语言是个奇怪的东西。约翰·麦克沃特帮助我理解了其中缘由 | 盖茨播客
My latest podcast is all about learning something new.
What do you do when you can’t solve a problem? I like to talk to smart people who can help me understand the subject better. I call this process “getting unconfused”—and I think it is one of the best ways to learn something new. In my new podcast, I try to get unconfused about some of the things that fascinate me.
我的最新播客专注于探讨学习新事物的过程。
当遇到难题难以解决时，你会怎么办？我喜欢与那些聪明的人交流，借助他们的帮助来更好地理解问题。我将这个过程称之为“解惑”，我认为这是学习新事物最好的途径之一。在我的新播客中，我尝试通过与专业人士的交流来消除自己对一些令我着迷的课题的困惑。
JOHN: I think language is more interesting than we’re often taught. I think it’s easy to think that a language is a basket of words, and there’s an order that you put them in. There’s a little more, and I try to get it across because I just enjoy it.
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BILL: I love learning. Even if a topic’s complex, I like to see if I can figure it out. When you’re learning about something, it’s important to let yourself be confused, to acknowledge, oh, I don’t really get how these pieces work together. And then it’s so much fun when they start to make sense. I call that ‘getting unconfused.’
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Welcome to Unconfuse Me. I’m Bill Gates.
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约翰：我认为语言比我们通常所教的更为迷人。我们往往容易把一门语言看成一大筐词汇，只需按照特定的顺序排列它们。但实际上，语言含有更多的内涵，我想要强调这一点，我对此感到非常兴趣。
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比尔：我热爱学习。即使一个话题很复杂，我也喜欢尝试看能否理解它。当你学习某事时，让自己感到困惑是很重要的，要承认，“哦，我不太明白这些要素是如何相互关联的。”然后当它们开始变得清晰时，那感觉真的很有趣。我称之为“解惑”。
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欢迎来到《给自己解惑》。我是比尔·盖茨。
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My guest today is John McWhorter. John helped me get unconfused about language and he’s a professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He’s written a lot of amazing books that I recommend. He’s also got an excellent podcast, Lexicon Valley.
今天我邀请到了约翰·麦克沃特（John McWhorter）作为我的嘉宾。约翰帮助我消除了一些关于语言的困惑，他是哥伦比亚大学的语言学教授。他写过很多令人印象深刻的书，对此我强烈推荐。此外，他还主持着一档出色的播客节目，名叫《Lexicon Valley》。
JOHN: Thank you for having me, Bill.
约翰：感谢你邀请我，比尔。
BILL: I think there’s an assumption that people who study language use language better. What expression or saying do people say you overuse?
比尔：我觉得大家通常会假定研究语言的人在运用语言方面更为娴熟。有没有人指出你经常使用某个特定的表达或习惯用语？
JOHN: I say “the truth of the matter is” too much. I use it partly as a substitute for saying, “um,” “like,” “sort of,” or “you know.” If you’re feeling that pause, my idea is always to say either, “the fact of the matter is,” or I’d say, “the idea that.” I overuse both of those.
约翰：我经常说“事实上”。我把它部分地当作替代词来使用，取代了“嗯”，“像是”，“有点儿”，或者“你知道的”。如果你感到我有那么一瞬间的停顿，我的想法总是要么说“事实的情况是”，要么说“这个观点”。我常常过度地使用这两个短语。
BILL: I have been accused of using superlatives too much. In fact, when they did a spoof magazine about me, there was an article titled He Ran Out of Superlatives Early in Life, because I’d always say, this is the best thing ever, or this is the stupidest thing ever. When I was running Microsoft, we were trying to move at high speed, and so I did kind of go overboard.
比尔：有人曾指责我过于频繁地使用最高级形容词。事实上，当他们开玩笑创作了一本关于我的讽刺杂志时，有一篇文章的标题就是《他在人生早期就用光了最高级形容词》，因为我总是说，“这是有史以来最棒的东西”，或者“这是有史以来最愚蠢的事情”。当我领导微软的时候，我们追求高速发展，我确实有点夸张。
JOHN: Everything is superlative, right.
约翰：一切都是最高级，对吧。
BILL: Yes, I’m guilty of that.
比尔：是的，我承认我有这个毛病。
JOHN: I always say that the superlative is interesting in both directions. I’m as interested in the worst version of something as in the best. Suppose you have some soup, somebody gives you some chicken and dumpling soup. If it’s the worst chicken and dumpling soup you’ve ever had, I’m going to comment on it and I’m going to remember it. I had some recently, the worst I’ve ever had.
约翰：我总是说，最高级形容词在两个极端上都很有趣。我对某事的最糟版本和最好版本一样感兴趣。假设你有一碗汤，有人给你一碗鸡肉饺子汤。如果它是我吃过的最糟糕的鸡肉饺子汤，我会评论一下然后记住它。我最近就吃了一些，是我吃过的最糟糕的。
BILL: What expression in English bothers you the most?
比尔：在英语中，有什么表达最让你不爽？
JOHN: When people say, “Oh, well, it is what it is.” What does that mean? People say it when really what they mean is, “I don’t care.” It is what it is. Well, of course it is. What else was it? I find that very annoying. The first time someone said that to me was when something unpleasant had happened to me and he didn’t care. He said, “well, it is what it is.” I parsed it, and I thought, what a gorgeously chilly way of saying, your problems don’t matter to me. And much to my surprise, it became a standard expression. It should leave. What’s yours? [laughs]
约翰：当人们说，“事情就是这样”（意译，“It is what it is”）时，最让我不爽。那是什么意思？人们说这句话时真正的意思通常是，“我不在乎。”事情就是这样。事情当然就是这样。不然还能是什么？我觉得这句话很烦人。第一次有人对我说这句话是当我遇到了一些不愉快的事情，而他却不关心。他说，“嗯，事情就是这样。”我对此有所思考，我认为这是一种精致地表达你的问题对我来说无关紧要的方式。令我惊讶的是，这句话后来成为了一种标准的表达。它应该被淘汰。那你呢？[笑]
BILL: It bothers me when I say “um.” And you don’t know that you’re saying it. So then when you go back and accidentally listen to yourself, you’re like, oh, my God, why did I do that? And it varies a lot. Sometimes I don’t at all, and sometimes I do. I guess it’s just trying to buy time, and I don’t realize that I should just let there be blank space instead of trying to fill it.
