译者按：词汇是一个国家、一个民族的精神财富。本文将告诉你英语中某些词汇消亡的原因、另一些词存活的理由以及今天的人们在试图保留一些古老词汇方面所做的努力。中文里的词汇和方言其实也面临着同样的问题。语言就像一个生态系统，我们需要主流的、大众的语言，也需要区域性的、个性化的表达。话不多说，我该出门了，皮皮虾我们走~
本文译自《经济学人》3月4日刊

Good riddance to them.

Lexical treasures

词汇的财富

Why words die (and how to stop a few of them from keeling over)
为什么词语死亡（以及如何阻止他们中的一些倒下）

keel over: fall over; collapse
e.g. After a couple of drinks he just keeled over on the floor.

1. BIOLOGISTS reckon that most species that have ever existed are extinct. That is true of words, too. Of the Oxford English Dictionary’s 231,000 entries, at least a fifth are obsolete. They range from “aa”, a stream or waterway (try that in Scrabble), to “zymome”, “that constituent of gluten which is insoluble in alcohol”.
   1）生物学家认为，已经存在的大多数物种已灭绝。这对于词汇来说也是对的。在牛津英语词典的231,000个条目中，至少五分之一是过时的。它们从“aa”，意思是“一条小河或水道”（在英语文字游戏Scrabble里试试），到“zymome”，“不溶于酒精的面筋的成分”。

2. That is surely an undercounting. The English have an unusually rich lexicon, in part because first they were conquered (by the Vikings and Norman French) and then they took their turn conquering large swathes of the Earth, in Asia, North America and Africa. Thousands of new words entered the standard language as a result. Many more entered local dialects, which were rarely written down. The OED only includes words that have been written.
   2）这肯定是少算了。英语人有一个异常丰富的词汇库，部分是因为他们首先被征服（由维京人和诺曼法国人），然后轮到他们征服地球上大部分地方，在亚洲，北美洲和非洲。结果成千上万的新词进入标准语言。更多的词进入当地方言，其中很少词被写下来。 牛津英语词典（OED）仅包括已被写下来的单词。

3. Dedicated researchers have managed to capture some of the unwritten ones. For the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), researchers conducted thousands of interviews—usually with older country folk—who still spoke their regional dialect. They found such treasures as “to pungle up”, meaning for someone to produce money or something else owed, and “the mulligrubs”: indigestion and, by extension, a foul mood.
   3）专门的研究人员设法捕获了一些不成文的词汇。为了编纂“美国地区英语词典”（DARE），研究人员进行了数千次访谈，通常是与年迈的乡下民众 ——他们仍然说他们的区域方言。他们发现了这样的宝藏：“to pungle up”，意思是为某人偿还欠款或其他欠债，和“mulligrubs”：消化不良，或者引申为，一种糟糕的情绪。

4. The smaller and more local a word, the more danger it faces of dying out. DARE’s editors trekked out to find old people in the countryside precisely because younger urban speakers are more likely to adopt metropolitan norms, whether “broadcast standard” in America or “BBC English” in Britain. Other factors gave this homogenising trend a boost: advertising, which tends to standardise the names of things bought and sold in national markets, and the rise of American popular culture and global mass media in the second half of the 20th century.

trek: to walk a long way, especially in the mountains, as an adventure = hike
e.g. For five days he trekked across the mountains of central China.
adopt: to use a particular style of speaking, writing, or behaving, especially one that you do not usually use
e.g. Kim adopts a southern accent when speaking to family back home.

4）一个词越小和越本地化，它面临灭绝的危险就越大。 DARE的编辑跋山涉水在农村寻找老年人，正是因为较年轻的城市说话者更有可能使用大都市的规范，无论是美国的“广播标准”抑或英国的“英国广播公司英语”。其他因素促进了这种同质化趋势：倾向于使国内市场上买卖的商品的名称标准化的广告，以及在20世纪下半叶兴起的美国流行文化和全球大众媒体。

5. A study published in 2012 found some evidence for this homogenisation. It looked through a huge trove of books published since 1800, scanned and made searchable by Google, and found that the death rate of words seems to have speeded up in English (and also in Spanish and Hebrew) since about 1950. One cause is the death of perfect synonyms in an era of mass communications: the words “radio- gram” and “roentgenogram”, both meaning the same thing, were eventually edged out by “x-ray”, the world having no need for three labels for the same thing.

trove : A collection of valuable items discovered or found;
edged out: If someone edges out someone else, they just manage to beat them or get in front of them in a game, race, or contest.
e.g. France edged out the British team by less than a second.

