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英语的起源  When we talk about English, we often think of it as a single language but what do the dialects spoken in dozens of countries around the word have in common with each other or with the writing of Chaucer? 一说到英语时，我们经常认为它只是一种语言,但在全世界众多国家使用的语言之间究竟有什么相同的地方？与乔叟的文字有何相同之处？(“Chaucer -乔叟”英国文学之父，被公认为中世纪最伟大的英国诗人。乔叟在促进和中世纪英语白话的正统方面起着举足轻重的作用，当时的文学语言主要是法语和拉丁语。) And how are any of them related to the strange words in Beowulf? 这些文字又与《贝奥武夫》中的陌生文字有何关系？ The answer is that like most languages, English has evolved through generations of speakers undergoing major changes over time. 答案是如同大部分的语言，英语是经过世代口耳相传而演化出来的，期间经历一些重大变化。 By undoing these changes, we can trace the language from the present day back to its ancient roots. 通过还原这些变化，我们能够从现今的英语追溯至其古代根源。 While modern English shares many similar words with Latin-derived romances languages like French and Spanish, most of those words were not originally part of it. 现代英语与拉丁语衍生的罗曼语有很多相似的单词，正如法语和西班牙语，大部分英语单词原来并不属于英语。 Instead, they started coming into the language with the Norman invasion of England in 1066. 而是在1066年，诺曼人入侵英格兰时传入从而成为了英语的一部分。 When the French-speaking Normans conquered England and became its ruling class, they brought their speech with them adding a massive amount of French and Latin vocabulary to the English language previously spoken there. 当说法语的诺曼人占领英格兰后成为其统治阶级，同时他们带来了自己的语言，于是数量庞大的法语和拉丁语词汇被带入到当时本土所说的英语。 Today, we call that language Old English. 今天，我们把那种英语称为（古英语）。 This is the language of Beowulf. 即《贝奥武夫》所用的语言。 It probably doesn’t look very familiar but it might be more recognizable if you know some German. 古英语可能看似比较陌生，但如果你懂一点德语的话就能辨认出古英语。 That’s because Old English belongs to the Germanic language family, first brought to the British Isles in the 5th and 6th centuries by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. 这是因为古英语属于日耳曼语族于5至6世纪初次传入不列颠群岛，通过盎格鲁人、撒克逊人和朱特人。 The Germanic dialects they spoke would become known as Anglo-Saxon. 他们所说的日耳曼方言日后成为了盎格鲁--撒克逊语。 Viking invaders in the 8th to 11th centuries added more borrowings from Old Norse into the mix. 于8至11世纪，维京人的入侵为英语带来源自古北欧语的新词汇。 It may be hard to see the roots of modern English underneath all the words borrowed from French, Latin, Old Norse and other languages. 要理解现代英语的根源似乎相当困难，因为需要溯源至这些分别来自于法文、拉丁文、古北欧语和其他语言单词。 But comparative linguistics can help us by focusing on grammatical structure patterns of sound changes and certain core vocabulary. 但比较语言学，能够帮助我们专注于文法结构、语言转变的格式和一些核心词汇。 For example, after the 6th century German words starting with “p” systematically shifted to a “pf” sound while their Old English counterparts kept the “p” unchanged. 例如，公元6世纪后，德文中以“P”为首的单词一律转成发“pf”音，而在古英语则保留了“p”的发音。 In another split, words that have “sk” sounds in Swedish developed an “sh” sound in English. 在另一种情况中，瑞典语中的“sk”音于英语发展成“sh”音。 There are still some English words with “sk” like “skirt” and “skull”, but they’re direct borrowings from Old Norse that came after the “sk” to “sh” shift. 现在仍有英语单词保留“sk”例如“skirt(短裙)”和“skull(头骨)”，它们虽然直接来自古北欧语，但是在“sk”音变成“sh”音后才传入英语。 These examples show us that just as the various Romance languages descended from Latin, English, Swedish, German and many other languages descended from their own common ancestor known as Proto-Germanic spoken around 500 B.C.E. 这些例子告诉我们正如种种罗曼语同源于拉丁语、英语、瑞典语、德语和很多其他语言同源于一种语言，即是于约公元前500年使用的原始日耳曼语。 Because this historical language was never written down we can only reconstruct it by comparing its descendants which is possible thanks to the consistency of the changes. 因为这古老的语言从未留下任何书面记录，我们只能够比较它的后继者来重塑它，这方法有赖于语言转变的连贯性。 We can even use the same process to go back one step further and trace the origins of Proto-Germanic to a language called Proto-Indo-European spoken about 6000 years ago on the Pontic steppe in modern day Ukraine and Russia. 我们甚至可以运用相同方法来更进一步把原始日耳曼语追溯源至约6000年前的原始印欧语来自东欧大草原，位于现今乌克兰和俄罗斯境内。 This is the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European family that includes nearly all languages historically spoken in Europe as well as large parts of Southern and Western Asia. 原始印欧语是印欧语系重塑出来的祖先，印欧语系包括绝大部分的古代欧洲语言和大部分的古代西南亚语言。 And though it requires a bit more work we can find the same systematic similarities, or correspondences between related words in different Indo-European branches. 虽然尚有工作还未完成，但是我们能够在印欧语系各种语言的相关词汇之间找出相同的系统相似性或对应性。 Comparing English with Latin we see that English has “t” where Latin has “d” and “f” where Latin has “p” at the start of words. 例如，比较英语和拉丁语可以发现单词中英语有“t”拉丁语则有“d”而英语有“f”拉丁语则有“p”。 Some of English’s more distant relatives include Hindi, Persian and the Celtic languages it displaced in what is now Britain. 部分英语的远亲包括了印地语、波斯语和现时仍存在于不列颠上的凯尔特语族。 Proto-Indo-European itself descended from an even more ancient language but unfortunately, this is as far back as historical and archeological evidence will allow us to go. 原始印欧语本身源于更古老的语言，但不幸地是这已经超出历史和考古证据无法让我们继续深究。 Many mysteries remain just out of reach such as whether there might be a link between Indo-European and other major language families and the nature of the languages spoken in Europe prior to its arrival. 很多谜团尚未解开，例如古印欧语系和其他主要语系之间有没有关联以及原始印欧语传入前欧洲本土语言的性质如何。 But the amazing fact remains that nearly 3 billion people around the world many of whom cannot understand each other are nevertheless speaking the words shaped same by 6000 years of history. 但奇妙的是还有全球当中有约30亿人虽然大部分听不懂对方说的话，但经过6000年语言演变都仍说着相同的词汇。   |
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