Spoons.
湯匙。
Cardboard boxes.
紙盒。
Toddler-size electric trains.
迷你電動火車。
Holiday ornaments.
假日裝飾品。
Bounce houses.
充氣屋。
Blankets.
毯子。
Baskets.
籃子。
Carpets.
地毯。
Tray tables.
托盤桌。
Smartphones.
智能手機。
Pianos.
鋼琴。
Robes.
袍子。
Photographs.
照片。
What do all of these things have in common, aside from the fact they're photos that I took in the last three months, and therefore, own the copyright to?
所有這些有什麼共通點? 除了都是我在過去 三個月內拍攝的照片, 版權都歸我。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
They're all inventions that were created with the benefit of language. None of these things would have existed without language. Imagine creating any one of those things or, like, building an entire building like this, without being able to use language or without benefiting from any knowledge that was got by the use of language. Basically, language is the most important thing in the entire world. All of our civilization rests upon it. And those who devote their lives to studying it -- both how language emerged, how human languages differ, how they differ from animal communication systems -- are linguists. Formal linguistics is a relatively young field, more or less. And it's uncovered a lot of really important stuff. Like, for example, that human communication systems differ crucially from animal communication systems, that all languages are equally expressive, even if they do it in different ways.
它們都是發明, 都是托語言的福創造出來。 沒有語言,這些東西都不會存在。 試想,創造上述任何一樣東西, 或者,比如建造一座像這樣的大樓, 卻不能使用語言, 或者不能使用任何 通過語言獲取的知識。 基本上,語言是全世界 最重要的東西。 我們的整個文明都立基於語言上。 而那些投入一生 去研究語言的人—— 研究語言的出現、 人類語言的差異、 人類語言和動物 溝通系統的差別—— 他們是語言學家。 正統的語言學或多或少 算是個較新的領域。 且它已經有了許多 非常重要的發現。 比如,人類的溝通系統 和動物的溝通系統天差地別; 所有的語言富含表現力, 即使表達方式不同。
And yet, despite this, there are a lot of people who just love to pop off about language like they have an equal understanding of it as a linguist, because, of course, they speak a language. And if you speak a language, that means you have just as much right to talk about its function as anybody else. Imagine if you were talking to a surgeon, and you say, "Listen, buddy. I've had a heart for, like, 40 years now. I think I know a thing or two about aortic valve replacements. I think my opinion is just as valid as yours." And yet, that's exactly what happens.
但,儘管如此, 很多人就喜歡對語言大肆評論, 好像他們跟語言學家 一樣了解它似的, 就憑他們會說一種語言。 如果你會說一門語言, 你就跟其他人一樣 有權討論它的作用。 想像你在和外科醫生談話, 你說:「聽著,老兄, 我的心臟至今跳 40 個年頭了, 我想我對於主動脈瓣 置換術應該略知一二。 我想我的意見和你一樣有效。」 果不出其然。
This is Neil deGrasse Tyson, saying that in the film "Arrival," he would have brought a cryptographer -- somebody who can unscramble a message in a language they already know -- rather than a linguist, to communicate with the aliens, because what would a linguist -- why would that be useful in talking to somebody speaking a language we don't even know? Though, of course, the "Arrival" film is not off the hook. I mean, come on -- listen, film. Hey, buddy: there are aliens that come down to our planet in gigantic ships, and they want to do nothing except for communicate with us, and you hire one linguist?
這是奈爾·德·葛拉司·泰森,他說, 如果他在電影《異星入境》裡, 他會選擇找密碼專家 能夠在已知語言中 解讀訊息的人—— 而不是找語言學家 去和外星人溝通, 因為語言學家能怎樣? 若我們根本不懂外星人語言, 找語言學家來有什麼幫助? 不過《異星入境》還有其他漏洞 拜託——做電影的人聽著, 嘿,老兄, 有外星人搭乘巨大船艦 降落到我們的星球, 他們無非只想和我們溝通, 而你就找來一個語言學家?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
What's the US government on a budget or something?
美國政府是預算有限還是怎樣?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
A lot of these things can be chalked up to misunderstandings, both about what language is and about the formal study of language, about linguistics. And I think there's something that underlies a lot of these misunderstandings that can be summed up by this delightful article in "Forbes," about why high school students shouldn't learn foreign languages. I'm going to pull out some quotes from this, and I want you to see if you can figure out what underlies some of these opinions and ideas. "Americans rarely read the classics, even in translation." So in other words, why bother learning a foreign language when they're not even going to read the classic in the original anyway? What's the point? "Studying foreign languages in school is a waste of time, compared to other things that you could be doing in school." "Europe has a lot of language groups clustered in a relatively small space." So for Americans, ah, what's the point of learning another language? You're not really going to get a lot of bang for your buck out of that. This is my favorite, "A student in Birmingham would have to travel about a thousand miles to get to the Mexican border, and even then, there would be enough people who speak English to get around." In other words, if you can kind of wave your arms around, and you can get to where you're going, then there's really no point in learning another language anyway.