5）2012年发表的一项研究发现了这种同质化的一些证据。它翻遍了从1800年以来出版的大批有价值的书籍，扫描并使其能够被Google搜索，发现英语（以及西班牙语和希伯来语）中词汇的死亡率从大约1950年开始似乎加快了，一个原因是在大众传播时代的完全同义的词语的死亡：“radiogram”和“roentgenogram”这两个词都意味着相同的事情，最终被“X射线”挤掉了，世界不需要同一件事的三个称呼。

6. But DARE’s editors resist the standardisation hypothesis. What people call their grandparents—for example, “gramps and gram” or “mee-maw and papaw”—is more immune to the steamroller of national norms. In fact, these words are especially stubborn precisely because they give people an emotional connection to where they come from.
   6）但DARE的编辑拒绝接受标准化假说。人们用来称祖父母的词——例如“gramps and gram”或​​“me-maw and papaw” ——更不受国家规范的碾压。事实上，这些词语特别的顽强，正是因为它们提供了人们与他们故乡的情感联系。

7. Some words were never a great loss in the first place. The OED has "respair", both as a noun and verb, meaning the return of hope after a period of despair—an obvious etymological kissing-cousin. But the great dictionary’s only citation for this dates back to 1425. For whatever reason, “respair” is a word that English-speakers decided they could happily live without. The OED also includes a host of terms from the “inkhorn” period of English word-coinage, when writers readily made up new words from Greek and Latin roots. These include such forgettables as “suppeditate”, meaning “subdued” or “overcome”. Good riddance to them.

kissing-cousin: a more or less distant relative; familiar enough to be greeted with a kiss
good riddance (to sb): spoken a rude way of saying you are glad someone has left
e.g. She was awful. Good riddance to her, I say!

7）一些词（的消失）本来就不是一个巨大的损失。 OED里有“respair”一词，既作名词又作动词，意味着在一段时间的绝望之后希望的回归——一个明显的词源上的远房亲戚（此处作者指的是绝望despair一词——译者注）。但是这部大词典的唯一引文可追溯到1425年。无论什么原因，“respair”是一个说英语的人觉得即使没有（它）他们也能生活幸福的词。 OED还包括来自英语造词的“学究”时期的许多术语，那时候作家很乐意用希腊语和拉丁语的根根造词。这些词包括诸如“suppeditate”，意思是“制服”或“克服”。谢天谢地它们终于走了。

8. Some words hang on in a sort of life-support state, frozen in a single usage but otherwise forgotten. Who uses the verb “to wend”, except in the fixed expression “to wend one’s way somewhere”? (Bonus fact: the past tense of “wend” replaced the old past tense of “to go”, which is why we say “I went”.) Had Shakespeare not memorialised the name of a small siege explosive in the phrase to be “hoist with his own petard”, meaning a small bomb but also linked to the French word for “fart”, that would probably be gone, too.

hoist with his own petard: to be harmed or embarrassed by the plans you had made to hurt other people - often used humorously

8）有些词处于命悬一线的状态，冻结在一个单一的用法里，否则就会被遗忘。谁除了在固定表达“to wend one's way somehere”中，还使用动词“to wend”？ （额外有价值的事实：“wend”的过去时取代了“to go”的过去时，这就是为什么我们说“I went”。）如果莎士比亚没有在短语“hoist with his own petard”(自食其果)中纪念一个小型攻城炸弹的名字，（petard）意思是一个小炸弹，但也与法国单词“屁”相关，它也很可能已经消失了。

9. Those who get the mulligrubs thinking about great old words dying can pungle up for a subscription to DARE, helping those lexicographers keep adding words to the online edition. But a word needs to be used to live. So DARE has teamed up with Acast, a podcast producer, creating a list of 50 endangered American regionalisms, and trying to get Acast’s podcasters to use them. Who can resist “to be on one’s beanwater”—meaning “in high spirits”? And isn’t “downpour” a bit workaday for heavy rain, when you could be calling it a “frog strangler”? No one wants to see English submit to boring homogenisation; using a few of these lexical rarities might offer some respair.

workaday: ordinary; not very interesting

9）那些对于伟大的老词正在消亡而心情糟糕（本段用的词都是前文中提到的已经消亡的词——译者注）的人可以通过订阅DARE的方式来偿还欠债，帮助那些词典编辑继续在网络版里添加词。但是一个词需要被使用才能存活。因此，DARE与Acast（一个播客制作者）合作，创建了50个濒危美国方言词语的列表，并试图让Acast的播客们使用它们。谁能抵抗使用“to be on one’s beanwater”（意思是“非常兴奋”）？而且当你可以称大雨为“frog strangler”（“青蛙扼杀者”）时，用“downpour”来表示不是有点儿无趣吗？没有人想看到英语屈服于无聊的同质化；使用这些词典里少见的词可能提供一些希望。

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原文出处：经济学人杂志

译者：七呵夫

本译文仅供个人研习、欣赏语言之用，谢绝任何转载及用于任何商业用途。本译文所涉法律后果均由本人承担。本人同意简书平台在接获有关著作权人的通知后，删除文章。