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First among equals 

语言之首

英文部分选自经济学人190921Books and arts版块

First among equals 

语言之首

Which is the best language? You decide

哪种语言最好？请君自行定夺

Maurice Druon of the French Academy once proposed that French should be made the principal legal language of the European Union. He argued that its logic and precision rendered it the judicial language par excellence. Others chortled. How very French of him!

法兰西学院的莫里斯•德鲁昂曾倡议将法语定为欧盟法律文书的首选语言。他认为，法语的逻辑性与精准度使其成为最优秀的司法语言。其他人则不以为然。他可真不愧是法国人！

The French are hardly alone in believing that their language is especially poetic, emotional, logical, precise, accessible or rich. But it turns out that the things people prize in their own languages can often be the same things foreign learners hate. Take the formal informal distinction in words for “you”. German and French have du and tu for friends and family, and Sie and vous for unknown adults and formal speech. Natives of those languages miss that distinction when speaking English. Those whose languages (like English) don’t make it in the first place often resent having this choice forced on them in French or German.

除了法国人，还有其他国家认为自己的语言别具诗意、情感丰富、逻辑严谨、准确无误、简单易学且丰富多彩。但事实上，正是这些他们眼中的优点，往往为外国学习者所痛恨。就拿“你”和“您”来说吧。德语用“du”（你）来称呼亲人和朋友，称呼陌生成年人或正式演讲时用“sie”（您）；对应的法语则分别为“tu”和“vous”。以这两种语言为母语人发现英语不分“你”和“您”。而对于那些母语没有“你”“您”之分（比如英语）的人来说，他们通常很不喜欢在讲法语或德语的时候被迫选择对应的用词。 

A dictum among linguists is that languages differ not in what they can express, but in what they must. Given the time and willingness to explain or coin basic terms, any language could be used to talk about anything. But they vary wildly in what they insist speakers say, with the tu-vous distinction just the tip of an iceberg. Washo, a native language of Nevada, has four past and three future tenses, depending on how distant an event is in time. Tariana, from Brazil, has “evidentiality”: speakers choose one of five verb-endings to show how they know what they aver to be true. Jarawara, also from Brazil, distinguishes “we (including you)” and “we (without you)”.

在语言学家中流行这样一条准则，不同语言的区别不在于如何表达，而在于该语言必须要怎么表达。如果表达和发明基本术语的时间充足、意愿强烈，人们可以用任何语言表达任何东西。但区别在于是否有强制性的语法规则，tu-vous 这样的例子只是冰山一角。瓦硕语（Washo）是内华达州的一种方言，有四种过去时和三种将来时，取决于事件发生的时间。来源于巴西的塔利亚纳语（Tariana）具有＂言据性＂：动词有五种后缀，用来表达事件不同程度的可信度。在同样源于巴西的雅拉瓦拉语（Jarawara）中，“我们”这个词有包括“你”和不包括“你”的区别。

The many different things a language can and must do are the subject of “Are Some Languages Better than Others?”, a book from 2016 by R.M.W. Dixon of James Cook University in Australia. Mr Dixon dispels old colonialist prejudices that European languages are sophisticated and indigenous >．

2016年，澳大利亚詹姆斯·库克大学的R•M•W•狄克逊出版了一本名为《语言是否有优劣？》的书，该书主要围绕语言能怎样表达，必须怎样表达来展开。在书中，狄克逊先生摒弃了古老的殖民者的偏见，即欧洲语言复杂精妙，而土著的语言原始简单。实际上，许多最细微的差别并没有出现在法语或德语中，却存在于互相孤立的传统群体之间。

In answering his title’s provocative question, Mr Dixon finds that requiring distinctions (formal or informal “you”, inclusive or exclusive “we”, evidentiality), is useful. The more information, the better. But not every language can require every distinction: a language that had them all would be too hard for members of the community to learn, to say nothing of outsiders. There may be an outer limit to how complex languages can get, constrained by the brain’s processing power.