比尔：当我自己说“嗯”时，我感到很不爽。而且你不知道自己在说。所以当你事后偶然听到自己的声音时，你会想，天哪，我为什么那样做？而且这种情况时有时无。有时我完全不说，有时候却会说。我猜这只是在争取时间，而我没有意识到我应该让那里留下停顿，而不是试图说点什么。
JOHN: Or say, “the fact of the matter is.”
约翰：或者说，“事实的情况是。”
BILL: Yes, something brilliant like that. What language would you want to speak that you don’t?
比尔：没错，或是类似的更精致的表达。你希望能说哪种语言，但目前还不会？
JOHN: If I had time, I wish I could speak Navajo. Navajo is so complicated that I don’t believe anybody actually speaks it. It has no regular verbs, and it also has tones. I’ve always kind of wished I could spend a year with that just because it’s Mount Everest. What language would you want?
约翰：如果我有时间，我希望我会说纳瓦霍语。纳瓦霍语非常复杂，以至于我不认为有人真的能说得很流利。它没有规则动词，而且还有声调。我一直希望自己能花一年时间学习它，因为这就像攀登珠穆朗玛峰一样挑战极限。你希望学会哪种语言？
BILL: Well, if you don’t count computer languages, I’m in pretty bad shape. I took Latin and Greek in high school. Yes, okay, it’s helped me with a few legal terms. I’m in the process of learning French. If I could learn Chinese, I would, but I know that I just don’t have the time. So I’m going to try to get pretty good at French and feel like at least I learned one other language.
比尔：如果不算计算机语言的话，语言这块我其实没有什么造诣。我高中学过拉丁语和希腊语。这帮助我理解了一些法律术语。我现在正在学法语。如果我能学会中文，我愿意去学，但我知道我实际上没有时间。所以我打算在法语上尽量表现出色，至少我在感觉上学会了另一门语言。
JOHN: French is fun and it’s accessible from English, whereas with Chinese, yes, I have spent the past ten years of my life very quietly chipping away at it, trying my best. Writing aside, everything is just so different that it helps to have a really good teacher or to be surrounded by it, or to be obsessive enough to spend ten years on it the way I have and look at where I’ve gotten. I can now read Chinese like a three-year-old, and that’s taken ten years. [laughs] French is one of those things where the hardest thing is the distance between the written version and what you say. And then there are two problems with French, not that French has a problem. The written version is one thing. Comment allez-vous, but it’s pronounced “como-tall-ay-voo.” Then you find out that people don’t really talk that way in real life, and there’s this huge gulf between textbook French and what even the most educated and uptight person says, sitting and drinking coffee. French has a real issue with that. So my heart is with you on French.
约翰：法语很有趣，而且对于英语来说很容易学习，而对于中文来说，我确实在过去的十年里默默地努力学习，尽我最大的努力。先不说写作，一切都非常不同，最好有一位非常出色的老师，或者置身语言环境中，或具备足够的执着，像我这样花了十年时间学习，看看我取得了什么成就——我现在能像三岁儿童一样读中文，这花了我十年的时间。[笑] 法语是这样一门语言——最难的部分在于书面表达与口语之间的差异。此外，法语还有两个问题，不是法语本身的问题。法语的书面表达和口语是两回事。比如说"Comment allez-vous"，但发音是"como-tall-ay-voo"。后来你会发现，人们在现实生活中并不真的那样说话，教科书法语与即使是受过良好教育并拘谨的人在喝咖啡时所说的话之间存在着巨大差距。法语在这方面确实存在问题。我对你在学习法语时的困难感同身受。
BILL: Language is such an interesting topic. What got you interested in languages in the first place?
比尔：语言是一个非常有趣的话题。最初是什么引发了你对语言的兴趣？
JOHN: I found out when I was about five years old that there were these other codes that people could speak in, and they were doing the same thing that I was doing in English, and yet I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I wanted to know that other code. I wanted to know why people don’t all talk the same way and how the other code was different from mine. That’s just kept me going for now a very long time.
约翰：我大约五岁时发现人们可以使用其他语言进行交流，而他们在其他语言中所做的事情与我在英语中所做的事情相同，但我无法理解他们在说什么。我想了解其他语言。我想知道为什么人们不都用相同的方式说话，以及其他语言与我的语言有什么不同。这个兴趣一直伴随着我很长一段时间。
BILL: So you’ve learned a lot of languages.
比尔：所以，你学过很多语言吗？
JOHN: Well, it depends on what you call learn because, you know, you don’t really know a language unless you’ve lived in it for some period of time. I have taught myself a great deal of a lot of languages, and so I can get around in a bunch of languages, and I’ll probably never stop learning bits and pieces of them because I just find it so fascinating that there are 7,000 of them and that I was raised with only one.
约翰：这要取决于你对于“学”是怎么定义的，你知道，除非你在某个语言环境中生活过一段时间，否则你不会真正掌握一门语言。我自学了许多语言的很多内容，所以我可以在很多语言中应付自如，而且我可能永远不会停止学习它们，因为我发现这个世界上有7000种语言，而我只是用一种语言长大的，这实在太有趣了。
BILL: I guess the number of languages is going down over time. How do you think about that?
比尔：我猜，随着时间的推移，语言的数量可能会减少。你对此怎么看？
JOHN: That’s a rich question because there is an epidemic of language death, just like there is of flora and fauna. With each language dying, you can say that a way of looking at the world is going away, too. But the problem is, and I know that I make some enemies by saying this, I think that the extent to which a language itself makes you see the world differently is somewhat exaggerated. As marvelous as it is that there are 7,000 different languages, the truth is that if everybody spoke one thing, and if language never changed and there hadn’t arisen these 7,000 different languages, nobody would say, “Boy, I wish we all spoke in 7,000 different ways and couldn’t understand each other and had to use translation.” No one would say that. We cherish the diversity of language. But on the other hand, I’m not sure that the languages dying means that cultural diversity is dying with it.
