TED | 学习新语言的四个理由

中文讲稿

00:00

我现在所说的语言将要成为世界通用语言，无论好坏。让我们面对现实吧，它是互联网的语言，它是金融的语言，它是空中交通管制的语言，它是流行音乐的语言，它是外交的语言——英语无处不在。

现在，说普通话的人越来越多，但学英语的中国人比学英语的人多。上次我听说，现在中国有二十多所大学都用英语教学。英语已经全面起飞。

除此之外，预计在本世纪末几乎所有现存的语言—大约有6000种—将不再被使用。只剩下几百个了。最重要的是，现场演讲的即时翻译不仅有可能发生，而且每年都在进步。

我之所以举这些例子，是因为我可感觉我们到了一个阶段，开始要问这个问题了，那就是：为什么我们的母语不是英语，为什么我们还要学习外语？既然世界上几乎所有人都能用一种语言交流，为什么还要费心去学另一种语言呢?

我认为有很多原因，但我首先想说的是你可能听说过的一个，因为实际上它比你想象的更危险。也就是说，语言能引导你思想的形成，不同语言的词汇和语法给每个人带来不同的迷幻之旅。这是一个非常诱人的想法，但也有点令人担忧。

所以这并不是完全不正确。例如，在法语和西班牙语中，table这个词，由于某种原因，被是阴性的意思。比如，“la table”“la mesa”，你知道就够了。已经表明,如果这些语言是你的母语时，那么当你被问到想象一个桌子突然张口说话,那么大多数情况下，不排除意外，一位说法语或西班牙语人,会说桌子说话的声音是女性的声音。所以如果你是法国人或西班牙人，你会把桌子看成女孩，而说英语的人的看法恰恰相反。

我们都很喜欢这种数据结果，而且很多人会告诉你这意味着，当你说话时，你继承了那种语言的世界观。但你必须小心，因为想象一下，想象一下有人把我们放在显微镜下，我们这些母语是英语的人。那么英语的世界观是什么?

举个例子，让我们以一个说英语的人为例。屏幕上的那位是波诺。他说英语。我猜他有世界观。这就是唐纳德·特朗普。同样他也讲英语。

这是卡戴珊女士，她也说英语。这里有三个说英语的人。这三个人有什么共同的世界观?英语将他们联系在一起，形成了什么样的世界观?这是一个非常令人担忧的概念。因此，逐渐形成的共识是，语言可以塑造思维，但只是非常模糊的一种心理暗示。它并不能让你用不同的态度看待世界。

如果这个想法不成立，那为什么要学习语言呢?如果外语并不会改变你的思维方式，那么我们学习的原因是什么?有一些几个理由。首先，如果你想学习一种文化，如果你想吸收并让自己融入这个文化，那么无论如何，这个语言是否为此文化的载体，或许有人会质疑，如果你想汲取这个文化，你就必须对这个文化使用的语言有一定程度的掌握。没有捷径。

这里有一个有趣的例子。可能这个例子没有那么直观，但是你可以理解。有一部加拿大电影导演丹尼斯·阿坎德(Denys Arcand)的电影—如果有兴趣，你可以上网查阅，英语是(Dennis Ar-cand)。他拍了一部名为《蒙特利尔的耶稣》的电影。很多角色都是充满活力的，有趣的，热情的，有趣的法裔加拿大人，说法语的女性。有一个场景最接近尾声，他们不得不带一个朋友去一家讲英语的医院。在医院里，他们必须说英语。现在，他们说英语，但这不是他们的母语，她们不太愿意讲英语，她们的语速慢了下来，讲的话有口音并且显得很生硬。突然间，这些你已经爱上的角色变成了空空的躯壳，变成了她们自己的影子。

了解一种文化，如果只是透过表面哪一层面纱，我们是无法真正理解的。所以，既然未来有数百种语言将被保留下来，学习外语的一个原因就是，它们是我们能够理解和融入一种文化的一张门票，因为语言是打开文化的钥匙。以上是第一个原因。

第二个原因:有研究表明，如果你会说两种语言，就不太可能患上痴呆症，而且你可能更擅长多任务处理。这些都是目前的研究结论，能够给你一些参考，帮助你决定什么时候让孩子们接触到新的语言。双语教学是有益健康的。

第三，语言本身是非常有趣的。比我们一般认为的要有趣得多。例如，阿拉伯语中“kataba”表示他写了，“yaktubu”表示他写，她写。“Uktub”是祈使句中“写”的意思。这些事情有什么共同点呢?所这几个单词有一个共同之处，就是中间的辅音构成主体，它们是不变的。元音围绕着辅音变化，谁不想在多说这些单词几遍呢?你可以从希伯来语中得到，你可以从埃塞俄比亚的主要语言阿姆哈拉语中得到。这是有趣的。

或者语言有不同的词序。当你学习如何用不同的语序说话就像你去某个国家时在街道的另一边开车，或者当你把薄荷放在眼睛周围时，你会感到刺痛。语言可以做到这一点。

举个例子，《戴帽子的猫回来了》，我相信我们经常会看这本书，比如《白鲸记》其中有一句话是:“你知道我在哪里找到他的吗?”你知道他在哪儿吗?他在浴缸里吃蛋糕，是的，他在!”很好。现在，如果你用普通话学习，那么你必须掌握，“你知道是否你，我哪里他找到?”他正在浴缸里狼吞虎咽地吃蛋糕，一定是狼吞虎咽地嚼着!这感觉很好。想象在未来能够做到这些。