很多像這樣的事情, 都可歸咎於誤解, 誤解了語言是什麼, 誤解了正式的語言研究, 誤解了語言學。 我想, 在《富比士》的這篇 有趣文章中就整理出 這些誤解的背後的邏輯。 文章闡述為什麼高中生 不應該學習外語。 我會引述一些文章中的句子, 各位試試是否能找出 在這些意見和想法背後的原因。 「美國人很少讀經典,即便是譯本。」 換言之,何必花時間去學外語, 反正他們也不會去閱讀經典原版。 有什麼意義? 「在學校學習外語是浪費時間, 你在學校能做其他 相對更值得做的事。」 「歐洲有許多種語言 卻聚集在相對狹小的空間裡。」 所以對美國人來說, 學另一種語言有什麼意義? 投資回報率不會好。 我最愛這段:「伯明翰的學生得 走上一千英里路 才能抵達墨西哥邊界, 就算到了,英語也夠溝通了。」 換言之,若揮揮手臂就能遂你所願, 那其實就沒有必要學另一種語言。 在上述這些態度的背後,
What underlies a lot of these attitudes is the conceptual metaphor, language is a tool. And there's something that rings very true about this metaphor. Language is kind of a tool in that, if you know the local language, you can do more than if you didn't. But the implication is that language is only a tool, and this is absolutely false. If language was a tool, it would honestly be a pretty poor tool. And we would have abandoned it long ago for something that was a lot better. Think about just any sentence. Here's a sentence that I'm sure I've said in my life: "Yesterday I saw Kyn." I have a friend named Kyn. And when I say this sentence, "Yesterday I saw Kyn," do you think it's really the case that everything in my mind is now implanted in your mind via this sentence? Hardly, because there's a lot of other stuff going on.
都有一種概念性的比喻: 即語言是工具。 這種比喻某種程度上 聽起來很有道理。 語言算是種工具, 比起不會當地的語言,你能做更多。 但它暗示,語言就「只是」個工具, 這點肯定是錯的。 如果語言是工具, 老實說,它是蠻糟的工具。 我們老早就該拋棄它, 換成更好的東西。 隨便想任何一個句子為例。 我這輩子一定說過: 「昨天我看到金。」 我有個朋友叫金。 當我說這句話: 「昨天我看到金。」 你真心認為 我腦中的一切能透過這個句子 就植入到你的腦中嗎? 幾乎不可能,因為還有很多其他東西。
Like, when I say "yesterday," I might think what the weather was like yesterday because I was there. And if I'm remembering, I'll probably remember there was something I forgot to mail, which I did. This was a preplanned joke, but I really did forget to mail something. And so that means I'm going to have to do it Monday, because that's when I'm going to get back home. And of course, when I think of Monday, I'll think of "Manic Monday" by the Bangles. It's a good song. And when I say the word "saw," I think of this phrase: "'I see!' said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw." I always do. Anytime I hear the word "saw" or say it, I always think of that, because my grandfather always used to say it, so it makes me think of my grandfather. And we're back to "Manic Monday" again, for some reason. And with Kyn, when I'm saying something like, "Yesterday I saw Kyn," I'll think of the circumstances under which I saw him. And this happened to be that day. Here he is with my cat. And of course, if I'm thinking of Kyn, I'll think he's going to Long Beach State right now, and I'll remember that my good friend John and my mother both graduated from Long Beach State, my cousin Katie is going to Long Beach State right now. And it's "Manic Monday" again.
比如,當我說「昨天」, 我可能會想著昨天的天氣, 因為我人在那裡。 如果我繼續回想,可能 會想起我忘了寄什麼, 這是真的。 這是個預先安排好的笑話, 但我真的忘了寄某樣東西。 那就表示,我得等星期一再寄, 因為我星期一才回家。 當然,想到星期一時, 我會想到手鐲合唱團的 「狂躁的星期一」,這歌不錯。 說「saw」這個字時,我就想到: 「盲人邊拿起錘子和鋸子,邊說: 『我看到了!』」屢試不爽。 每次聽或說「saw」,我都會想到, (註:saw 是鋸子也是看見的過去式) 因為以前我祖父總說那句話, 所以它讓我想起我祖父。 基於某種理由,我們又 回到了「狂躁的星期一」。 關於金,當我說: 「昨天我看到金。」 我會想起我看到金時的情境。 這剛好就是那一天。 這就是他和我的貓。 當然,若我想著金, 就會想到他要去長堤分校, 然後我會想起好友約翰和我母親, 都是長堤分校畢業, 我的表親凱蒂要去讀長堤分校。 然後又是「狂躁的星期一」。 但這只是任何你在說話的時刻,
But this is just a fraction of what's going on in your head at any given time while you are speaking. And all we have to represent the entire mess that is going on in our head, is this. I mean, that's all we got.
