英语说不好，会被老外看不起吗？

Since Jonathan Swift’s 1712 Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue, two centuries of self-appointed correctors and improvers of English usage - such as Robert Lowth, HW Fowler, George Orwell, Kingsley Amis, Simon Heffer, Lynne Truss, and Neville Gwynne - have decried the decadent state of our language and instructed people on how to use it better. But what have they accomplished?

自从1712年Jonathan Swift的“纠正，改进和确定英语口语”提议以来，那些自封的英语用法矫正者们和改进者们，像是Robert Lowth, HW Fowler, George Orwell, Kingsley Amis, Simon Heffer, Lynne Truss, 和Neville Gwynne，两个世纪以来，他们抨击我们语言里的颓废表达，并指导人们怎样更好地使用语言。但是他们都做成了一些什么？

They have helped enforce agreement that there should be a standard version of the language. They have not, however, managed to set the exact details of that standard. They have not even agreed whether long words or short ones are better. And the stream of the language has flowed on despite the damning practices prescribed by grammar doctors in the 1700s and 1800s that often look old-fashioned or bizarre now : no one writes snatcht, checkt, or snapt : no one uses colons as I am doing in this sentence.

他们帮助我们强化了在“语言应该有一个标准的版本”上的认同。然而，他们没有写下更多关于这个标准的额外细节。他们甚至没有在长单词更好还是短单词更好这个问题上给出答案。而且语言的溪流在流动的时候已经忽视了那些语言学者在十七世纪和十八世纪里规定的要求，现在这些要求经常看起来过时或者怪异：没有人会写snatcht, checkt，或者snapt这样的单词：没有人会像我这句话里这样使用冒号。

The language cannot be fixed in place, and its constant evolution does not always follow the tastes of its self-appointed guardians. Some of their proposed improvements have had inglorious careers: a rule - don’t split infinitives, don’t end sentences with prepositions, don’t start sentences with conjunctions - is decided in defiance of established usage. It is promulgated in books, taught in schools, and often used as an indicator of a writer’s level of education, yet it continues to be broken - productively by some (including many of the best writers), sloppily by others, guiltily by many.

语言是不能固定不变的，而且语言内容上的演变也不总是符合那些自称捍卫者的口味。一些他们的改进提案有不光彩的学术目的：一个规则（比如不要分离出不定式，不要用介词结束句子，不要用连词作为句子开头）是明确无视现已成立的用法。它被发布在书上，用在学校教学上，而且常用作一个文章作者受教育水平的参考标准，但是这些规则不断被打破——一些人运用得如鱼得水（包括很多的作家），一些人很粗心地用错，很多人用的时候心有不安.

One important effect the English-improvers have had, however, is on how people feel and talk about English usage. They have taught generations of English speakers that ‘bad English’ is a failure of intellectual and moral fibre. Consider the adjectives they have used to condemn choices of words they disagreed with.

然而，英语推进者们做出的一个重要影响是，人们对英语用法的感受和讨论。他们教导代代英语言者，“糟糕的英文”就是智力和道德品质的失败。想了很多形容词来对他们选出的一些不认同的单词加以谴责。

Jonathan Swift, in 1712, talked of “Corruptions,” “Licentiousness,” and “barren” usages; Robert Lowth, in 1799, applied terms such as “perverted” and “barbarous”; Richard Grant White, in 1872, used phrases such as “utterly abominable”, “foolish and intolerable”, and said they showed “utter want of education and a low grade of intelligence” (and these against words such as donate, jeopardise, and preventative). HW Fowler in 1908 spoke of “barbaric” usages, and the “special ugliness” that comes from a word with a “mongrel origin”, and counselled readers that “The effect of using quotation marks with slang is merely to convert a mental into a moral weakness.” George Orwell in 1946 inveighed against “slovenliness” and “sheer incompetence.”

1712年，Jonathan Swift谈论了“Corruptions," “Licentiousness,” 和“barren” 的用法；1799年，Robert Lowth提出了一些像是 “perverted” 和 “barbarous”的措辞；1872年，Richard Grant White使用“utterly abominable”, “foolish and intolerable”这样的短语，并称这些词展现出了“教育和低智力级别的无条件需求”（而且它们违背了像是donate, jeopardise, 和preventative这些词）。HW Fowler在1908年谈及“barbaric”的用法，这“特殊的丑陋之物”来自于一个“杂种起源”的单词，并且劝告读者们“给俚语使用引号的作用仅仅只是把精神软弱转变成道德软弱。”George Orwell在1946年猛烈抨击“slovenliness” 和“sheer incompetence.”

To be fair, these angry grammarians did not invent discrimination based on speech. Anywhere there are different varieties of a language associated with different regions and different social sets, the way you talk will show what group you belong to, and people will decide on that basis how to treat you. What these umpires of the English language have enabled and abetted is scorn based purely on details of the language itself rather than on extrinsic social differences.

公平地说，这些愤怒的文法学者没有用演说来创造语言歧视。根据不同的区域和不同的社会集合，语言无处不在地被分为不同种类，你说话的方式会表现出你所属的团体，然后人们会基于此来决定怎么对待你。这些英语的裁判员授予权利并煽动的是，藐视能仅仅根据语言细节本身而非外部的社会差异就产生。

It’s not so surprising that people over the centuries have wanted to tidy it all up. But attempts at improvement have not been unequivocally successful, to say the least, and the tone in which they have been presented has done further injury. It’s bad enough that we have to worry about being clear and consistent; thanks to the weaponisation of English grammar and vocabulary, we also have to worry about being seen as degenerate barbarian imbeciles.

几个世纪以来人们产生整理语言的想法并不意外。但是在改善的尝试上没有明确地成功，至少可以说，他们提出了的那些说辞造成了长远的伤害。这真的糟透了，我们不得不担心变得清楚而单一；感谢英文文法和词汇的武器，我们也不得不担心要被看作堕落的野蛮低能人。

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