英語演講:全世界的通用語言
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 英語語言
Mr. Chairman, adjudicators, ladies and gentlemen,
Good afternoon.
The arrival of the year 1999 has brought with a near perfect opportunity to take a look back at the last one thousand years, assess man’s successes and failures, and look forward with our predictions of the third millennium.
Already this afternoon you’ve heard many assessments and you’ve heard a variety of predictions. A variety so vast, ranging from Lewis Carol’s depiction of celebratory life, to the Irish celebration of death. So vast a variety that it’s difficult to find any common ground amongst the contestants here today. Perhaps the only thing that we all share is that we are indeed discussing millennia, the old and the new and the turn of the millennium, and we’re all discussing it in the same language.
A few hundred years ago to have held an event like this it would have been imperative that we were all fluent in a number of different tongues, for the approach of combating the language barrier was simply to learn many different languages. Of course people back then had an ulterior motive: that was to ensure that different languages held their different societies or positions, or as King Charles V of Spain put it, “ I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.”
Today our approach is somewhat different. Instead of trying to vastly spread our verbal ability across the board, we’ve chosen rather to focus it, concentrating on our ability to master one particular language, the English language. Time magazine recently suggested that by the turn of the millennium, English will be the Lingua Franca for one quarter of the world’s population. Already today sixty percents of the world’s television and radio broadcasts are produced and delivered in English. Seventy percents of the world’s mail addressed in English. And it is the language of choice for almost every bite of computer data sent across the globe.
But why English? There are no clear linguistic reasons for its suggested global dominance, certainly the grammar is complicated, the spelling peculiar and the pronunciation eccentric, to say the very least. One would need only look through the dictionary to find the vast list of amusing paradoxes in the English language—quicksand that works slowly, a boxing ring that is in fact square and a guinea pig that’s really neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. Doesn’t it seem odd that one can make amends but not one amend. Or go through the annals of history but not one annal. The reason, ladies and gentlemen, is simple. English is strange, but no where near as strange as some of our alternatives.
Perhaps I should give you a few idiomatic examples. In English we say “once in a blue moon”. The Italian choose instead “every death of a Pope”. Irish doesn’t like our “drop dead”, replacing it rather with the slightly more obscure “you should lie in the earth.” And if you wanted to tell someone off in Spanish our relatively obvious “go fly a kite” would be better served by the phrase “go fry asparagus”. English’s primary advantage is that of flexibility. On the one hand it has the largest vocabulary of all modern languages, allowing us, as its users, to say exactly what we want in exactly the words we choose to use. On the other, globalization has insured the introduction of a business English, a sort of trimmed down variety of the language we’ve all come to know and love.
