosophy of life in perfect vernacular youth English: “Don’t be a salad. Be the best goddamn broccoli you could ever be.” His 59.3 million subscribers (or “Bros”, as he calls them) have mostly stayed loyal even after Disney dropped him last year for posting anti-Semitic videos. He said he’d only been joking.

全球最知名的Youtube網紅可能就數PewDiePie了。表面上，他的視頻是表達他對視頻遊戲的看法，但這些視頻也通過最地道的年青人口頭英語表達了他的生活哲學：“不要做一盤沙拉，盡力做一棵最棒的該死的西蘭花！”他有5930萬訂閱者（他把這些訂閱者稱爲“兄弟”）。雖然去年他因上傳反猶太人視頻（他說他只是在開玩笑）而遭迪斯尼(Disney)解約，但大部分訂閱者仍在繼續關注他。

PewDiePie lives in Brighton but — as the faint accent in his videos reveals — he is a Swede called Felix Kjellberg. Born in 1989, he represents the first global generation in which tens of millions of people from outside the English-speaking world speak perfect English. That shift is ominous for the US and UK. Thanks to English, these countries have dominated the global conversation. Their entertainment, media, university and tech sectors bestraddle the world. But now the PewDiePie generation, machine translation, Brexit and Trump are combining to threaten their dominance.

PewDiePie住在英國的布萊頓(Brighton)，但是——正如他視頻中不太明顯的口音所暴露出的——他是瑞典人，真名叫費利克斯?謝爾貝里(Felix Kjellberg)。他出生於1989年，屬於第一個“全球世代”，這個世代的許多非英語國家的人也能說一口完美英語。對美國和英國來說，這種轉變是個不祥的徵兆。拜英語所賜，這兩個國家主導了全球的話題。他們的娛樂、媒體、大學和科技行業均傲視全球。但現如今，在PewDiePie一代、機器翻譯、英國脫歐和特朗普(Trump)的共同作用下，美英兩國的主導地位受到了威脅。

A few non-native speakers have always managed to sneak into the global English conversation. In music, for instance, think of PewDiePie’s fellow Nordics Abba and Bj?rk. But most ambitious foreigners were held back because they spoke not English, but Globish: a simple, dull, idiom-free, cripplingly accented version of English with a small vocabulary. So they rarely sounded as fun, clever or cool in English as native speakers.

一直以來，都有一些非母語人士成功混入了全球英語話題中。比如，在音樂界，有PewDiePie的北歐同胞——瑞典的阿巴樂團(Abba)和冰島女歌手比約克(Bj?rk)。但是，大多數雄心勃勃的外國人壯志難酬的原因是，他們講的不是英語，而是“全球語”(Globish)： 一種用詞簡單、乏味、沒有習語、口音很重且詞彙量極少的英語。 所以，他們講英語時很難像以英語爲母語的人一樣風趣、智慧和酷炫。

This had fateful consequences. “What is well articulated in English on the internet becomes ‘truth,’” says Japanese writer Minae Mizumura in The Fall of Language in the Age of English. Perfect English is not only heard more, but also taken more seriously than what’s said in other languages, she argues. Note the mystical reverence among the global elite for The Economist, or the spread of Trump’s jibe “fake news” among autocrats worldwide. By contrast, it’s said in the Netherlands that if Jesus returned to earth, and a Dutch newspaper reported the news, the world would never find out.

這種情況產生了十分嚴重的後果。日本作家水村美苗(Minae Mizumura)在《英語時代的語言淪陷》(The Fall of Language in the Age of English)一書中說，“在互聯網上，用英語闡述的觀點成爲了‘真理’。”她指出，較之用其它語言所做的表達，完美英語不僅聽的人更多，而且更加受重視。試看全球精英階層對《經濟學人》(The Economist)的那種神祕的崇敬，或者特朗普怒懟媒體的口頭禪“假新聞”在全球獨裁者中的廣爲流傳。相反，荷蘭流傳着這樣一種說法：如果耶穌重返人間，而一家荷蘭報紙報道了這個消息，全世界可能永遠不會注意到。

But now, just as populists are trying to roll back globalisation, along comes the first global generation shaped by the internet, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening of China. This generation always knew that Globish wasn’t enough. Emmanuel Macron, born in 1977, records a video in English called “Make the Planet Great Again”, and it impacts the global conversation. Russian social-media trolls influence elections in English. India, for the first time ever, has a new generation of urbanites whose mother tongue is English. They no longer use such Hinglish formulations as “Head is paining”. In Egypt, some children at private English-language schools now struggle to speak Arabic, reports anthropologist Noha Roushdy. These kids are being trained to be heard abroad.

