‘Don’t Lose Your Accent!’
别介意你的英语有口音
The immigration debate often centers on who should be welcomed into our country. Some even argue that multiculturalism dilutes our national character — that the very the essence of the country is somehow vanishing. But far from undermining the American experiment, immigrants enhance our culture by introducing new ideas, cuisines and art. They also enrich the English language.
移民辩论通常关注我们应该欢迎什么样的人进入我们的国家。有些人甚至争辩说，多元文化主义淡化了我们的民族性格——这个国家的精粹正在以某种方式消失。但移民绝非破坏美国的实验，移民通过引入新的思想、美食和艺术来增强我们的文化。移民还使英语变得更加丰富。
As newcomers master a new language, they lend words from their native lexicon to the rest of us. For example, the English language, or maybe we should just call it American, has borrowed from others to name the foods so many of us love. Italians gave us pizza and spaghetti, and we borrowed taco, burrito and churros from the Spanish language.
当新移民掌握一门新语言时，他们会将母语词典中的单词借给我们其他人。例如，英语，或者我们应该就叫它美语，从其他语言中借用了许多词来命名我们许多人喜爱的食物。意大利人给了我们pizza（披萨）和spaghetti（意大利面），我们从西班牙语中借来了taco（塔可饼）、burrito（卷饼）和churros（油条）。
Chinese immigrants introduced us to chopsticks, while the ketchup we drown our hot dogs, burgers and fries in is believed to have derived from a Chinese word. Irish immigrants introduced us to hooligan, phony and galore — and from Yiddish we got the words chutzpah and schlep. The terms diva, tornado and tycoon came from other languages, too.
中国移民带来了chopsticks（筷子），而我们用来涂满热狗、汉堡和薯条的ketchup（番茄酱）据信源自一个中文词。爱尔兰移民带来了hooligan（流氓）、phony（假）和galore（大流氓）——我们从意第绪语中得到了chutzpah（放肆）和schlep（负重前行）这两个词。diva（名伶）、tornado（龙卷风）和tycoon（台风）等词也来自其他语言。
Scores of words are invented every day, while old words are pushed aside to make room for new ones. Some loans have a short life span; others become an essential part of our day-to-day. Their staying power can depend on the process of assimilation — the time it takes a group to enter the middle class and the connection that group retains to its origins.
每天都会出现几十个新单词，而旧单词会被推到一边，为新单词腾出空间。有些外来词的寿命很短；有些则成了我们日常生活的重要组成部分。它们能存在多久可能取决于同化过程——一个群体进入中产阶级所需的时间以及该群体与其根源的联系。
Of course, American English hasn’t just borrowed heavily from those coming from distant shores. Words like kayak, chipmunk, tobacco and hurricane are derived from some of the roughly 300 Native American languages spoken by those who were here long before most of our ancestors arrived. More than half of America’s states owe their names to Native American origin. I think of the poet Natalie Diaz, who wrote:
当然，美语不仅仅大量借鉴了来自远方的英语。kayak（皮划艇）、chipmunk（金花鼠）、tobacco（烟草）和hurricane（飓风）等词源自大约300种美洲原住民语言中的一部分，这些语言在我们大多数祖先到来之前很久就存在了。美国一半以上的州的名字源于美洲原住民。我想起了诗人娜塔莉·迪亚兹的诗句：
Manhattan is a Lenape word.
莱纳佩人给了我们曼哈顿一词。
Even a watch must be wound.
就算手表也必须上弦。
How can a century or a heart turn
如果都没有人问，
if nobody asks, Where have all
原住民去了哪里？
the natives gone?
一个世纪如何更始，一颗心如何挽留。
Our nation’s founders would likely understand little of what we say today, given the amount of fresh acquisitions we’re always making. John Adams, our second president, was convinced that American English required a federally funded version of L’Académie Française in order to safeguard the people’s tongue from “going to the dogs.” He proposed, in 1780, a strategy to build one. But Thomas Jefferson, who sought to protect Native American languages and is credited with introducing words like belittle and pedicure into our lexicon, disagreed. He believed that a language has its own survival mechanisms.