腦中思路的冰山一角。 我們腦中的這一團亂, 卻只能靠這些來表示。 我們就只有這些。(笑聲)
(Laughter)
我們的系統就這麼糟, 這有什麼奇怪?
Is it any wonder that our system is so poor? So imagine, if I can give you an analogy, imagine if you wanted to know what is it like to eat a cake, if instead of just eating the cake, you instead had to ingest the ingredients of a cake, one by one, along with instructions about how these ingredients can be combined to form a cake. You had to eat the instructions, too.
我來做個類比, 試想,如果你想要知道 吃蛋糕的感覺是什麼, 如果你不是直接吃蛋糕, 而只是嚥下蛋糕的成份, 一種接著一種, 包括製作說明, 說明這些成份如何 組合在一起,形成蛋糕。 你也得把說明書吃下去。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
If that was how we had to experience cake, we would never eat cake. And yet, language is the only way -- the only way -- that we can figure out what is going on here, in our minds. This is our interiority, the thing that makes us human, the thing that makes us different from other animals, is all inside here somewhere, and all we have to do to represent it is our own languages. A language is our best way of showing what's going on in our head. Imagine if I wanted to ask a big question, like: "What is the nature of human thought and emotion?" What you'd want to do is you'd want to examine as many different languages as possible. One isn't just going to do it. To give you an example, here's a picture I took of little Roman, that I took with a 12-megapixel camera. Now, here's that same picture with a lot fewer pixels. Obviously, neither of these pictures is a real cat. But one gives you a lot better sense of what a cat is than the other.
如果非得這樣才能吃個蛋糕, 我們永遠不會去吃蛋糕。 而語言是唯一的途徑—— 讓我們釐清這腦袋瓜裡 想法的唯一途徑。 這是我們的內在, 讓我們之所以為人、 與動物有所區別的內在 就在我們腦內某處; 我們要做的就是 用自己的語言表達出來。 語言是呈現腦中內容的最佳方式。 試想,若我有個大哉問: 「人類思想和情緒的本質是什麼?」 你會想要盡可能去調查 各種不同語言,越多種越好。 單單一種語言是不夠的。 舉個例子, 我拍了一張小羅門的照片, 我用一千兩百萬畫素的相機拍的。 這是同一張照片,畫素低很多。 顯然這兩張照片都不是真貓。 但前者比後者更能 讓你理解貓是什麼。
Language is not merely a tool. It is our legacy, it's our way of conveying what it means to be human. And of course, by "our" legacy, I mean all humans everywhere. And losing even one language makes that picture a lot less clear.
語言不只是工具而已。 它是我們的傳承, 是我們人類傳達信息的方式。 我說「我們」的傳承, 「我們」指的是所有人類。 即使只少了一種語言, 也會讓那個面畫比較不清楚。
So as a job for the past 10 years and also as recreation, just for fun, I create languages. These are called "conlangs," short for "constructed languages." Now, presenting these facts back to back, that we're losing languages on our planet and that I create brand-new languages, you might think that there's some nonsuperficial connection between these two. In fact, a lot of people have drawn a line between those dots. This is a guy who got all bent out of shape that there was a conlang in James Cameron's "Avatar." He says, "But in the three years it took James Cameron to get Avatar to the screen, a language died." Probably a lot more than that, actually. "Na'vi, alas, won't fill the hole where it used to be ..." A truly profound and poignant statement -- if you don't think about it at all.
