看網絡發展如何改變語言

Online, English has become a common language for users from around the world. In the process, the language itself is changing.

英語已經在網絡上成爲全球範圍內的通用語言。在此過程中，英語本身也在不斷髮生着變化。

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年英美戰爭結束後，當美國從廢墟中發展起來時，還是個四分五裂的國家。美國辭典編纂家諾亞-韋伯斯特認爲，統一語言將會使人們更有凝聚力，並獲得新的身份，這有助於美國真正的脫離英國而獨立。

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.

《韋氏詞典》現在已經是第11版了，它採用我們現在熟悉的美式拼寫——theatre中的re變爲er，去掉colour中的u，把一些單詞中的兩個l如traveller變爲一個l。詞典中也收錄了一些美國獨有的新詞彙，如skunk（臭鼬）, opossum（負鼠）, hickory（山核桃）, squash（南瓜）和 chowder（雜燴）。

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.

韋伯斯特花了18年時間寫成《美國英語詞典》，爲了研究詞典中的70000個單詞的詞形變化，他學習了26種語言。

The internet is creating a similar language evolution, but at a much faster pace.

互聯網爲類似的語言演變創造了一個平臺，但速度更快。

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.

現在在全球範圍內共有45億個網頁。在中國，如今有一半的人都是網民，他們中很多人使用中文上網。

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.

不過一些語言學家預測，10年內英語將成爲互聯網的主導語言，但形式將和網民今天接受和認可的英語有很大不同。

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.

這是因爲將英語作爲第二語言的人數已經超過以英語爲母語的人數。而且非英語國家的人進行交流時都使用英語，尤其是在互聯網上，人們不太注重語法和拼寫，使用者也不用擔心口音問題。

"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.

“網絡讓那些非英語國家的人們在重要和意義重大的場合中更自由的使用英語，”位於華盛頓地區的美利堅大學的語言學教授內奧米-巴倫說。

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.

社交網絡的用戶使不同形式的英語社會化，包括印度英語，西班牙式英語和韓式英語。雖然這些變化一直存在於各國的文化中，但如今網絡使它們相互融合。

"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."

“在互聯網上，最重要的是人們可以相互交流——沒有人有權利規定該使用何種語言，”巴倫說。“如果你能說服臉譜網建立網頁，你的語言就有了政治和社會地位，即使它在語言方面並沒有太多的獨特性。”

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."

有些單詞與傳統英語出入較大：在新加坡英語中，“blur” 意爲“困惑的”或“緩慢的”，例句：“聊天的時候她很遲才加入討論，因此有些困惑。”

Others combine English words to make something new. In Konglish, "skinship" means intimate physical contact: handholding, touching, caressing.

此外，合成詞也可以產生一些新的詞彙。在韓式英語中，"skinship"意爲身體的親密接觸：握手、撫摸和愛撫。

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.

科技公司正在開發英語新變化的相關產品，旨在幫助用戶增加現在英語字典中不存在的單詞。

And most large companies have English websites, while smaller businesses are learning that they need a common language - English - to reach global customers.

大多數大公司都有自己的英文網站，小企業也意識到他們需要一種通用語言，也就是英語，來爭取全球範圍內的客戶。

"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, a language technology company in California.

“雖然大多數人的母語都不是英語，但現代娛樂方式讓英語發揮着特殊的商業和社會作用，” 加利福尼亞一家名爲Idibon的語言公司的老總，計算機語言學家羅伯特-芒羅說。

"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."

“在一些除了手機和DVD外沒有其他什麼高科技產品的地區，英語電影的流行讓英語成爲一種時尚。人們認爲這是數字時代的語言。”

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.

過去幾個世紀，文化和商貿的融合導致了洋涇浜語的產生，這是一種簡潔實用的交流語言，語法結構簡單，喬治城大學大腦和語言實驗室的主任邁克爾-厄爾曼這樣解釋道。

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.

下一代的洋涇浜語言使用者還會爲其繼續增加詞彙和語法，它會變成一種截然不同的克里奧爾語。“洋涇浜語會有不同的形式，會更加複雜和系統化。對於英語，這種變化會發生在互聯網上，”他說。

Take Hinglish. Hinglish is a blend of Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and English and is so widespread that it's even being taught to British diplomats.

以印式英語爲例，印式英語是北印度語、旁遮普語、烏爾都語和英語的混合語，它使用很廣泛，甚至被教給英國外交官。

Mobile phone companies are also updating their apps to reflect its growing use.

移動電話公司也在不斷更新應用程序，以體現他們日益增多的功能。

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".

在印式英語中，co-brother意爲姐夫、妹夫或小舅子；eve-teasing意爲性騷擾；緊急救援隊對突發事件的反應可能會被描述爲 airdashing，而令球迷有些困惑的是，stadium指的是頭髮稀疏的禿頂男人。就連表示時間都有新的概念——pre-pone，延期的反義詞，意爲“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.

互聯網在日常生活中的日益普遍意味着語言並非一場零和博弈。相反，它讓不同的語言蓬勃發展。

"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."

“實際上，很多人都會說多種語言，只會說一種語言的人是很少見的。” 芒羅先生說。“英語已經成爲世界的通用語，但它並不排擠其他語言。”

Instead, other languages are pushing their way into English, and in the process creating something new.

相反，其他語言正在融入英語當中，在此過程中也在不斷產生新的東西。