在回答书的标题个颇具争议的问题时，狄克逊发现有所区分（正式或非正式的“你”、包容或排斥“你”的“我们”、“言据性”等等）是有用的。虽然信息越多越好，但并不是每种语言都需要拥有所有类型的区分，否则使用这一语言的群体成员来说太难学了，更不用说外人。语言的复杂程度也许存在最大极限，这是由我们大脑的处理能力所决定的。

Into the argument about whether some languages are superior comes a recent paper on information density in speech, by François Pellegrino and his colleagues at the University of Lyon. Some languages, like Japanese, have few distinct sounds and tight rules on how syllables may be structured, so that the number of possible syllables is low (think ka, ru, to, etc). Other languages (like English) have fewer constraints, so that a single syllable may be as complicated as strengths. All things being equal, one syllable chosen among English’s thousands will carry more information than one picked from Japanese’s dozens. But the study finds that this imbalance is counteracted by speech rate: speakers of Japanese get in many of their simple syllables more quickly than English-speakers do their complicated ones. Overall information density turns out to be the same across hugely different tongues.

最近，里昂大学的弗朗索瓦•佩莱格里诺和他的同事们发表了一篇关于语言中信息密度的论文，该论文讨论了语言的优势性。有些语言，比如日语，一个单词很少有不同的发音，音节结构也有严格的规则，所以可能的音节数量很少（比如ka、ru、to等等）。其他语言（如英语）的限制较少，一个音节的发音可能和重音一样复杂。在所有条件相同的情况下，从英语的数千个音节中选择一个，所包含的信息比从日语的几十个音节中选择一个要多。但研究也发现，这种不平衡可以通过语速弥补：日语音节简单，英语音节复杂，但同一时间内日语说出的音节数量比英语多。不同语言之间总的信息密度是相同的。

In short, languages are governed by trade-offs. One that avoids making certain information mandatory may be easy to speak, but leaves the listener to fill in the gaps. It may be simple to learn but less expressive. Some languages have lots of redundant elements: in los tres gatos negros están mojados(“the three black cats are wet” in Spanish), all six words indicate a plural. Marking the plural just once (as Chinese does) would be enough. But redundancy has a virtue: emphatic communication is more likely to survive a noisy environment.

简而言之，语言的优劣性需要多方面权衡。强制性语法规则少的语言，可能说起来简单，但缺少的信息需要听话者自行脑补。这种语言学起来容易，但是缺乏表现力。有些语言过于冗余：在los tres gatos negros están mojados（西班牙语：三只黑猫湿了）这句话里，所有六个单词都是复数形式。仅仅表明一次复数（如中文）就足够了。但是冗余也有好处：强调的语气，更有利于在嘈杂的环境中发声。

Languages, Mr Dixon says, are like a Western-style house. There are a few rooms you must have (kitchen, bedroom, living room, bathroom), and some discretionary options (office, guest room). On a fixed budget, you can’t have all the extras. He does not crown a “best” language. In the end, he says, readers should make their own list of desirable features, and then closely examine a few languages to decide whether one has more of them than another. But the list of advantages, he concedes, is itself a matter of judgment. For all his scientific criteria, in the end the verdict is in the ear of the beholder.

狄克逊写道：语言就像一座西式的房子。有些房间是必备的（如厨房、卧室、客厅、浴室），有些房间是可以自由选择的（如办公室、客房）。在预算一定的条件下，你不可能拥有所有房间。对于“最佳”的语言，狄克逊没有下定论。在书的最后，他写道，读者应该列出自己理想的语言特征，仔细研究，对不同的语言是否满足要求进行比较。但他承认，优势清单本身就是主观判断。尽管他提出了所有的科学标准，但最终的结论还是仁者见仁，智者见智。

翻译组：

Cindy，女，未来外贸工，TE粉

Lee ，爱骑行的妇女之友，Timberland粉

校核组：

Nikolai，子承父业，蛋糕厂员工，AKB49

Helen，女，坐标武汉，职业翻译，翻硕已毕业英语二笔二口，爱好陶笛洞箫古诗词