约翰：这是一个复杂的问题，因为语言消失的现象就像植物和动物消失一样普遍。随着一门语言的消失，你可以说一种看待世界的方式也在逐渐消失。但问题在于，我这么说可能因此而得罪一些人，我认为语言本身让你看待世界的方式被夸大了。尽管有7000多种不同的语言，但事实上，如果每个人都说同一种语言，如果语言从不改变，没有出现这7000多种不同的语言，没有人会说，“天哪，我希望我们都以7000多种不同的方式说话，互相听不懂，必须使用翻译。”没有人会这样说。我们珍惜语言的多样性。但另一方面，我不确定语言的消失是否意味着文化多样性也在减少。
BILL: In the Christian Bible, they have the Tower of Babel, where it’s almost a curse on humanity that we can’t understand each other.
比尔：在基督教圣经中，有巴别塔的故事，几乎可以说是对人类的一种诅咒，人们无法相互理解。
JOHN: Yes.
约翰：是的。
BILL: It’s fascinating that it’s told that way.
比尔：以这种方式叙述真的很有趣。
JOHN: Yes, it’s hard for there to be so many different languages. Languages can divide. There’s a reason why we’re always seeking to have a universal language that at least everybody will speak, while speaking their own other one. Divisions between languages, as marvelous as they are, are also difficult to bridge.
约翰：是的，有这么多不同的语言确实让事情变得复杂。语言会造成分裂。我们之所以一直在寻求一种通用语言，至少每个人都会说一点，同时又可以继续说自己的母语，这是有原因的。尽管语言之间的差异非常令人惊奇，但要弥合这些差异也同样困难。
BILL: And this idea of a written formal language versus just, you know, when you’re at home kind of socializing –
比尔：还有书面正式语言与在家庭社交时的语言差异——
JOHN: The hardest thing is to get beyond the idea that the way a language happens to be written most on the page, which is usually in the form of the dialect that happened to get chosen to be in the shop window, is the right way, and everything else is some bastardization, some devolution from the perfect. It’s so hard to get beyond that within our own little lives, but the truth is that about 200 languages – on some days I say 100, other days I say 200 – about 200 languages are written in any real way. Generally, it’s only one dialect that usually is written as opposed to all the other dialects. If some God, Martian, ET thing came down and looked at all the ways that people speak in all of the 200-and-whatever nations that we have, they couldn’t decide, this way of speaking is cleaner and better and richer, and then all these other things are something that they probably call dialects. They couldn’t tell the difference. That person could land in Compton, California, hear nothing but the most spontaneous and uneducated black English and think how complex, how nuanced the language of these humans are. Then they will go have a conversation with Tom Brokaw, and they wouldn’t say, “Oh, this language is more sophisticated.” They’d say, “Oh, here’s a variation on what this gentleman in Compton was speaking.” They’d recognize no qualitative difference whatsoever. We can’t feel it because languages inevitably have social evaluations, as well as neutral left brain ones.
约翰：最难的是超越这种观念，即一种语言通常以其中最常用的书写方式来记录，而这一般是选择出镜率高的方言，并被视为正统，而其他一切都是从完美退化而来的非正统变体。在我们自己的小世界里很难超越这一观念，但事实是，大约有200种语言——有时我说100，有时我说200——大约有200种语言以某种具体的方式书写。通常，只有一种方言通常被用于书写，而抛开了所有其他方言。如果某位上帝、火星人或外星人降临，观察我们拥有的200多个国家中人们说话的方式，他们无法判断哪种方式更清晰、更好、更丰富，所有其他的方式都可能被他们称之为方言。他们无法区分。他可以降临在加利福尼亚的康普顿，听到的是最自然和最未受过教育的黑人英语，进而会认为这些人类的语言有多复杂而微妙。他们会与汤姆·布罗考（译注，一位美国新闻主播）交谈，他们不会说，“哦，这种语言更复杂。”他们会说，“哦，这是康普顿绅士的说话方式的一个变体。”他们无法辨认出语言质量上的差异。我们无从感受这些，是因为语言不可避免地受到社会评价的影响，同时也受到中性的左脑的影响。
BILL: It reinforces this notion that there’s the correct language, the King’s English or something like that, and everything else is kind of lower class, inferior. I have to admit, until I read your books, The Power of Babel and Talking Back, Talking Black, the idea that each of these dialects has its own self- consistent logic, I wasn’t aware that there’s no laziness involved in this in any way.
比尔：这强调了一种观念，即有一种“正确”的语言，类似国王的英语之类的，而其他一切都有点掉价、低劣。我必须承认，在我读了你的书《巴别塔的力量》（中文名暂译）和《顶嘴，像黑人那样说话》（中文名暂译）之前，我并不知道每种方言都有自己一致的逻辑，而这一点与我的怠惰毫无关系。
JOHN: It’s so hard to hear that. Really, it’s the sort of thing that you gradually have to be taught. It’s kind of like the fact that, you know, mountains become sand. I was saying this to my significant other just today. Mountains become sand and you never see it, and you don’t really believe it. In the same way, a nonstandard dialect is not inferior, and in fact, the fun thing, if you’re a linguist or if you’re the kind that’s inclined to cock your ear to this sort of thing, is that the nonstandard dialects are often more complicated and always have features that the standard dialect lacks.
约翰：这真的很难理解。实际上，你需要逐渐接受这个观念，就像山脉最终会变成沙子一样。我今天刚刚对我的另一半说了这个。山脉最终会变成沙子，你永远看不到这个过程，而且你可能不会完全相信它。同样，非标准方言并不低劣，事实上，如果你是一名语言学家，或者你是那种倾向于留意这类事情的人，有趣的是，非标准方言通常更加复杂，而且总是具有标准方言所不具备的特点。
BILL: It’s fascinating that some languages have a lot of gender information built in or the way that the tenses are done, which things are easy to express is so different. And yet, because genetically, our language machine, our brain is in common, it is stunning the degree of language variation.
比尔：有趣的是，一些语言中包含了很多性别信息，或者时态的表达方式，哪些东西容易表达等等都非常不同。然而，从基因的角度，我们的语言机器——大脑是相同的，这么看语言变化的程度令人惊讶。
JOHN: It’s absolutely amazing. The brain can tolerate an insane degree of needless complexity. The brain can do it, but the brain doesn’t need it. ‘He’ versus ‘she,’ you don’t need that. Half of the languages in the world make no difference. Context always takes care of it. You and I think that ‘he’ and ‘she’ is one of the most basic things. If you make up a language, you should leave that out because context takes care of it 98% of the time. That’s what language is. It’s too complicated.