但現在，正當民粹主義者試圖逆轉全球化進程之際，經歷了互聯網、柏林牆(Berlin Wall)倒塌和中國對外開放的第一個全球世代成長起來了。這一代人一直都明白，只會說“全球語”是不夠的。1977年出生的法國總統埃馬紐埃爾?馬克龍(Emmanuel Macron)用英文錄製了一個名爲“讓地球再次偉大”(Make the Planet Great Again)的視頻，在全球引起了反響。俄羅斯噴子在社交媒體上用英語影響了別國大選。在印度，有史以來首次出現了以英語爲母語的新一代都市人。他們不再說“Head is paining”（頭在痛）這樣的印式英語了。人類學家諾哈?魯什迪(Noha Roushdy)在一篇報告中說，在埃及，一些在私立英語學校上學的孩子現在說阿拉伯語都很困難。這些孩子正在被訓練成爲能讓外國人聽懂自己說話的人。

And the production line of perfect English-speakers hums ever faster. More and more universities around the world offer courses in English. The Netherlands sets the pace in Europe, followed by the Scandinavians. These countries are now attracting world-class foreign academics, and that’s before the anticipated post-Brexit exodus from British universities. If Brexit and Trump hamper English-language talent industries, continental Europe should benefit. Amsterdam and Copenhagen are already effectively bilingual. Berlin and Paris aren’t far behind.

而且，培養能講完美英語人士的生產線正在以前所未有的速度運行。全球各地越來越多的大學提供英語教學課程。荷蘭是歐洲地區英語教學的領頭羊，緊隨其後的是北歐國家。這些國家目前正在吸引世界級的外國學者。而且在英國脫歐後，預計英國的大學會有大量人才出走。如果英國脫歐和特朗普當政對英語人才產業構成阻礙，歐洲大陸應該會受益。阿姆斯特丹和哥本哈根已經基本了實現了雙語化。柏林和巴黎也緊隨其後。

Next, the US and UK will lose their dominance of media. Machine translation improves by the week. In a couple of years, a top-class newspaper like Die Zeit will produce its German edition, then press “translate” and get a very decent English version in an instant. Hire a few English-language subeditors to touch up the machine’s phrasings, and suddenly you’re competing with The New York Times.

接下來，美國和英國將失去他們在媒體領域的支配地位。機器翻譯的質量每週都在改善。用不了幾年，德國的《時代週報》(Die Zeit)等質量上乘的報紙，將只需按一下“翻譯”鍵，就能立即將德語版轉換成很像樣的英文版，再僱用幾個英語編輯來潤色一下機器翻譯的文稿，就馬上能與《紐約時報》(New York Times)競爭了。

This is bad news for non-English languages and literatures. Mizumura predicts that in Germany, for instance, novelists and poets will soon start writing in English. This would mean a return to the era before 1800, when European writers often used a universal language. Dante, Descartes, Thomas Hobbes and even Luther, the father of German, were fluent in Latin, notes Mizumura.

對英語以外的其他語言和非英語文學作品來說，這是個壞消息。水村美苗預測，以德國爲例，小說家和詩人很快就會開始用英語寫作。這將意味着歐洲將回到1800年前的時代——當時歐洲作家通常使用統一的語言寫作。水村美苗指出，但丁(Dante)、笛卡爾(Descartes)、托馬斯?霍布斯(Thomas Hobbes)、甚至德語之父路德(Luther)都能講流利的拉丁語。

Everyone now piously preaches multilingualism, but it’s not going to happen. About 1.5 billion people are learning English, roughly 10 times more than are learning French, Chinese, Spanish, German, Italian and Japanese put together, estimates the German linguist Ulrich Ammon. And the more people who speak English, the more useful English becomes. Anyway, the PewDiePie generation won’t let you learn their own languages. Try going to Sweden and speaking bad Swedish. You’ll be forced into English in seconds.

現在，人人都惟願自己具備多語言能力，但這種情況不會發生。德國語言學家烏爾裏希?阿蒙(Ulrich Ammon)估計，全球約有15億人在學習英語，是學習法語、漢語、西班牙語、德語、意大利語和日語人數總和的10倍左右。而且講英語的人越多，英語就會變得越有用。無論如何，PewDiePie這一代是不會讓你再學習他們的母語了。你去瑞典講蹩腳的瑞典語試試？ 用不了幾秒鐘，你就會被迫改說英語。

From Spain to China, the aspirational classes want to upgrade from Globish to English. That should spark a boom in expat teaching jobs for native English speakers. A Briton teaching in Beijing told me in 2011 that most Chinese students he encountered had never met a native speaker before. The coming generation will have to, because Globish no longer cuts it. (Iran’s recent threat to ban English teaching in primary schools would probably just drive it underground.)

從西班牙到中國，有報負的階層都想從把自己的“全球語”提升爲英語。這應該會導致以英語爲母語的外派教師的工作急增。2011年，一位在北京教英語的英國人告訴我，他遇到的大多數中國學生以前從來沒有遇見過母語爲英語的人。下一代必須得學好英語了，因爲“全球語”已經不夠用了。 （伊朗最近威脅要禁止小學教授英語，這可能只會促使英語教學轉到地下）。

The next global ruling class will perceive the world chiefly in English. That will be a loss. As Mizumura says, you can only see what your language allows you to express. But when perfect English becomes standard, Brits and Americans lose their advantage.

下一代全球統治階層將主要用英語來認識世界。那將是一個損失。正如水村美苗所說，你只能明白你的語言能表達清楚的東西。但是，當完美英語成爲標準時，英國人和美國人將失去優勢。