English Purism 中译

English Purism

The English poet William Barnes is no household name. But that is almost a shame, because he represented a strand that we don’t otherwise see much of: English Purism. Imaging what would have happened if he had been more influential makes for an interesting thought experiment.

Any language in contact with other languages borrows words. And English has always been, of course, a master borrower. A west Germanic language brought over with the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, it first took a lot of Norse from invading Vikings, then even more French from the Norman conquerors of 1066. When the English later themselves became conquerors, they promiscuously took on words from languages all around the world. And as science and medicine advanced, English writers took to coining words from Greek and Latin roots.

Barnes, who wrote poems in his Dorset dialect, didn’t like this. He thought the English showed no self-respect when they reached to classical languages to make learned words. He deplored the loss of old Anglo-Saxon words like inwit, earthtillage and bodeword, replaced by conscience, agriculture and commandment. And where terms had to be coined for new things, Barnes wanted them to be created from Anglo-Saxon roots: he recommended sun-print as a calque for the Greek-derived photograph (“light-writing”).

Johnson knows of none of Barnes’s coinages that made their way into the lexicon. But what if they exited? What would English look like? A speaker of German or the other German languages doesn’t have to speculate. An English-native speaker of German, Dutch, Danish or Icelandic is confronted daily by words that are incredibly concrete and earthy. If translated into English, depending on the subject, they are sometimes even mildly shocking,

Begin with the German words that seem amusingly over-literal to an Anglophone. The vacuum cleaner is a Staubsauger (“dust-sucker”), the television a Fernseher (a “far-seer”) and gloves are Handschuhe (“hand-shoes”) – all the typical subject of giggles for a first-year student of the language. But as the learner gets more advanced, things get really striking.

英国纯正学派

英国诗人威廉·巴恩斯不是个家喻户晓的名字。但这几近令人汗颜，因为他是英语纯正学派的代言人。如果没有他，我们对这个学派会知之更少。想象一下如果他的影响力一直很大，情况会怎样？这一想象有助于展开有趣的思维实验。

任何与其他语言接触的语言都会借用词语。当然，英语一直就是词语借用大师。作为从盎格鲁人、撒克逊人和朱特人带过来的西日耳曼语，英语首先从入侵的维京人那里接纳了很多挪威词语，而从1066年的诺曼征服者那里接纳的法语词汇就更多了。英国人后来自己也成了征服者，他们便不分青红皂白地吸入世界各地语言。随着科学和医学的进步，英语作家逐渐喜欢用希腊和拉丁词根词造词。

坚持用多赛特方言写诗的巴恩斯不喜欢这种造词法。他认为英国人一旦借助古希腊和拉丁词语来创造书面词语会显得毫无自尊。他痛感inwit、earthtillage、bodeword之类的古盎格鲁—撒克逊词语被conscience、agriculture、commandment等词所取代。巴恩斯希望，在必须创造新术语时，能够用盎格鲁—撒克逊词根造词：他建议“照片”一词用sun-print代替希腊词根衍生的photograph（即“光—写”）。

巴恩斯的一些自造词是否汇入了英语特殊词汇中，约翰逊对此一无所知。假设这些词果真存在又会怎样呢？英语看起来会变成什么样？讲德语或其他德语语系的人不必推测。但是对于讲德语、荷兰语、丹麦语或冰岛语的英语母语者来说，他们所面对的日常词语却将直白地令人难以置信。如果翻译成英文，根据不同的主题，有时听起来甚至会有些令人震惊。

首先看一些于以英语为母语的人觉得字面化得好笑的德语单词。真空吸尘器在德语中叫Staubsauger （dust-sucker尘—吸管），电视叫做Fernseher （far-seer远—看器）及手套叫做Handschuhe（Hand-shoes手—鞋）——对于学习德语的一年级新生，所有的这些典型实例无疑会令人忍俊不禁。而随着知识的加深，这一特点会变得更加显著。

（许建平 译）