约翰：这绝对是令人惊奇的。大脑可以承受不必要的复杂性。大脑可以做到，但大脑不需要这样。例如，‘他’和‘她’的区别，实际上是不需要的。世界上有一半的语言根本不区分性别，因为语境通常会解决这个问题。你和我可能认为‘他’和‘她’是最基本的东西之一，但如果你创造一种语言，你应该省略这个区分，因为语境在98%的情况下都能处理它。这就是语言，它太复杂了。
BILL: Well, you end up with strange things, like in French nouns have a gender, even though it doesn’t really map back to the fundamental characteristic. It’s not informative that they have a gender.
比尔：嗯，最后你可能会出现一些奇怪的情况，比如在法语中，名词有性别，尽管这实际上并不与它们的基本特征相关。事实上，它并没有提供什么有用的信息。
JOHN: It’s so frustrating. If you speak English, the first time you step outside of English to take Chinese, the language that you think you’re learning because you know the words, suddenly a hat is a man, and the moon is a girl. You think, why, why? It starts with making a division between things that are flat and round, or things that are male and female biologically, and some cosmology. But then culture changes, the sounds change, nobody’s thinking that way anymore, but you’ve got these labels that stick to things, and next thing you know, the table is a girl, and you can handle it. The baby can handle it. The toddler can handle it. By the time you’re a teenager, you start to realize your language doesn’t make sense, but by then you have too much to do to think about it. And so that’s language.
约翰：这确实令人沮丧。如果你说英语，第一次尝试学习中文，当你知道单词本身的意思，你就会意识到你正在学习这门语言。突然间，帽子被称为男性，月亮被称为女性。你会想，为什么会这样呢？起初，这是基于一些原则的，比如物体是平面还是圆形，或者生物性别的区分，还有一些宇宙观。但后来文化发生了变化，发音也发生了变化，人们不再以这种方式思考了，但这些标签仍然保留了下来，你会发现，桌子被称为女性，你可以接受。婴儿可以接受。幼儿可以接受。当你十几岁的时候，你开始意识到你的语言没有逻辑，但那时你已经学的差不多了，来不及考虑这个问题了。这就是语言。
BILL: That’s interesting. I never thought about it in terms of that our computer, our brain is so capable, that having these rules that –
比尔：这很有趣。我从来没有想过，我们的大脑是如此强大，以至于有了这些条条框框——
JOHN: Make no damn sense.
约翰：毫无意义。
BILL: – seem very arbitrary, you can put up with it because your brain can memorize all that stuff. Like when I learned English, I didn’t know I was learning the subjunctive and that there’s strange rules about it. I just learned it. Then when I learned other languages, I’m like, oh God, my own language has actually got a lot of irregular cases – that I just, without thinking about it, I use the subjunctive. And now that I’m learning French, I’m like, oh, no, there’s too many tenses.
比尔：——听上去非常武断，但你可以承受这些，因为你的大脑可以记住所有这些东西。就像我学英语时，我不知道我在学虚拟语气，也不知道有奇怪的规则。我只是学会了它。然后当我学其他语言时，我就会觉得，哦天啊，我的母语实际上有很多不规则的情况——我不经思考地使用虚拟语气。现在我正在学法语，我会觉得，哦不，有太多的时态了。
JOHN: Oh, just the most.
约翰：噢是的，最多的。
BILL: Will I have to use this?
比尔：我非得这么表达吗？
JOHN: And the neat thing is that once this nonsense stuff settles in, it can become useful. For example, the subjunctive, overemphasizing the hypothetical in that way, it can end up being useful for conveying certain things. If you’ve got the meaningless gender, it means that you can take your adjective away from the noun and put it over in some other part of the sentence, and you can know that the ‘big’ and the ‘hammer’ match because they have the same ending.
约翰：而有趣的是，一旦这些无聊的东西在你的大脑中固定下来，它们可以变得很有用。例如，虚拟语气，以过分强调假设的方式，最终可能对传达某些事物非常有用。如果你使用毫无意义的词性，这意味着你可以把形容词从名词中分离出来，放在句子的其他部分，你会知道“大”和“锤子”是匹配的，因为它们有相同的结尾。
BILL GATES: When you’re learning a language, some people find the pronunciation very hard, and others not so much. Why do you think that is?
比尔·盖茨：学一门语言时，有些人觉得发音很难，而其他人则觉得不那么难。你认为是为什么？
JOHN MCWHORTER: Sometimes I think that some people are less comfortable with broadly imitating other people than others. I think that part of that is just what sort of person you are.
Getting an accent is partly opening yourself up to doing a mock version of that person in English of the kind that is increasingly socially unacceptable today, and then using that accent in speaking the actual language, because there is often some truth in that stereotypical accent, and you just have to imitate. If somebody says to you the French word for "moon," for example, what we want to say is "lune" and then the French teacher says, "No, no, say lune," and you think to yourself, "lune."
约翰·麦克沃特：有时我会认为，有些人比其他人更不善于放开地模仿别人。我认为部分原因在于你是什么样的人。掌握口音在一定程度上意味着你要放开自己，去模仿那个人的英语口音——并带有些戏谑的腔调，这种模仿今天在社交上越来越不受欢迎，通常那种刻板印象的口音有一部分真实性——在实际的语言使用中用得到那种口音，而你就只需要模仿就好了。例如，如果有人告诉你法语中的“月亮”的词是“lune”（译注，英语发音），然后法语老师说，“不，不，说lune”（译注：法语发音），你会和自己说，“lune”（译注，法语发音）。
BILL GATES: Didn’t I just say that? [laughs]
比尔·盖茨：我刚刚不是说了吗？[笑]
JOHN MCWHORTER: [laughs] Right! But no, you have to imitate that person in a silly accent and say, "Huh-huh, lune," but it is "eh" and then if you could keep doing it. That’s what I’ve always done, and it’s not that I can get an accent perfectly, but you have to mimic. I think as we get older, or sometimes just as people, we’re less inclined.
