评论
打印
As we listen today to the arguments about bilingual education, we ought to think ourselves back into the shoes of the Saxon peasant. The new ruling class had built a cultural barrier against him by building their French against his own language. There must have been a great deal of cultural humiliation felt by the English when they revolted under Saxon leaders like Hereward the wake. "The King's English"-if the term had existed then-had become French. And here in America now, 900 years later, we are still the heirs to it.
当我们今天听着有关双语教育问题的争论时，我们应该设身处地替当时的撒克逊农民想一想，新的统治阶级把法语用来对抗撒克逊农民自己的语言，从而在农民周围筑起一道文化障碍。当英国人在像觉醒者赫里沃德这样的撒克逊领袖领导下起来造反时，他们一定深深地感受到了文化上的屈辱。"标准英语"--如果那时候有这个名词的话-已经变成法语。而九百年后我们在美国这儿仍然继承了这种影响。
So the next morning, the conversation over, one looked it up. The phrase came into use some time in the 16th century. "Queen's English" is found in Nash's "Strange Newes of the Intercepting Certaine Letters" in 1593, and in 1602, Dekker wrote of someone, "thou clipst the Kinge's English." Is the phrase in Shakespeare? That would be the confirmation that it was in general use. He uses it once, when Mistress Quickly in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" says of her master coming home in a rage, "here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the King's English," and it rings true.
那晚闲聊过后，第二天一早便有人去查阅了资料。这个名词在16世纪已有人使用过。纳什作于1593年的《截获信函奇闻》中就有过"标准英语"(Queen's English)的提法。1602年德克写到某人时有句话说："你把'标准英语'(King's Engligh)简化了"。莎士比亚作品中是否也出现过这一提法呢?如出现过，那就证明这个词在当时即已通用。他用过一次，在《温莎的风流娘儿们》中，快嘴桂嫂在讲到她家老爷回来后将会有的盛怒情形时说，"……少不了一顿臭骂，骂得鬼哭神愁，伦敦的官话(即"标准英语")不知要给他糟蹋成个什么样子啦。"(朱生豪译)后来的事实果然被她说中了。
One could have expected that it would be about then that the phrase would be coined. After five centuries of growth, of tussling with the French of the Normans and the Angevins and the Plantagenets and at last absorbing it, the conquered in the end conquering the conqueror. English had come royally into its own.
我们有理由认为这个词语就是那个时期产生的。经过前后五百年的发展和与诺曼底人、安茹王朝及金雀花王朝的法语的竞争，英语最终同化了法语。被征服者变成了征服者，英语取得了国语的地位。
