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1、Several Languages Called English (几种语言称之为英语)English isrft managing to sweep all else before it-and if ever does become the universal language, many of those who speak it wont understand one another.在此之前，英语不能支配其他的全部，如果当初就成为通用的语言，那么那 些说话人也是不能够相互理解的。Much of what will happen to English we can only specu
2、late about. But lets pursue an idea that language researchers regard as fairly well grounded: native speakers of English are already outnumbered by second-language and foreign-language speakers, and will be more heavily outnumbered as time goes on.关于英语将会发生的许多变化我们仅仅只能作出推测。但是，让我们来追寻 被语言研究者们认为是相关的背景：将英
3、语作为第二语言或外语的人，在数量上 超过了以英语作为母语的人；并且随着时间的推移，还将超出更多。One obvious implication is that some proportion of the people using English for business or professional purposes around the world arenft and neednt be fluent in it. Recently I talked with Michael Henry Heim, a professor of Slavic literatures at the Un
4、iversity of California at Los Angeles and a professional translator who has rendered into English major works by Milan Kundera and Gunter Grass. By his count, he speaks Hten or son languages. He told me fla什y, English is much easier to learn poorly and to communicate in poorly than any other languag
5、e. Fm sure that if Hungary were the leader of the world, Hungarian would not be the world language. To communicate on a day-to-day basis to order a meal, to book a room theres no language as simple as English.n Research, though, suggests that people are likely to find a language easier or harder to
6、learn according to how similar it is to their native tongue, in terms of things like word order, grammatical structure, and cognate words. As the researcher Terence Odlin noted in his book Language Transfer (1989), the duration of full-time intensive courses given to English-speaking U.S. foreign-se
7、rvice personnel amounts to a rough measurement of how different, in these ways, other languages are from English Today the courses for foreign-service employees who need to learn German, Italian, French, Spanish, or Portuguese last twenty-four weeks. Those for employees learning Swahili, Indonesian,
8、 or Malay last thirty-six weeks, and for people learning languages includingHindi, Urdu, Russian, and Hungarian, forty-four weeks. Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean take eighty-eight weeks. Note that all the worlds other commonest native languages except Spanish are in the groups most demanding
9、of English-speakers. It might be reasonable to suppose that the reverse is also true that Arabic- and Chinese-speakers find fluency in English to be more of a challenge than Spanish-speakers do.一个显而易见的含义就是：在世界上，一部分人们出于商业和职业的目的而 使用英语，他们的英语不流利，也不需要流利。最近我和麦克尔亨利交谈，他是 洛杉矶加利福尼亚大学的斯拉乎文学教授，也是一位专职翻译，他曾将米兰和甘
10、特的主耍著作翻译成英语。以他的计算，他能说出大约十种语言。他平和地跟我 说：“英语较其他语言更能草草地学会，简单交流，我确信，假如匈牙利是这个世 界的领导者，匈牙利语也不能成为世界性的语言。在日常基本交流中，如点餐、 定房，没有语言象英语一样的简单。”尽管，研究表明人们认为一种语言的简单与 困难与否，是根据这种语言相对于其母语的语序、语法结构和同根词语的相似度 而言的。根据Terence Odlin的研究在语言的演变一书中提到，为使英语会话 及涉外服务人员开设一段时间的全日制强化课程，当作一个粗略的度量，用这种 方法来比较英语与其他语言之间的不同。今天，这类为涉外服务人员需要学习徳 语、意大利
11、语、法语、西班牙语和葡萄牙语设置的课程为期24周。而那些员工学 习斯瓦四语、印度尼四亚语或马来语的课程，为期为36周。还有那些学习北印度 语、乌尔都语、匈牙利语的则为44周。阿拉伯语、汉语、日语、韩语的则达88 周。我们注意到，在世界范围内除了以西班牙语为母语的人们以外，大部分人说 英语都比较难。这个反推可能也是止确的，说阿拉伯语和汉语的人们相对与说四 班牙语的人们学好流利的英语更富挑战性。A variety of restricted subsets of English have been developed to meet the needs of nonfluent speakers.
12、 Among these is Special English, which the Voice of America began using in its broadcasts experimentally some forty years ago and has employed part-time ever since. Special English has a basic vocabulary of just 1,500 words (The American Heritage Dictionary contains some 200,000 words, and the Oxfor
13、d English Dictionary nearly 750,000), though sometimes these words are used to define non-Special English words that VOA writers deem essential to a given story. Currently VOA uses Special English for news and features that are broadcast a half hour at a time, six times a day, seven days a week, to
14、millions of listeners worldwide.为适应说不大流利英语的人，各种特定形式的英语得到了发展。慢速英语就 是其中之一，它早在40多年前，“美国之音”电台就开始了试验性的广播，并一 直用到现在。慢速英语的基本词汇只有1500个单词（美国传统字典里囊括了 20 万词，牛津英语字典收入将近75万个词），尽管有时这些单词常被用于阐述非慢 速英语的词，而这些词对于美国之音的作者讲故事是必要的。因为近来，美国之 音利用慢速英语面向的是世界各地数以百万的听众，进行每周7天，每天6次， 每次30分的新闻和特写的报道。But restricted forms of English ar
15、e usually intended for professional communities. Among the best known of these is Seaspeak, which ships1 pilots around the world have used for the past dozen years or so; this is now being supplanted by SMCP, or HStandard Marine Communication Phrases/ which is also derived from English but was devel
16、oped by native speakers of a variety of languages. Airplane pilots and air-traffic controllers use a restricted form of English called Airspeak.但是，特定形式的英语通常通常供专业团体使用，其中有为大家所熟知的航 空用语，它是大约在12年前，在世界范围内飞行员所采用的语言，现在己经被 SMCP即标准航空用语所替代。SMCP也是起源于英语，但却是由不同以不同 母语的说话使用者那里得到发展的。飞机领航员和空中交通指挥员所使用的特定 形式的英语叫做航空语言。Certainly, the world!s ships and airplanes are safer if those who guide them have some language in common, and restricted forms of English have no modern-day r
