U4:THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH 英语的未来In the middle of sixteenth century, English was spoken by between four and five millions of people, and stood fifth among the European languages, with French, German, Italian, and Spanish ahead of it in that order, and Russian following. Two hundred years later Italian had dropped behind but Russian had gone ahead, so that English was still in fifth place. But by the end of the Eighteenth Century it began to move forward, and by the middle of the Nineteenth it had forced its way into first place. To-day it is so far in the lead that it is probably spoken by as many people as the next two languages—Russian and German combined.在 16 世纪中叶，有四五百万人说英语，说英语的人 数在欧洲的语言中名列第五。
前四位依次是法语、德语、意大利语和西班牙语俄语排在英 语之后两百年以后，意大利语排名落后，而俄语的排名靠前了，英语依然处于第五位到 了 18 世纪末，英语的地位开始上升到19 世纪中叶，英语已经跻身于第一位了今天，英 语的地位遥遥领先，说英语的人数可能达到说后两种语言，即俄语和德语人数的总和How many people speak it today?It is hard to answer.Besides those to whom English is their native tongue,there are people who, though born to some other language, live in English-speaking communities and speak English in their daily business. More importantly, English is now spoken as a foreign language throughout the world-very often, to be sure, badly, but nevertheless understandably. It has become a platitude that one may go almost anywhere with no other linguistic equipment and get on almost as well as in New York. 今天到底有多少人说英语？这个问题难以回答。
除了把英 语作为母语的人以外，还有一些人虽然出生在说其他语言的地方，但现在生活在说英语的社 会，这些人在日常工作中说的是英语更重要的是，英语目前在世界范围里作为外语广泛使用 —当然，在这些地方英语往往说得蹩脚，但是也可以让人理解你几乎可以去世界的任何一 个地方，不会任何别的语言，也能像在纽约一样过得顺利，这已成为司空见惯的事情In part, of course, its spread has been due to the extraordinary dispersion of the English-speaking peoples. They have been the greatest travelers of modern times, and the most adventurous merchants, and the most assiduous colonists. Moreover, they have been, on the whole, poor linguists, and so they have dragged their language with them, and forced it upon the human race.当然，英语 得到普及，部分原因是说英语的人分布极广。
他们是现代最热衷旅行的人、最敢冒险的商人、 最执着的殖民主义者除此以外，他们总体上学语言的能力很差，所以，他们走到哪里，便 把自己的语言带到哪里，并将之强加于人But there is more to the matter than this. English, brought to close quarters with formidable rivals, has won very often, not by force of numbers,but by the sheer weight of its merit. “In wealth, wisdom, and strict economy,” said the eminent Jakob Grimm a century ago, “none of the other living languages can vie with it.”To which the eminent Otto Jespersen was adding only the other day: English is simple, it has clear sounds, it packs its words closely together, it is logical in their arrangement,and it is free from all pedantic flubdub.但是，问题远不止如此。
英语在与其劲敌的 竞争中取胜，往往不是因为数量原因，而完全是因为其优点在丰富性、所包含的智慧、以 及严谨的精炼程度方面， ”著名的雅各布•格利姆在一个世纪之前说， “没有一种现存的语言能与 英语媲美 ”而著名的奥托•耶斯佩森就在前几天对此加以补充说：英语简单，发音清晰，词与 词之间的结构紧密，词的安排组织有逻辑性，而且英语中没有迂腐的废话When American pedagogues speak of the virtues of English they almost always begin by hymning its enormous vocabulary, which is at least twice as large as that of any other language. But this is not what enchants the foreigner; on the contrary, the vast reaches of the vocabulary naturally alarm him. The thing that really wins him is the succinctness and simplicity of those elements. We use, for all our store of Latin polysyllables, a great many more short words than long ones, and we are always trying to make the long ones short. What was once puniligrion is now pun;what was gasoline only yesterday is already gas. No other European language has so many three-letter words,nor so many four-word sayings.“First come,first served“-that is typically English,for it is bold, plain, and short. 当美国的教育工作者谈及英语的优点时，几乎总是一开始就赞美其词汇量之庞大。
英语的词 汇比任何其他语言的词汇至少多一倍然而，吸引外国人的并不是词汇量大，相反，浩瀚的 词汇很容易令外国人担忧真正赢得外国人的是英语简练和纯朴的特征尽管英语中有大量 的源于拉丁文的多音节词，但我们却更多地使用短词，少用长词而且，我们总是努力把长 词缩短以前使用的puniligrion 现在缩短成了pun；昨天还是gasoline，今天已成为gas欧洲没有任何一种其他语言有这么多由三个字母构成的单词，也没有如此多由四个单词构成的格 言 “First come, first served”（先到先供应）便 是典型的英语，因为它一目了然、朴实无华、 短小 精悍The English psychologist,Dr.Ogden believes, indeed, that 850 words are sufficient for all ordinary purposes, and he has devised a form of simplified English,called by him Basic, which uses no more. Of his 850 words no less than 600 are the names of things, which leaves only 250 for the names of qualities and actions, and for all the linguistic hooks and eyes that hold sentences together. 英国心 理学家奥格登博士认为，在一般的交流中， 850 个词就足够了。
他把英语改编成简单的形式， 将这种形式叫做基础英语基础英语中的词汇不超过 850 个在这850 个词中，有至少600 个 词表示事物的名称，剩下的250 个词包括说明事物的特征和动作行为的词、以及将句子连接 在一起的语法词和小品词Does this seem too few? Then it is only to those who have forgotten one of the prime characteristics of English—its capacity for getting an infinity of meanings out of a single word by combining it with simple modifiers. Consider, for example, the difference between the verbs to get, to get going, to get by, to get on to, to get wise, to get off, to get ahead of, and to get over. Dr. Ogden proposes to rid the language of a great many verbs—some of them irregular, and hence difficult—by substituting such compounds for th。