鉴于我们总是吸纳大量的新东西，开国元勋对我们今天的语言可能几乎一无所知。我们的第二任总统约翰·亚当斯确信，美国英语需要一个联邦政府资助的美国版法语学院，以防人们使用的语言“走向没落”。1780年，他提出了建造该学院的策略。但托马斯·杰斐逊不同意这种说法，他试图保护美洲原住民语言，人们还将belittle（贬低）和pedicure（修脚）等词汇的引入归功于他。他认为，一种语言有自己的生存机制。
Adams, fortunately, was on the losing side. American English is of, for and by the people, and its well-being depends on us. We do with it as we wish — or as we feel, since language is so often shaped by gut emotions. There are authorities within each language, of course, chief among them parents, educators, language scholars and dictionaries.
幸运的是，亚当斯是失败的一方。美语是民有、民享、民治的，它的发展取决于我们。我们按照自己的意愿或感觉来使用它，因为语言往往是由内心情感塑造的。当然，每种语言都有权威，主要是父母、教育家、语言学者和字典。
When our foundational dictionary, Noah Webster’s “An American Dictionary of the English Language,” published in 1828 it only included 70,000 words. To be accepted into it, words must suit a specific criterion. Over time, it became Merriam-Webster, a commercial lexicon that now contains over 15 million examples of words. It is descriptive rather than prescriptive, as dictionaries in other languages might be. That is, Merriam-Webster doesn’t tell us how to speak. It’s the other way around: Native speakers and immigrants alike dictate what the dictionary should contain.
我们的奠基词典——诺亚·韦伯斯特的《美国英语词典》——于1828年出版时只收录7万个单词。为了能被接受，词语必须符合特定的标准。随着时间的推移，它变成了《韦氏词典》，一部包含超过1500万条单词示例的商务词库。它是描述性的，而不是规定性的，就像其他语言的字典一样。也就是说，《韦氏词典》并没有告诉我们如何说话。事实正好相反：母语人士和移民都能决定字典应该包含哪些内容。
A Mexican immigrant myself, I am constantly amazed at how, in its 450-year history, American English has become stunningly elastic. It has recalibrated itself by learning from the past. It is essential that it continues to do so. Don’t give up your accent! Don’t lose your immigrant verbal heritage! As an immigrant myself, I find joy in hearing accents, particularly those by people who have mastered American English yet retain a beautiful trace of their native tongue.
作为一名墨西哥移民，我经常惊讶于过去450年的历史中，美语如何变得具有惊人的可塑性。它通过学习过去来重新调整自己。它必须继续这样做。不要放弃你的口音！不要失去你的移民语言遗产！作为一名移民，我很喜欢听口音，尤其是那些掌握了美语但还保留着母语优美痕迹的人。
It’s important to note that speaking English hasn’t always been a choice for some. Immigrants are sometimes made to feel that they have to suppress their language in order to belong. Throughout history, children have been physically disciplined or discriminated against for speaking their native language.
需要注意的是，对一些人来说，说英语并不是一种自愿选择。移民有时会觉得，为了归属感，他们必须压制自己的语言。纵观历史，曾经有儿童因为说母语而受到体罚或歧视的情况。
I recently stumbled on an episode of NPR’s “Where We Come From,” in which Emily Kwong, a third-generation Chinese American, discusses her quest to become comfortable with her Chinese self. Her father spoke Mandarin until he entered kindergarten, at which point he was forced to speak English. He explained how his need to integrate fueled his desire to become fluent, and he forgot how to speak his native tongue. In the process his family lost an important part of their cultural heritage.
我最近偶然看到NPR的一集《我们来自哪里》(Where We Come From)，第三代华裔美国人艾米丽·邝（音）在节目中讨论了她如何适应自己的华裔身份。她的父亲在上幼儿园之前一直说普通话，后来被迫说英语。他解释说，融入社会的需求激发了他想说流利英语的愿望，他忘记了如何说自己的母语。在这个过程中，他的家庭失去了他们文化遗产的重要部分。
Emily Dickinson thought that words start a new, discreet cycle of life the moment they are uttered. While American English can be perceived as a threat to the survival of other cultures around the world, within our country it is a force that helps to bind us together, even as ideological polarization pulls the other way. Immigrants help us reinvigorate our multitudinous language.
艾米莉·狄金森认为，话语在被说出的那一刻就有了新的、不引人注意的生命。虽然美语可以被视为对世界各地其它文化生存的威胁，但在我们的国家，它是一种有助于将我们团结在一起的力量，即使是在意识形态两极化的情况下。移民可以帮助我们重振我们多姿多彩的语言。
来源：好英语网
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