美式英語入侵英國：好萊塢電影、流行小說勢不可擋

The future of written English will owe more to Hollywood films than Dickens or Shakespeare, if the findings of a study into children’s writing are anything to go by.
如果一項對兒童作文的研究結果可靠的話，那麼比起狄更斯或莎士比亞等英國文壇巨匠，書面英語的未來受好萊塢電影的影響會更大。

The analysis of 74,000 short stories found that their written work was littered with Americanisms, exclamation marks and references to celebrities.
對74000篇兒童短文的分析發現，這些文字作品中儼然處處可見美式英語、感嘆號和明星姓名。

Researchers who looked at the entries to a national competition found they were increasingly using American words such as garbage, trash can, sidewalk, candy, sneakers, soda, cranky and flashlight.
研究人員閱讀了全國作文比賽的參賽作品後發現，，孩子們正越來越多地使用一些美式英語詞彙，比如：garbage（垃圾）, trash can（垃圾桶）， sidewalk（人行道）, candy（糖果）, sneakers（膠底運動鞋）, soda（蘇打水）, cranky（暴躁的） and flashlight（手電筒）。

The stories, written by pupils aged seven to 13, show how fairy cakes are referred to as cupcakes and a dinner jacket has become a tuxedo. ‘Smart’ is now often used for ‘clever’ and ‘cranky’ for ‘irritable’.
這些短篇作文出自7-13歲孩子們之手，小學生們用紙杯蛋糕(cupcakes)來代替仙女蛋糕（fairy cakes），晚禮服(dinner jacket)則變成了無尾禮服(tuxedo)。常用美式英語還有‘smart’現在也替代了英式用詞’clever’來表示聰明之意，而表達暴躁古怪之意的’cranky’也取代了’irritable’。

Celebrity culture also has a powerful influence on children’s work, with Simon Cowell and Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi among the famous names cropping up repeatedly.
名人文化同樣對孩子們的作文有着強大的影響力，像真人秀毒舌評委西蒙・考威爾以及阿根廷足球明星梅西這樣的名人姓名都再三地出現在他們的文章中。

But pupils are let down by basic spelling, punctuation and grammar, according to the study by Oxford University Press, which looked at the entries to BBC Radio 2’s ‘500 Words’ competition.
但是牛津大學出版社的研究發現，小學生們在基本拼寫、標點和語法上很成問題。該研究查看了英國廣播公司第二之聲舉辦的“500單詞”作文比賽的參賽作品。

Children stumbled over simple spellings such as ‘does’ and ‘clothes’ and struggled to use the past tense correctly, often saying ‘rised’ instead of ‘rose’ or ‘thinked’ instead of ‘thought’.
孩子們會出現簡單的拼寫錯誤，比如拼錯’does’和’clothes’，也不能正確運用過去式，他們常常把rose寫成rised，把thought寫成thinked。

Researchers also found that punctuation was underused, especially semi-colons and speech marks. Some did not know how to use capital letters.
研究人員還發現學生們標點該用的時候不用，特別是分號和引號。一些孩子竟然不知道如何使用大寫字母。

However, exclamation marks were overused. Researchers found 35,171 examples in total, with some young writers using five at a time. The study of more than 31million words will be compared with future research to see how written language evolves.
但是，感嘆號卻被過度使用了。研究人員發現35171次這樣的實例，一些孩子竟然一次點了5個感嘆號。這個包含3100萬個單詞的研究將拿來和未來研究做對比，分析書面語言的演變過程。

Popular US fiction such as the Twilight vampire novels and films is thought to be fuelling the increasing use of American vocabulary and spelling.
時下熱門美國小說《暮光之城》系列和由其改編熱映的電影作品都促使孩子們越來越多地使用美式詞彙和拼寫。

Modern technology was also influential. Out of almost 300 references to ‘blackberry’, nearly half referred to mobile phones. But the researchers found a wealth of imaginative and inventive ideas.
現代科技也有很大的影響力。在孩子們的作文中，’blackberry’一詞出現了300次，幾乎一半指的都是黑莓手機。但是研究人員也發現了很多富有創造力又別出心裁的點子。

Fears that texting was corrupting children’s written work were unfounded, they said, with youngsters only using text speak when they were referring to a text message.
研究沒有證實發短信會破壞孩子書面表達能力的擔憂。研究人員稱，這些年輕人只在發短信的時候纔會使用有關短信的字符和詞語。

Samantha Armstrong, of the OUP children’s dictionaries division, said: ‘Perhaps we are catching a glimpse of the language of the future.’
牛津大學出版社兒童部辭書室的薩曼莎・阿姆斯特朗說：“也許我們正瞥見未來英語的微光。”

Chris Evans, whose radio show runs the competition, said the results were ‘fascinating’, adding: ‘Who’d have thought that Messi and Jeremy Clarkson would be some of the most used celebrity names?’
英國廣播公司第二之聲“500單詞”作文比賽的主持人克里斯・埃文斯稱，這一研究結果“很有趣”，他還說：“誰會想到梅西和著名電視節目主持人傑瑞米・克拉克森會是被使用最多的名人名字呢。”