约翰·麦克沃特：[笑] 对！但不，你必须模仿那个人的滑稽口音，说：“Huh-huh，lune”，但实际上发“eh”的音——如果你能一直这样做的话。这是我一直在做的事情，我不是说我能完美模仿口音，但你必须得这么做。我认为随着年龄的增长，或者有时只是作为人来说，我们不太倾向于这样做。
BILL GATES: I’d never made that connection. There are people who are very good. Like Bono can imitate lots of people, and so, he has something that he kept nurturing that skill. Probably from a young age, he was a little bit good at it, and people reinforced it, whereas most of us were so bad we decided we’re not going to try it.
比尔·盖茨：我从未想到过这种联系。有些人非常擅长。像波诺可以模仿很多人，他拥有维持和培养这种技能的天赋。很可能从小的时候，他就有点擅长这个，接着人们鼓励他这么做，而我们大多数人都做得很差，而我们决定不再尝试。
JOHN MCWHORTER: You get uptight as you get older, right, you mimic. And as for learning languages otherwise, the grammar will get you to a certain point, but I always found, you only really start to get it if you read a lot in it, and hopefully read something that’s relatively colloquial, and it gets the rhythm into your head. Also interacting and talking with people speaking at normal speed, which is also important.
约翰·麦克沃特：随着年龄的增长，你会对模仿感到紧张和不自在。至于学习语言，语法可以帮助你达到一定水平，但我发现，只有当你大量阅读，并且希望阅读一些相对口语化的内容时，你才会真正开始理解它，并将其节奏融入你的头脑中。与正常语速的人的互动和交谈也很重要。
BILL: In the world of linguists the last 20 years, do you feel like there have been some key advances, like in understanding how kids learn languages or how languages evolve over time? Are we smarter today than we were at the start of your career?
比尔：在过去的20年里，你是否觉得在理解儿童如何学习语言或语言随时间演变方面有一些关键进展？与你的职业生涯初期相比，今天的我们是否更聪明？
JOHN: I have to make myself unpopular with some linguists by saying that there are some things that have not been learned. When I came into linguistics, there was a notion that we were on the cusp of figuring out a specification for universal grammar. That was such an exciting idea. That has developed no consensus among the people who study it. They’ll admit it to you. What have you learned? What do we have to tell people? It’s really just kind of going in circles. Not the idea that there is some kind of universal specification, but what the nature of it is beyond shards is unclear. And that’s an unfortunate thing.
约翰：我不得不说，有些事情并没有被学习到，我这么说可能会引起语言学家的反感。当我进入语言学领域时，有一种观念，即我们正处在揭示通用语法规范的交点。那是一个令人兴奋的想法。但在研究这个领域的人中并没有形成共识。他们会向你承认这一点。我们学到了什么？我们必须告诉人们什么？实际上，我们似乎一直在围绕这个问题打转，没有明确的答案。这并不是说通用语法规范的概念本身有问题，而是我们尚未完全了解它的本质，尤其是在超越某些零散知识的层面上。这是一个令人遗憾的现实。
BILL: Now these AIs are coming along. We went from computer, thinking we’d write logic and it’d be super explicit and somehow this body of rules would give us great translation. These AI techniques where you expose it to massive examples, large language models, are developing a stunning degree of ability to translate and even sort of generate fluency that I think of as very much a human characteristic.
比尔：现在这些人工智能正在崭露头角。最初，我们以为只需编写清晰的逻辑规则，就能实现出色的翻译。然而，如今的人工智能技术采用了大量实例和大型语言模型，已经在翻译方面取得了惊人的进展，甚至能够生成非常接近人类流利语言的内容，这一点令我非常惊讶。
JOHN: Yes, it’s not what people expected, and frankly, in ways it’s not as cool. What people were waiting to do is have machines reproduce and manipulate the syntactic formulations that we thought we had discovered. That was going to be so neat. And then it kept on hitting walls. Some people are beginning to argue, that is how language is built. It’s a matter of what sorts of things go together most often, to the point that it becomes habit, and learning a language is about mastering what all of these habits, what all of these linguistic in-jokes, as it were, have become. If you master about 30,000 of those, you’ve got the language. There are rules, but not enough that you can just feed them into a computer and have it represent language in any realistic way. I remember first learning about how far things were going with statistics and thinking “This isn’t cool, this isn’t fun, this isn’t as interesting as it being this hitherto-unknown grammatical system that’s in our heads.” But frankly, it works, and it works better every five years, and we just have to go with it. It’s getting to the point that AI is helping some people understand how language might actually be represented in this mess between our ears called the brain.
约翰：是的，这并不是人们最初期望的，坦率地说，在某些方面它并没有像人类那样令人兴奋。最初，人们期望机器能够复制和处理我们认为已经了解的语法结构，这个想法听起来非常出色。然而，我们遇到了一些困难。有些人开始争论语言的构建实际上是基于哪些事物最常一起出现，以至于它们变成了习惯。学一门语言就是充分掌握这些习惯，了解所有这些语言圈子里的笑话的历史和现状。如果你能掌握大约3万个这样的习惯，你就会掌握这门语言。当然，也有规则存在，但规则本身不足以让你只需将它们输入计算机，并以任何现实方式代表语言。我还记得第一次了解到统计数据在这方面取得了多大的进展，我当时认为，“这并不令人激动，这并不有趣，这并不像我们之前认为大脑中存在着未知的语法系统那样引人入胜。”但坦白说，这种方法是行之有效的，而且每隔五年就有更多的进展，我们只能跟随时代的步伐。人工智能正逐渐帮助一些人理解语言实际上是如何在我们称之为大脑——这两耳之间的混沌中——被表示出来的。
BILL: When you write books, are you more trying to share your fascination that somebody should appreciate the beauty of all these things about language? Are you trying to kind of advance the state of knowledge? Is it a mix of those things?
比尔：在你写书的时候，你更倾向于分享你对语言之美的迷恋，希望有人能够欣赏它吗？还是你更想推动知识的普及？或者这两者都有？
JOHN: With the academic books that nobody reads, I’m trying to advance the state of knowledge, and that’s a slow, quiet, frustrating process. [laughs] With the books written for actual human beings, yes, I am sharing my fascination because I think language is more interesting than we’re often taught. I think it’s easy to think that a language is a basket of words, and there’s an order that you put them in, and most people don’t speak it right. That’s easy to think about how language works. There’s a little more, and I try to get it across because I just enjoy it.