所以我過去十年的工作 也是我的娛樂,我樂在其中, 是創造語言。 這些語言叫「CONLANGS」, 「人造語言」的縮寫。 把這些事實擺在一起: 地球上的語言正在消失, 及我會創造全新的語言, 你可能會認為兩者之間 有某種非表面的連結。 事實上,有很多人 把這兩件事連結起來。 有個傢伙十分憤怒, 因為在詹姆士·卡麥隆的 《阿凡達》中有種人造語言。 他說: 「詹姆士·卡麥隆用 3 年 將《阿凡達》送上大銀幕, 而期間有一種語言消失了。」 其實,可能遠不只一種。 「納維阿拉斯語無法替代 在它之前消逝的語言。」 這是段很深奧、尖刻的表述—— 如果你完全不用大腦的話。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
But when I was here at Cal, I completed two majors. One of them was linguistics, but the other one was English. And of course, the English major, the study of English, is not actually the study of the English language, as we know, it's the study of literature. Literature is just a wonderful thing, because basically, literature, more broadly, is kind of like art; it falls under the rubric of art. And what we do with literature, authors create new, entire beings and histories. And it's interesting to us to see what kind of depth and emotion and just unique spirit authors can invest into these fictional beings. So much so, that, I mean -- take a look at this. There's an entire series of books that are written about fictional characters. Like, the entire book is just about one fictional, fake human being. There's an entire book on George F. Babbitt from Sinclair Lewis's "Babbitt," and I guarantee you, that book is longer than "Babbitt," which is a short book. Does anybody even remember that one? It's pretty good, I actually think it's better than "Main Street." That's my hot take. So we've never questioned the fact that literature is interesting. But despite the fact, not even linguists are actually interested in what created languages can tell us about the depth of the human spirit just as an artistic endeavor.
當我在加州大學時, 我完成了雙主修。 一個是語言學,另一個英文。 當然英文這門學科 其實並不是研究英文這種語言, 是研究文學。 文學很美好, 因為,廣義來說, 文學基本上是種藝術。 它可以列在藝術底下。 我們在文學上所做的是, 作者會創造新的、 完整的人物和歷史。 很有意思的是,我們可以看到 作者在這些虛構人物 身上注入什麼樣的 深度、情緒,和獨特的精神。 太多了——看看這個。 有一系列書討論虛構的角色, 一本專講一個虛構的人物。 有一整本講喬治·巴位元, 辛克萊·路易斯 《巴位元》書中的角色, 我保證那本書比《巴位元》長, 《巴位元》本身很短。 有人還記得那本書嗎?它很不錯, 我真心它認為比《大街》好 ——純個人意見。 我們從來沒有質疑過 文學作品的趣味性。 但,儘管如此, 就連語言學家也不對 人造語言能表現出的 人類精神深度感興趣, 僅把它當作藝術創造。
I'll give you a nice little example here. There was an article written about me in the California alumni magazine a while back. And when they wrote this article, they wanted to get somebody from the opposing side, which, in hindsight, seems like a weird thing to do. You're just talking about a person, and you want to get somebody from the opposing side of that person.
讓我舉個很好的例子。 有一篇關於我的文章, 前陣子刊在加州大學校友雜誌上。 他們寫這篇文章時, 想要取得對立人士的意見, 從後見之明來看, 這麼做似乎很奇怪。 你只是要談一個人, 而你卻想要聽 與這人對立方的說法。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Essentially, this is just a puff piece, but whatever. So, they happened to get one of the most brilliant linguists of our time, George Lakoff, who's a linguist here at Berkeley. And his work has basically forever changed the fields of linguistics and cognitive science. And when asked about my work and about language creation in general, he said, "But there's a lot of things to be done in the study of language. You should spend the time on something real." Yeah. "Something real." Does this remind you of anything? To use the very framework that he himself invented, let me refer back to this conceptual metaphor: language is a tool. And he appears to be laboring under this conceptual metaphor; that is, language is useful when it can be used for communication. Language is useless when it can't be used for communication. It might make you wonder: What do we do with dead languages? But anyway.
基本上,這只是篇吹捧文, 但,隨便啦。 所以,他們剛好找上了 我們這個時代 最傑出的語言學家之一, 喬治·萊考夫,他是 柏克萊的語言學家。 基本上,他的研究永遠改變了 語言學和認知科學領域。 當他被問及對我的研究 和語言創造的大體看法時, 他說:「在語言研究方面 有很多需要完成的。 你應該把時間花在實在的地方。」 是的,「實在的地方」。 這讓你們想到什麼? 借用一下他自己發明的架構, 讓我再借用一下 這個概念性的比喻: 語言是工具,他顯然是在 這個概念性比喻下勞作; 也就是,當語言能用來 溝通時,它就是有用的。 當語言無法用來溝通, 它就沒有用。 這會讓你納悶,那我們要拿 已死的語言如何是好? 但,無所謂。
So, because of this idea, it might seem like the very height of absurdity to have a Duolingo course on the High Valyrian language that I created for HBO's "Game of Thrones." You might wonder what, exactly, are 740,000 people learning?
