世人皆知的10大錯誤語法規則(上)

for You

10.對你來說，Good是什麼含義

"How are you?" "I'm good," you reply.

“你好嗎？” “還不錯（I'm good）”，你回答。

"You're good? No, you're not! You're well!" says the smug friend whom everyone hates. Before you grumble a halfhearted apology for being an ungrammatical nitwit, stop yourself. Because -- get ready for a breakthrough -- you are good.

“you're good？不對，你不能用‘good'表示！你得用‘well'，是you're well！”，那些自以爲是的朋友總是這麼煩人地告訴你。此時又準備爲自己是個語法白癡而違心地向朋友道歉？省省吧！勇敢一點，因爲你沒錯（you're good）。

The long-held myth was that you should use an adverb (such as "well") to describe how you're doing. But most of us get that "am" is a form of the linking verb "to be" (I am, she is, you are), so we can use an adjective for description. You don't need to say, for instance, "I'm busily" when you're trying to finish your crossword in record time and your kid is asking for a snack. In other words, using an adjective is perfectly acceptable, and "well" is -- in fact -- used in adjective form when we say "I'm well." Also not worth hearing? The argument that "good" can only apply to our moral character and that "well" means we're physically OK. That's just a matter of usage. We all commonly accept that "good" can mean "well." You're good. You're well. We're all fine.

關於語法，人們長久以來都信奉這樣的金科玉律：你應該用副詞（比如“well”）來描述現在你怎麼樣。但我們大多數人認爲，“am”是“to be”連繫動詞的一種形式（I am, she is, you are），所以後面可接形容詞。比如，你正在嘗試破紀錄完成填字遊戲，你的孩子卻來找你要零食，此時你表達自己很忙就不必用“I'm busily”。 換句話說，使用形容詞完全沒問題，而且實際上，當我們說“I'm well”的時候，是把“well”當形容詞使用的。你還是認爲我剛剛的說法不正確嗎？還是糾結於他們那種觀點嗎？認爲“good”只能用於形容我們的道德品質，而“well”指我們的身體狀況不錯？其實這只是用法的問題。一般我們都認爲，“good”也是“well”。“you're good”也好，“you're well”也好，大家都很好。

y Conjunction Shun

9.避免使用連詞

We all know it's absolutely horrifying to start a sentence with a conjunction. Who would do such a thing?

我們都知道一個句子用連詞開頭是完全膽戰心驚的。誰又喜歡做這樣的事？

Everyone. Shakespeare, for one, liked starting with conjunctions so much that sometimes he used two. ("And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.") Or the Beatles: Who can argue that the lovelorn "And I love her" lyric and song title are just not right? And yet, they are perfectly acceptable ways to start sentences. So why do we all think that "so why do we all think that" is an unacceptable starter for a sentence? Linguist Arnold Zwicky posits an interesting theory. He says that because many freshly minted English speakers (children) tend to use a lot of conjunctions when they speak ("And I went to the playground. And then I skinned my knee. And my mom wouldn't feed me because she was working on her crossword."), teachers might have gone a little overboard and declared starting with a conjunction to be verboten in written assignments

答案是，所有人都喜歡。舉個例子，莎士比亞就非常喜歡用連詞開頭，有時候他甚至會用兩個連詞。比如他這句，“And yet，to say the truth，reason and love keep little company together nowadays”（譯爲“然而，說實話，如今理性可真難得和愛情並存。”）裏面就用到兩個連詞。再來看看披頭士，誰能說他描寫失戀的歌詞“但是我愛她”和他歌曲的名字是不正確的。其實，這些連詞完全可以放在句首來用。那麼，我們爲什麼都認爲這個句式“那麼，爲什麼我們都認爲”不能用在句首呢？語言學家阿諾德˙茲維基提出一個有趣的理論。他說，很多以英語爲母語的入學新生（兒童）在說話時，會使用大量的連詞：“然後（and）我去操場，接着（and）我擦破了膝蓋，而且（and）我媽媽不給我零食，因爲她當時正忙於她的填字遊戲。”老師可能會有點偏激，告訴學生，在英文的寫作中不允許使用連詞作爲句子的開頭。

-never

8.永遠不要把“however”放在句首

Speaking of conjunctions, the word "however" gets its own special place in the pantheon of Generally Accepted Yet Totally Baseless Grammar Rules. The thinking was this: You shouldn't start a sentence with the word "however" first because it's a conjunction (see previous page) and second because "however" has a few different meanings, which might muddy the waters of understanding.

說到連接詞，”however”這個詞在“人們普遍接受而又毫無根據的語法規則”中有着特殊的地位。過去人們是這樣認爲的：句首不能用“however”。首先因爲它是一個連接詞，其次這個詞含有幾種不同的意思，可能會讓人理解有誤。

To wit: If you say "However long I live, I'll never forget you," the meaning of however is either "to whatever extent" or "no matter how". If you say, "However, I will forget you if I meet someone else," you obviously are using "however" like a qualifier. (The word "but," for instance, is pretty interchangeable with "however.") Somehow, these two ideas led people to believe that "however" was a messy, inaccurate way to start a sentence. In fact, you'll be fine if you just follow these easy rules: Add a comma if you're using it to mean "but" and leave the comma out for an expression of extent.