约翰：对于那些学术著作，几乎没有人会阅读的那些，我是试图推动知识的普及，这是一个缓慢、平静且令人沮丧的过程。[笑] 而对于为真正的普通人写的书，是的，我在分享我的着迷，因为我认为语言比我们通常所教的要有趣得多。人们很容易认为一门语言只是一堆词汇，按照一定的顺序排列，而大多数人都说得不正确。这种对语言工作原理的看法过于简单。实际上，情况更复杂一些，而我试图将这一点传达给读者，我自己非常享受这个过程。
BILL: Tell us about what you’re working on now.
比尔：告诉我们一下你现在正在做什么。
JOHN: Well, right now, it’s the first book I’ve done that the title came first. It’s going to be called Pronoun Trouble, and that’s something that Daffy Duck says in one of the famous cartoons between him and Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, ‘aha, pronoun trouble!’ Obviously there are controversies about pronouns these days, and they need to be written about in one book. In Pronoun Trouble, the formal arrangement is to take each English pronoun and discuss it. There’s an issue of what you’re going to use as a plural ‘you.’ Why doesn’t English have a plural you? We think of it as normal to say ‘you there’ and ‘you there,’ meaning three people. That’s not how languages work, that’s an accident, and that’s why we have things like ‘y’all.’ If we want something neutral, then you could say, ‘you people,’ and that sounds like something Donald Trump would say. You can’t have that. You can say ‘y’all’ or ‘you all,’ but it sounds regional. It sounds socially specific. It’s either Southern or black. Those are both great things, but they don’t sound neutral, and we are human beings. So then there’s ‘you guys,’ and ‘you guys’ is what most people use, including groups of women. But there are some people who say, “Don’t say ‘you guys,’ because that implies that guys are the default person.” Other people would say that in that case, nobody’s thinking of gender at all. It’s just a shape, ‘guys.’ I’m going to come down in favor of that.
约翰：嗯，现在我正在写的这本书是我第一次先有书名再写的。这本书将被取名为《代词的困扰》（中文名暂译），这是《乐一通》中的梗，其中有个桥段，达菲鸭在与兔八哥和爱发先生的对话中说过“啊哈，代词的困扰！”显然，现今有关代词的争议，需要在一本书中详细探讨。在《代词的困扰》中，正式的内容安排是讨论每个英语代词。其中有关于使用什么作为复数的“你”的这个问题。为什么英语没有复数的“你”？我们认为说“你在那里”和“你们在那里”来表示三个人都是正常现象（译注，英语中，you可代指你或者你们）。这其实并不符合语言的逻辑，完全是一个意外。这就是为什么我们有“y'all”（译注，你们所有人的缩写）。如果我们想要一个中性的表达方式，那么你可以说“you people”（译注，你们这群人），但这听起来像是唐纳德·特朗普会说的话。你不能这么说。你可以说“y'all”或“you all”，但这听起来有地域特色，带有社会色彩的特定口音，要么是南部的，要么是黑人的。这两者都是很棒的表达，但它们听起来不中性，而我们人类是多元的。所以有了“you guys”（译注，你们这些人），大多数人使用的就是这个，包括女性。但有些人会说：“不要说‘you guys’，因为这默认指的就是当下眼前的人。”其他人则表示，在这种情况下，根本没有人考虑性别。它只是一个描述，“guys”（译注，这些人）。我支持这一观点。
BILL: Oh wow.
比尔：哇哦。
JOHN: We need a plural ‘you,’ and just like English has got its flaws, but English is the universal language because it got there first, and we can’t fix it. ‘You guys’ is flawed, but we need a plural ‘you.’ It’s not going to be ‘y’all’ in the default. And so, what else is it going to be? Unless you make something up? If you bring in something like ‘kabunka’ or a ‘gazooka,’ nobody’s going to take it up. It has to be native. And ‘they’ is already busy. So it’s going to be ‘you guys,’ and I imagine some people are going to throw some fruit at me about that, but books need to be written. What really happens is that what becomes the right thing is what appeals tacitly and subconsciously to the most people in the public. Language change is inevitable. So next is Pronoun Trouble, and that’s the next book. Then for the Great Courses, very soon is coming a course about the history of writing and the alphabet. The idea is to figure out how we learned how to write and then where these darned ABCs come from. We’ll see how that comes out.
约翰：英语有其缺点，我们需要一个复数的“你”。但英语之所以成为通用语言，是因为它的率先普及和流传，我们无法改变这件事。尽管“you guys”有缺陷，但我们还是需要一个复数的“你”。默认情况下，“y'all”并不是默认的选择。那么，还有什么其他选项呢？除非我们编造一些新词，像“kabunka”或“gazooka”，但没有人会采纳这些词。它必须是自然而然形成的。而“they”（译注：他们/她们）已经被广泛使用了。因此，最终可能的选择还是“you guys”，我可以想象有些人可能对此提出异议，但我们还是需要继续这么写。实际上，语言中成为正确用法的是那些在公众中、对大多数人心底和潜意识产生吸引力的东西。语言的变化是不可避免的。因此，我的下一本书是《代词的困扰》，它就是我接下来要写的书。另外，我即将推出一期有关写作历史和字母的Great Courses（译注，由Wondrium公司录制的演讲课程系列）。这期课的理念是弄清楚我们是如何学会写作的，以及这些字母ABC到底是从哪里来的。让我们拭目以待。
BILL: One alphabet thing I find amazing is that the Chinese, Japanese, Korean alphabets are really of a different character than I think almost all the rest of the languages. It’s interesting that persevered over time.