It’s interesting to know that the simple list of just ten words, words like “a”, “and”, “have” and “the”, combined to form one quarter of all those ever used in modern communication. Perhaps the real test is: will the global adoption of English as a master language insure the eradication of any misunderstandings that happen today? The answer is not as simple. Russell Hoven once asked: “How many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?” But one can only hope that our only aim and our only chance of insuring that we communicate effectively with each other is to make sure that we do speak one universal language. In a thousand years time Western clocks will hopefully have ticked onto the year 2999 and we can be assured that scientists, academics and futurists will convene, much like we’ve done today to look back at the third millenium and offer their predictions for the successes of the forth.
It’s impossible to imagine what they might say, impossible to imagine what technology they’ll have available or even which planet they’ll hold the meeting on. In fact, quite possibly the only thing we can say for sure is that they’ll be discussing the issues in one common universal language. And that will be the language of the third millennium. And that language without any doubt looks set to be English. Thank you.
全世界的通用語言--英語
主席先生,諸位評判員,女士們,先生們:
下午好。
1999年的到來給我們帶來了一個回顧過去千年的好機會,評價人類的成與敗,展望第三個千年的前景。
今天下午大家已經聽到了許多評價和不同的展望。這些評價和展望是如此之多,從劉易斯-卡羅對幸福生活的描繪,到愛爾蘭人的死亡慶典。這些評價和展望是如此之多,以致今天的比賽上很難發現任何相同之說。也許唯一的相同點就是我們的確在討論千年期,新千年,舊千年以及新舊之交,而且我們都在用同一種語言對論。
幾百年前,舉辦一次像這樣的活動是十分麻煩的,我們得流利地說許多種不同的語言,因為克服語言障礙就是學習多種不同的語言。當然,那時候的人們有一個心照不宣的觀念:不同的語言顯示著社會地位,就如西班牙國王查爾斯五世說的:“我對上帝說西班牙語,對女人說義大利語,對男人說法語,對馬兒說德語。”
今天我們的目的有些不一樣。我們不用將學習精力分散於多種語言的學習上,而是集中在一種特別的語言——英語的掌握上。《時代》雜誌最近說,在世紀之交,英語將會成為世界四分之一人口的通用語言。今天已經有60%的電視和廣播在用英語製作和傳輸。70%的信件是用英語寫的。英語還是全球傳送的電腦資料的幾乎每個位元組所選擇的語言。
但為什麼是英語?對於它的全球化沒有明確的語言學的原因。誠然它的語法是複雜的,拼寫是獨特的,發音是古怪的。就拿最基本的說,只要查一查字典,你就能發現一大串逗人的似非而是的雋語——quicksand反而慢騰騰,boxing ring 原來是方的,guinea pig不是來自幾內亞,也不是豬。一個人可以說 “make amends”,但卻不能說 “one amend”,這不是很奇怪嗎?你可以翻閱一本史冊,但卻不能把“一本史冊”說成 “one annal”。其中的原因,女士們,先生們,是很簡單的,英語夠奇怪的了,但是對於另外一些說法就更奇怪了。
也許我該給大家舉出幾個成語例子。“千載難逢”用英語我們說“once in a blue moon” 。在義大利語中則成了“every death of a Pope”。愛爾蘭人不喜歡把“死亡”說成 “drop dead”,而用 “you should lie in the earth”表達得更委婉。如果你想用西班牙語指責某人“放空頭支票”,那麼最好是用 “go fry asparagus” ,而不是相對較直白地說 “go fly a kite”。英語最基本的優勢在於它的靈活性。一方面,它有著所有現代語言中最豐富的詞彙表,允許我們這些使用者能用最恰當的詞彙恰如其分地表達出我們的所想。另一方面,全球化使得商業英語的介入成為必然,一種我們都將能懂得和喜愛的簡化語言。
有意思的是,簡單的十個詞,如 “a”, “and”, “have” 和“the”,組合起來就是能形成現代交際中所用的詞彙的四分之一。也許真正的問題是,作為一種主要語言的英語的全球化真能消除今天的種種誤解嗎?答案並不是那麼簡單。拉塞爾·霍文曾問道:“即使是在說同一種語言,有多少人說的是相同的語言呢?”但有一點可以確定的是,確定我們相互之間能有效地溝通的唯一的目的和機會,就是我們在說同一種世界語。在一千年內,西方的時鐘將滴答著走向2999年,我們也將肯定,科學家、學者和未來主義者將集合起來,就像我們今天所做的,回顧第三個一千年,並展望第四個一千年的輝煌成就。
他們將說些什麼,將掌握什麼樣的科技,將在哪個星球上開會,是無法想象的。實際上 ,我們唯一敢肯定的事情是,他們將用一種共通的世界語討論事務,這就是第三個一千年的語言。毫無疑問,這種語言即是英語。謝謝大家。
相關文章
-
英語競賽演講:全世界的通用語言
The arrival of the year 1999 has brought with a near perfect opportunity to take a look back at the last one thousand years, assess man’s successes and failures, and look forward with our predictions -
世界最美的語言:普通話比賽演講稿
尊敬的各位領導、各位評委、來賓朋友們:大家好!天高雲淡,秋高氣爽,在這碩果累累的金秋,我們相聚在這裡,參加構建和諧語言生活,弘揚中華優秀文化為主題的普通話演講比賽,我非常榮幸。今天,我演講的題目是:《世界上最美的語言》 -
普通話比賽演講稿:世界上最美的語言
尊敬的各位領導、各位評委、來賓朋友們:大家好!天高雲淡,秋高氣爽,在這碩果累累的金秋,我們相聚在這裡,參加“構建和諧語言生活,弘揚中華優秀文化”為主題的普通話演講比賽,我非常榮幸。今天,我演講的題目是:世界上最美的語言 -
世界最美的語言:普通話比賽演講稿範例
在我們平凡的日常裡,大家都嘗試過寫作文吧,通過作文可以把我們那些零零散散的思想,聚集在一塊。還是對作文一籌莫展嗎?下面是小編為大家收集的校園之春作文,歡迎大家借鑑與參考,希望對大家有所幫助。校園之春作文1我們學校 -
推廣普通話演講稿——世界上最美的語言
普通話是我國各地的通用語言,它也成為了各民族文化交流的紐帶。下面是小編整理的推廣普通話演講稿——世界上最美的語言,請閱讀。推廣普通話演講稿——世界上最美的語言朋友們:大家好!我一向自詡會 -
推廣普通話演講稿——世界上最美的語言大綱
朋友們:大家好!我一向自詡會講一口流利標準的普通話,沒想到不久前,一個老外竟當了一回我的普通話老師。 那天,我們景區來了幾個美國人,我想趁此機會練練英語口語,便自告奮勇給他們當導遊。誰知這幾個老外擺擺手,用不大流利 -
世界名人的英語演講稿
英語演講對發展學生個人能力的促進作用逐漸為人所知,為了學習英語,校園通常會使用一些名人的經典演講稿做示範,下面是本站小編為你整理的幾篇世界名人的英語演講稿,希望能幫到你喲。世界名人的英語演講稿篇一As Americans -
TED英語演講:我的閱讀世界年
安.摩根認為自己擅於閱讀,直到她在自己的書架上發現到不得了的文化盲點;在眾多的英、美作家之列,極少作品出自英語世界以外的作家。所以她訂出一個豪情萬丈的目標-「在一年的歷程閱讀世界各國的一本書」;現在她鼓勵其他 -
世界經典英語演講稿
正如每個人所知,英語在今天十分重要。它已經被應用到世界的各個角落。下面是小編為大家收集關於世界經典英語演講稿,歡迎借鑑參考。經典英文演講稿——The rhythm of lifehow well are we in tune with the -
世界名人英語演講稿
下面是本站小編為大家推薦的世界名人英語演講稿以及翻譯,歡迎大家的閱讀。Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, reverend clergy, fell