比如，如果你說“However long l live ， I'll never forget you”（譯爲“無論生命多長，我都將永遠記得你”或者“只要我活着，你就在我心裏活着”），這裏的“however”既可以表示程度，也可以指“不論如何”。如果你說，“However ，I will forget you if I meet someone else”（譯爲“然而，如果遇見別人，我會忘記你”）在這種情況下，“however”就是一個修飾語。（如“but”這個詞就完全可以和“however”互換使用）也不知爲何，以上這兩種情況就導致人們認爲：“however”作爲一個句子的開頭既不準確，又讓人混亂。事實上，只要你遵守這條簡單的規則就沒有問題：使用“however”時，如果想表達“但是”的意思那就加個逗號，表達某種程度的話就去掉逗號。

fully

7.別隨便用“hopefully（但願）”

If you haven't gotten the idea so far, it's time we just said it: Grammar changes. Words are fluid and don't mean the same thing forever, nor are they used the same way throughout eternity. Fittingly, we come to "hopefully," which became a flash point for some grammar wars a few years ago.

如果你現在還沒有反應過來，那我們現在就來說說這個：語法規則是變化着的。詞彙的意思並非一成不變，其用法也不會始終如一。正好我們談到這個詞，“hopefully”。幾年之前，它可是語法論戰的焦點問題。

"Hopefully" literally means "in a hopeful manner." That means that using it in the sense of "it is hoped" is incorrect, as in "Hopefully it will rain soon." In that instance, you're really saying, "In a hopeful manner, it will rain." However, the sentence "We watched the clouds hopefully for rain" is correct. Or something like that. The point is, there's a very commonly accepted usage where we mean "it is hoped" when we say "hopefully." So when the Associated Press decided in 2012 that it would begin accepting "hopefully" in such a manner, anarchy reigned. Or at least some people wrote some angry editorials that are totally worth reading.

從文字層面上來看，“hopefully”意指“懷着一種希望的態度”。這就表明，如果用它表達“我希望”就不正確，。比如這個句子“Hopefully it will rain soon”的真正含義是“我希望能下雨”。其實，“We watched the clouds hopefully for rain”這個句子的用法也是正確的，意思相近。還有其他一些句子，用法與之相同。而問題的關鍵在於，我們使用“hopefully”這個詞來表達“我希望”已經非常普及了。因此在2012年，出版協會決定接受這種用法後，一場激烈的爭論拉開序幕。起碼，有一些人寫了幾篇非常值得一讀的社論來表達其憤慨之情。

ive-aggressive

6.被動語態

Passive voice seems to be the bane of every high school teacher's existence. You can certainly see why. It can't be a lot of fun to read paper after paper explaining that "The shot was made by Atticus to kill the dog and save them" or "The book was written by an alcoholic Faulkner." Surely they'd want to read something more enlivening: "Atticus shot the dog and saved them," or "Faulkner wrote the stream of consciousness story, but he often lost consciousness while drinking."

被動語態似乎是每一個高中老師的痛苦之源。原因很簡單。如果一份報紙如此報道新聞：“爲了殺死狗並救下這些人，這個射殺由阿提克斯實施，”或“這本書是一個酒鬼福克納寫的”，那麼讀來毫無樂趣。顯然人們想讀一些更生動有趣的句子，例如：“阿提克斯射殺狗然後救下了他們”或“福克納寫了意識流的故事，但他喝酒時經常失去意識”。

To review: In active voice, the subject of the sentence is doing the action ("I ate the hot dog"). In passive voice, the target of the action is the subject ("The hot dog was eaten by me"). As you can see, passive voice can be a lot clumsier, clunkier or even confusing in many circumstances, but it's not incorrect. Writers may also employ passive voice when they haven't done their homework, as in, "The man was shot and killed on Thursday." By whom? Hmmm, not sure. As with most things, the key to passive voice is moderation. (Someone should've told Faulkner.) And sometimes we must use it. In some professional writing, it's considered a good way to write objectively. For that reason, you might see studies or scholarly work that uses passive voice to say something like, "The experiments were conducted according to strict standards" as opposed to "We conducted the experiments according to strict standards." So watch for passive voice, but don't buy that you're a grammar pariah if you use it.

回顧一下：在一個主動語態裏，一個句子的主語是正在做某個動作（“我吃了個熱狗”）。在被動語態裏，動作的目標是主語（“那個熱狗被我吃了”）。正如你所看到的，被動語態有些笨拙、沉重甚至一些情況下能引起困惑，但也不是不正確。作家在打草稿的時候也會使用被動語態，例如，“那個男人在週四的時候被射殺”。“被誰？”嗯，不確定。在大多數情況下，被動語態的關鍵是適可而止（真應該有人告訴福克納這件事情的）。但有時候，我們必須使用被動語態。在一些專業寫作中，運用被動語態能增強寫作的客觀性。由於這個原因，研究總結或者學術作品可能會使用被動語態來闡述一些事情，例如描述爲“這個實驗通過嚴格的標準實施”，而不是“我們通過嚴格的標準進行實驗”。所以小心使用被動語態，但也不要相信“如果你使用被動語態，就會被語法世界唾棄”這種理論。

審校：Freya然 編輯：Freya然 來源：前十網