比尔：我发现令人惊奇的是，中文、日文和韩文的字母与几乎所有其他语言都有很大不同。有趣的是，这种差异随着时间的推移得以保留下来。
JOHN: Yes. We humans are such conservative creatures. Even just think about a word like ‘through’ and how it’s spelled. Think about that. What a hideous mess that is. And yet we wouldn’t change it. We think t-h-r-u is slangy and abbreviated. Koreans’ writing system actually is this very elegant system that makes 91% of sense. They overthrew the idea of using Chinese, and they were right because, the Chinese writing system is beautiful. It has a noble history. No, it’s a horrible system, I say with great admiration, because there are just too many damn characters. And the Chinese know that, to an extent. But to use the pinyin, to use the Roman system, that doesn’t look as good to them because the Chinese system is part of their culture and it’s something that everybody has to learn, and it’s very hard to imagine a China without them. I can perfectly well put myself in their heads and yet think that, imagine how much of education has gone into learning them. Until recently, things have to be done in a certain order of strokes, and some of them have fifteen and twenty strokes. Why that? But it’s because they haven’t known anything else, just like we’re used to. I ‘made’ a house, m-a-d-e, ma-de. Why is it ‘made?’ Well, we’re fine with that. I don’t want it spelled any other way. It’s the same thing with the Chinese writing system. The Japanese end up sitting there with it, despite the fact that alongside, they have two elegant syllabic systems where you only have to memorize a couple dozen symbols, but then they keep the Chinese ones, too, because that’s what they know. That’s what human beings do.
约翰：是的，我们人类是如此守旧。只需想象一下像“through”（译注：穿过）这样的单词及其拼写方式。你想想看。那是多么混乱的拼写方式啊。但我们却不会改变它。我们认为t-h-r-u是一种俚语和缩写。韩文的书写系统实际上是一种非常优雅的系统，让人们可以理解其中91%的内容。他们放弃了使用中文书写系统，这是正确的，因为尽管中文书写系统很美丽且有悠久的历史，但实际上它是一个极其复杂的系统，我以非常钦佩的态度说这一点，因为其中包含了太多复杂的汉字。中国人自己也认识到这一点。但要使用拼音，要使用罗马字母系统，则对他们来说似乎不够美观，因为中文书写系统是他们文化的一部分，每个人都必须学会，很难想象一个没有汉字的中国。我可以理解他们的想法，同时，也可以理解并设想在汉字学习过程中所投入的教育资源。直到现在，人们仍必须按照一定的笔画顺序书写汉字，有些汉字甚至有15-20个笔画。为什么要这样呢？这就是因为他们没有了解其他方式，就像我们已经习惯了一样。我建造（made）了一座房子，m-a-d-e，ma-de。为什么要这样拼写呢？好吧，我们对这样拼写没有什么意见。我不想要其他方式的拼写。对于中文书写系统也是一样。日本人尽管拥有两种优雅的音节系统，只需要记住几十个符号，但他们仍然使用汉字，因为那是他们熟悉的东西。这就是人类的行为方式。
BILL: Hangul in Korean did simplify the lettering system.
比尔：韩国的韩文确实简化了字母系统。
JOHN: Oh, it’s a joy.
约翰：哦，它很棒。
BILL: And then, in Japanese, what is it, it’s katakana and hiragana.
比尔：那么，日文中是什么，片假名和平假名？
JOHN: Katakana and hiragana.
约翰：片假名和平假名。
BILL: Ah.
比尔：啊哈。
JOHN: Yes, and you can learn them in an afternoon.
约翰：是的，你可以在一个下午的时间内学会它们。
BILL: So when I say Coca-Cola, am I using katakana?
比尔：所以当我说可口可乐时，我在使用片假名吗？
JOHN: That’s the katakana.
约翰：那是片假名。
BILL: Okay.
比尔：好的。
JOHN: Because it’s foreign. And you learn, Co-ca-Co-la. But then above it you’ve got these 4,000 kanji you have to know for anything interesting. Not that Coke isn’t interesting. But yes, I say with great admiration for the Japanese system, it’s clumsy. I mean, it’s so clumsy that I am always in awe watching a native Japanese person reading, just reading the paper and thinking the accomplishment that goes into that. I admire it.
约翰：因为它是舶来词。你学会了Co-ca-Co-la。但除此之外还有4,000个日本汉字，你必须掌握它们才能了解有趣的东西。并不是说可口可乐不有趣。但的确，我非常钦佩日本的这个系统，它不太灵活。其实我想说它很不灵活，以至于我总是惊叹地看着土生土长的日本人在那阅读，光是阅读报纸，我就觉得这是一种成就了。我对此表示敬佩。
BILL: No, it’s incredible. I got a little bit of exposure to this in software. We were trying to accommodate the world’s languages. First we were so English-centric. We had these 8-bit character codes, and then we did Unicode, which was 16-bit, so that we could deal with all the glyphs, the letters, the alphabets.
比尔：这真是不可思议。我在软件领域稍微接触过这方面。我们试图容纳世界各国的语言。起初，我们侧重于英语。我们使用了8位字符编码，然后我们使用了Unicode，它有16位，以便我们可以处理所有的字形、字母和字母表。
JOHN: You need more.
约翰：你需要更多。
BILL: We had to go up to 16 bits to get kanji and all the different things in. Actually nowadays, computers do a good job. But I remember being stunned, like in German, when you hyphenate a word, it can change the spelling, just that you’re hyphenating a word.
比尔：我们必须升级到16位才能容纳日本汉字和其他各种东西。实际上，如今的计算机做得很好。但我记得当时我感到震惊，就像德语中，当你在一个词中加连字符时，它可以改变拼写，而这仅仅是你在一个词中加连字符。
JOHN: I see what you mean.
约翰：我明白你的意思。
BILL: Now with TikTok, and icons and everything, we’re off in some new directions in terms of what people do. I guess kids get a kick a little bit out of having things that us old folks are kind of confused by.
比尔：现在有了TikTok、各种符号和其他东西，我们在语言使用方面正朝着一些新的方向发展。我想孩子们可能会觉得有点有趣，而老年人对这些东西多少有点困惑。
JOHN: Bill, I don’t know. I don’t know if most young people are thinking, “How are we going to keep it from the old ones.” [laughs] They just do it. Now, linguistically, there are things that they say where I really have to be carefully told exactly what it means. And it’s not just a few things. It’s interesting, but I think they’re doing it because they talk to each other constantly within texting or what they’re tweeting. And what they’re doing is literally opaque to me. I don’t know if they’re doing it on purpose. Some people would disagree, but I think that most identity construction is subconscious, which makes it even more awesome to me.