所以,基於這個想法, 可能荒唐到極點的就是 在多鄰國(Duolingo)平台 學瓦雷利亞語言課程—— 是我為 HBO《冰與火之歌》 所創造的語言—— 你可能會納悶,到底 這七十四萬人在學什麼?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Well, let's take a look at it. What are they learning? What could they possibly be learning? Well, bearing in mind that the other language for this -- it's for people that speak English -- English speakers are learning quite a bit. Here's a sentence that they will probably never use for communication in their entire lives: "Vala ābre urnes." "The man sees the woman." The little middle line is the gloss, so it's word for word, that's what it says. And they're actually learning some very fascinating things, especially if they're English speakers. They're learning that a verb can come at the very end of a sentence. Doesn't really do that in English when you have two arguments. They're learning that sometimes a language doesn't have an equivalent for the word "the" -- it's totally absent. That's something language can do. They're learning that a long vowel can actually be longer in duration, as opposed to different in quality, which is what our long vowels do; they're actually the same length. They're learning that there are these little inflections. Hmm? Hmm? There are inflections called "cases" on the end of nouns --
咱們來瞧瞧。 他們在學什麼? 他們究竟在學什麼? 請記住,另一種語言—— 這是針對說英語的人—— 英語母語者會學到很多。 上面這個句子, 大家一生中可能都不會用到: 「Vala ābre urnes.」 「男子看見女子。」 中間那一行是註解, 一個字對應一個註釋。 他們其實在學習非常炫的東西, 特別是針對英語母語者。 他們學到動詞可以放在句子的最末。 在英語中若有兩個論元, 就不會這麼做。 他們學到 有時其他語言並不一定有 和「the」對等的字——完全沒有。 語言可能會這樣。 他們學到,長母音其實 可以是時間長度比較長, 而不是在音色上的差別, 我們的長母音就是這樣。 他們學到這些小小的變音。 嗯?嗯? 這些變音叫做「格」, 在名詞詞尾——
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
that tell you who does what to whom in a sentence. Even if you leave the order of the words the same and switch the endings, it changes who does what to whom. What they're learning is that languages do things, the same things, differently. And that learning languages can be fun. What they're learning is respect for Language: capital "L" Language. And given the fact that 88 percent of Americans only speak English at home, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
用來告訴你句子中 是誰對誰做了什麼。 就算把每個字的順序保持不變, 把結尾調換, 也會改變是誰對誰做了什麼。 他們學到各種語言 會以不同的方式來做同樣的事。 且學語言是很好玩的。 他們學到對語言的尊重: 大寫的「語言」。 有 88% 的美國人在家只會說英語, 我認為這未必是壞事。
You know why languages die on our planet? It's not because government imposes one language on a smaller group, or because an entire group of speakers is wiped out. That certainly has happened in the past, and it's happening now, but it's not the main reason. The main reason is that a child is born to a family that speaks a language that is not widely spoken in their community, and that child doesn't learn it. Why? Because that language is not valued in their community. Because the language isn't useful. Because the child can't go and get a job if they speak that language. Because if language is just a tool, then learning their native language is about as useful as learning High Valyrian, so why bother?
各位知道為什麼 地球上的語言會滅亡嗎? 不是因為政府強迫小族群 必須要說某種語言, 也不是因為說某種語言的 族群全數被消滅。 的確在過去和現在發生過這種事, 但那不是主因。 主因是,孩子出生在一個家庭中, 而這個家庭說的語言 在他們的社區裡並不普遍, 孩子就不會去學它。 為什麼? 因為那種語言在他們的 社區裡不受重視。 因為那種語言沒有用。 因為那孩子說那種語言, 是無法找到工作的。 因為如果語言只是工具, 那麼學習他們的母語 用處就只是和學習 瓦雷利亞語言差不多, 那幹嘛花心力去學?
Now ... Maybe language study isn't going to lead to a lot more linguistic fluency. But maybe that's not such a big deal. Maybe if more people are studying more languages, it will lead to more linguistic tolerance and less linguistic imperialism. Maybe if we actually respect language for what it is -- literally, the greatest invention in the history of humankind -- then in the future, we can celebrate endangered languages as living languages, as opposed to museum pieces.
所以…… 也許研究語言並不會說得更流利。 但也許那也沒什麼大不了的。 也許,如果有更多人學習更多語言, 就會對語言多一點包容, 少一點帝國主義式的對待態度。 也許,如果我們 真能尊重語言的本質—— 語言真的是人類歷史上 最偉大的發明—— 那麼,在未來, 我們就可以把瀕危的語言 當作活語言來讚美, 而不只是博物館中的收藏。
(High Valyrian) Kirimvose. Thank you.
(瓦雷利亞語言) Kirimvose。謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)