⊙ By Patrick Cox

翻译：T Boy

英语是一盆大杂烩

⊙ By Patrick Cox

翻译：T Boy

English Is a1)Hodgepodge

没错，英语就是一盆大杂烩。尽管它顾名思义源自英国，但英语自其形成发展的早期就已经不够“纯粹”了。与欧洲大陆隔海相望的英国历来是块香饽饽，谁都想来插一脚。于是，古罗马人、维京人、盎格鲁人、撒克逊人、诺曼人……外来者入侵、定居、被后来者赶走，络绎不绝，好不热闹。外来者人离开了，却也留下了永久的印记——语言。各种外来语言在英国这口大锅里不停地蒸、炒、焖、炖、煮，烧成了这盆夹杂着各种风味的大杂烩。

Dialects are fading away in Britain, but they haven’t disappeared yet; far from it. One of the best known and least2)penetrable to outsiders is the “3)Geordie” accent, spoken in Newcastle and other parts of Northeast England. Much of the region where this dialect is spoken is a post-industrial place today. Shipbuilding, coal mining, they’re gone, replaced by call centres, office parks and a4)container ship port. Something else, too.

John Sadler (Tour Guide): On this site we’ve got pigs and sheep and goats, cattle…

...and ducks; all kinds of farmyard animals, including some ancient varieties more popular 1,400 years ago than they are now, like this5)shaggy-haired pig.

It’s called “Bede’s World.” The animals are part of a re-creation of an Anglo-Saxon village. There are6)timber-frame buildings here, part of a farm called “Gyrwe注1”—that’s old English. Next door is a7)monastery that really is old. It was the home of a8)monk known as “the9)Venerable Bede.”

1) hodgepodge ['hɒdʒpɒdʒ] n. 大杂烩，混合物

2) penetrable ['penɪtrəb(ə)l] adj. 可识破的

3) Geordie ['dʒɔːdɪ] n. （英国的）泰恩赛德人；adj. 泰恩赛德人的

4) container [kən'teɪnə(r)] n. 集装箱，货柜

5) shaggy-haired ['ʃægɪheə(r)d] adj. 毛发蓬松散乱的

6) timber ['tɪmbə] n. 木材，木料

7) monastery ['mɒnəstərɪ] n. 修道院

8) monk [mʌŋk] n. 修道士

9) venerable ['venərəb(ə)l] adj. 尊敬的，在天主教中被列为圣徒者的头衔。

注1：位于英格兰东北部的贾罗镇（Jarrow）在盎格鲁–撒克逊语中的叫法。

John: He’s famous as a writer and as a teacher, and, of course, he has this10)keen interest in history and in language.

David Crystal (Linguist): Bede wrote an ecclesiastical history注2of the nation at the time. We’re talking 7th century here, and he’s the first person to actually write down who it was that actually came to the11)British Isles. He talks about the Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes, and discusses the range of languages that were spoken around the country.

These were the languages that arrived in Britain after the Romans had left. The newcomers, these Angles, Saxons and Jutes, they found themselves in a place already12)heaving with languages: Celtic ones, as well as bits and pieces of languages left behind by Roman13)mercenaries, which explains why English, from its very beginnings, was a14)mongrel tongue. Pure English? It never existed.

Now, these waves of15)migrants, they also helped form the dialects that you can still hear in Britain. On average, there’s a different one for every 25 miles you travel.

This is one of the reasons Bede’s writings are so valuable. They’ve helped linguists16)trace the origins of today’s dialects. Of course the migration didn’t stop there. Vikings, Normans, and much later, Irish, Jamaican, Indians and others; they’ve all left their stamp on Britain’s dialects. English, like the people who spoke it then and speak it today, is a17)fabulous hodgepodge.

10) keen [ki:n] adj. 强烈的，深切的

11) British Isles 不列颠群岛

12) heave [hiːv] v. 起伏

13) mercenary ['mзːsɪnərɪ] n. 雇佣兵

14) mongrel ['mʌŋgr(ə)l] adj. 杂交的

15) migrant ['maɪgrənt] n. 移民

16) trace [treɪs] v. 追溯，探索

17) fabulous ['fæbjʊləs] adj. <口>非常好的

注2：即《英格兰人教会史》（Ecclesiastical History of the English People）。

见招拆招

词组：bits and pieces

把两个表达小片、小段、碎块的词放在一起，就有了这个常用词组：bits and pieces。这个词组指一些不同事物的零碎小部分，它既可指整体的一部分，如剩余材料、机器零部件等，又可指一些分散的物件，如家中、办公室里的零星杂物等；既可指实体的物品，也可指抽象的事物，如：

● I always have a lot of bits and pieces in my kitchen drawers.（我家厨房的抽屉里总有些七零八碎的东西。）

● We only have bits and pieces of information.（我们只有一些零碎的消息。）

在英国，各种方言在渐渐减少，但并未消失，而且离消失还差得远呢。其中一种最有名，且外人最难明白的就是泰恩赛德语。你可以在纽卡斯尔和英格兰东北部的其他地区听到这种方言。