[music]
约翰：比尔，我不知道。我不知道大多数年轻人是否在考虑“我们要如何瞒住老人们”。[笑] 他们就这么做了。从语言学的角度来看，他们说的一些话确实让我不得不仔细问清楚它的确切含义。而且这不仅仅只是一小部分。这很有趣，但我认为他们这样做是因为他们在通过短信或推特等方式不断地互相交流。而他们所做的事情对我来说是完全不透明的。我不知道他们是否故意这样做。有些人可能会持不同意见，但我认为大多数身份认同的构建是潜意识的，这使我更加惊叹不已。
[音乐]
BILL: I’ve got a turntable here, and I asked you to bring in a record album.
比尔：我这里有一个唱盘机，之前我请你带来一张唱片专辑。
JOHN: This is, quote unquote, my favorite record of all time. And of course, you know, I’ve been alive too long to have a favorite. But this is A Child’s Introduction to the Orchestra. That sounds boring, but actually, all of the instruments have solos. Somebody sings as the instrument, and then there’s a beautiful instrumental solo. The music, which is by Alec Wilder and the lyrics by Marshall Barer, who worked Broadway, it’s good stuff. I grew up with this. I still remember 90% of the lyrics, and I, believe it or not, have a bad memory for words when they’re with music.
约翰：这是“我有史以来最喜欢的唱片”。当然，你知道，我已经岁数很大了，不可能只有一个最喜欢的。但这张《儿童对管弦乐的介绍》（中文名暂译）可以称得上是。这名字听上去有点无聊，但实际上，所有的乐器都有独奏。一些人饰演乐器，接着是好听的器乐独奏。这里的音乐是由亚历山大·维尔德创作的，而歌词是由曾在百老汇工作的马歇尔·巴勒写的，都很棒。我从小就听这个。我现在还记得90%的歌词，你可能不会相信，当歌词伴随着音乐时，我对文字的记忆很差。
BILL: Huh.
比尔：嗯哼。
JOHN: And so, that is the golden record that I brought.
约翰：是的，这就是我带来的黄金唱片。
BILL: I wonder what the trombone solo sounds like.
比尔：我想知道长号独奏听起来是什么样子。
JOHN: “Mike Malone, The Slide Trombone.” [sings] I’m Mike Malone, the slide trombone.
He’s cool. That’s his solo. I think my favorite solo was “Muldoon the Bassoon.” And so here he is.
[music - “Muldoon the Bassoon” by the Golden Symphony Orchestra]
约翰：“Mike Malone, The Slide Trombone.” [演唱] I’m Mike Malone, the slide trombone.
他很酷。这是他的独奏。我认为我最喜欢的独奏是“Muldoon the Bassoon”。听这里。
[音乐 - 由Golden Symphony Orchestra演奏的“Muldoon the Bassoon”]
BILL GATES: That’s fantastic.
比尔·盖茨：太棒了。
JOHN: So that’s “Muldoon the Bassoon.” No, that’s not the music I listen to in my downtime these days, but that is a very, very dear recording to me.
约翰：这就是“Muldoon the Bassoon”。这并不是我现在闲暇时听的音乐，但对我来说这是一张非常非常珍贵的唱片。
BILL: It’s a classic. Can you imitate an instrument?
比尔：的确经典。你能模仿某一种乐器吗？
JOHN: [mimics a few notes] That’s a French horn. [laughs] I’ve never done that in public.
约翰：[模仿几个音符] 这是圆号。[笑] 我从来没有在公开场合模仿过。
BILL: What’s your favorite word?
比尔：你最喜欢的一个词是什么？
JOHN: You have to extend the definition of word a bit to accept this answer, but ‘happens to.’ ‘It happens to be that.’ ‘He happened to become king and…,’ ‘I happened to buy that magazine and…,’ indicating that you did something by chance. I wish people used it more because the role of the fortuitous in life is rather under-sung. To be a good scientist, you have to leave a little room for chance, and so I like ‘happen to.’
约翰：你得稍微扩展对词的定义，才能接受这个答案，我的答案是‘happens to’（碰巧）。“碰巧是这样的”，“他碰巧成了国王，然后…”，“我碰巧买了那本杂志，然后…”，这表示你做了一些事情是因为偶然。我希望人们更多地使用它，因为偶然在生活中的作用往往被低估。要成为一个好的科学家，你必须为偶然留出多一点空间，所以我喜欢“碰巧”这个词。
BILL: Well, we ‘happen to’ have run out of time. Thanks, John, for talking with me today.
比尔：好吧，我们“碰巧”已经没有时间了。约翰，感谢你今天和我交谈。
JOHN: Well, I’m wondering if you feel unconfused.
约翰：好，我在想你是否感到已经解惑了。
BILL: Yes, I feel like, there are answers in language, but it’s so infinitely interesting. There’s still more questions that I have.
[music]
比尔：是的，我觉得语言中确实有一些答案，但它是如此这般有趣，我还是有很多问题。
[音乐]
JOHN: It’s a delicious topic. It’s been good talking about it.l.
约翰：这是一个令人愉快的话题。很高兴和你谈论它。
BILL: Thank you.
比尔：谢谢。
Unconfuse Me is a production of The Gates Notes. Special thanks to my guest, John McWhorter.
《给自己解惑》由盖茨笔记出品。特别感谢我今天的嘉宾，约翰·麦克沃特。
JOHN: [makes sliding sound] I’ve never tried to imitate a trombone. Yeah, it’s not the embrasure you use to blow on, unfortunately.
约翰：[模仿滑音声] 我从来没有试过模仿长号。很遗憾，它不是这么吹的。
BILL: Yes, you just blow into that mouthpiece like a mad man.
比尔：是的，你就像个疯子一样吹那个吹口。
JOHN: Right, you, and you can’t do it in the trombone. [makes sliding sound] A tuba is – [mimics a tuba]. Which is not what you do to make a tuba go. I’ve never tried a trombone.
约翰：对，你不能这样吹长号。[制造滑音声] 大号可以 - [模仿大号]。但你不能像吹大号那样吹。我从来没有尝试过吹长号。
BILL: You should do a cappella sometime.
比尔：你应该试试纯人声表演。
JOHN: [laughs] I don’t think so.
约翰：[笑] 我想我不会的。