或者，你学过柬埔寨语吗?我也没有，不过如果我学了，那么从我嘴里发出的元音字母要远多于英语中的13个元音，而是整整三十个元音在柬埔寨人的嘴里热烈的翻滚着。就像蜜蜂一样，这就是语言能够带给你的。

更重要的是，我们现在的时代，要自学一门语言要比过去容易得多。过去你要学习外语，就必须去上课，或许会遇到勤勉地老师，睿智的老师，但是那个人只在特定的时间在那里，你需要按时上课，除此之外没有任何机会。你只能去上课，如果你没法听课，你能拿到录音带。我小时候就是这样学的。录音上就那么多信息，磁带也是这样，或许是已经过时的磁带。除此之外你还有用处不大的书，学外语就是这样。

如今，你可以躺在客厅的地板上，啜饮着威士忌，用丰富的学习资料，例如罗塞塔石碑之类的神奇工具自学任何你想学的语言。我强烈推荐Glossika这一软件。你随时可以学习，所以你可以不断练习，熟能生巧，你可以在早晨感受多种语言，我每天早上都会看一点不同语言的《呆伯特》漫画，这可以不断提高你的能力。在20年前，能把你想要学习的任何语言装进口袋，放进手机里，这些都是不可能的。对于那些老于世故的人而言这些如同科幻小说。

所以我强烈建议你学习我现在说的英语之外的语言，因为这是最好的时机。这非常有趣。这不会改变你的思维，但肯定会让你大大开眼界！

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英文讲稿

00:00

The language I'm speaking right now is on its way to becoming the world's universal language, for better or for worse.Let's face it, it's the language of the internet, it's the language of finance, it's the language of air traffic control, of popular music, diplomacy -- English is everywhere.

00:22

Now, Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more people, but more Chinese people are learning English than English speakers are learning Chinese. Last I heard, there are two dozen universities in China right now teaching all in English. English is taking over.

00:41

And in addition to that, it's been predicted that at the end of the century almost all of the languages that exist now -- there are about 6,000 -- will no longer be spoken. There will only be some hundreds left. And on top of that, it's at the point where instant translation of live speech is not only possible, but it gets better every year.

01:05

The reason I'm reciting those things to you is because I can tell that we're getting to the point where a question is going to start being asked, which is: Why should we learn foreign languages -- other than if English happens to be foreign to one? Why bother to learn another one when it's getting to the point where almost everybody in the world will be able to communicate in one?

01:30

I think there are a lot of reasons, but I first want to address the one that you're probably most likely to have heard of,because actually it's more dangerous than you might think. And that is the idea that a language channels your thoughts,that the vocabulary and the grammar of different languages gives everybody a different kind of acid trip, so to speak.That is a marvelously enticing idea, but it's kind of fraught.

02:01

So it's not that it's untrue completely. So for example, in French and Spanish the word for table is, for some reason, marked as feminine. So, "la table," "la mesa," you just have to deal with it. It has been shown that if you are a speaker of one of those languages and you happen to be asked how you would imagine a table talking, then much more often than could possibly be an accident, a French or a Spanish speaker says that the table would talk with a high and feminine voice. So if you're French or Spanish, to you, a table is kind of a girl, as opposed to if you are an English speaker.

02:45

It's hard not to love data like that, and many people will tell you that that means that there's a worldview that you have if you speak one of those languages. But you have to watch out, because imagine if somebody put us under the microscope, the us being those of us who speak English natively. What is the worldview from English?

03:06

So for example, let's take an English speaker. Up on the screen, that is Bono. He speaks English. I presume he has a worldview. Now, that is Donald Trump. In his way, he speaks English as well.

03:27

And here is Ms. Kardashian, and she is an English speaker, too. So here are three speakers of the English language.What worldview do those three people have in common? What worldview is shaped through the English language that unites them? It's a highly fraught concept. And so gradual consensus is becoming that language can shape thought, but it tends to be in rather darling, obscure psychological flutters. It's not a matter of giving you a different pair of glasses on the world.

04:02

Now, if that's the case, then why learn languages? If it isn't going to change the way you think, what would the other reasons be? There are some. One of them is that if you want to imbibe a culture, if you want to drink it in, if you want to become part of it, then whether or not the language channels the culture -- and that seems doubtful -- if you want to imbibe the culture, you have to control to some degree the language that the culture happens to be conducted in.There's no other way.

04:37

There's an interesting illustration of this. I have to go slightly obscure, but really you should seek it out. There's a movie by the Canadian film director Denys Arcand -- read out in English on the page, "Dennis Ar-cand," if you want to look him up. He did a film called "Jesus of Montreal." And many of the characters are vibrant, funny, passionate, interesting French-Canadian, French-speaking women. There's one scene closest to the end, where they have to take a friend to an Anglophone hospital. In the hospital, they have to speak English. Now, they speak English but it's not their native language, they'd rather not speak English. And they speak it more slowly, they have accents, they're not idiomatic.Suddenly these characters that you've fallen in love with become husks of themselves, they're shadows of themselves.

05:27

To go into a culture and to only ever process people through that kind of skrim curtain is to never truly get the culture.And so to the extent that hundreds of languages will be left, one reason to learn them is because they are tickets to being able to participate in the culture of the people who speak them, just by virtue of the fact that it is their code. So that's one reason.

05:51

Second reason: it's been shown that if you speak two languages, dementia is less likely to set in, and that you are probably a better multitasker. And these are factors that set in early, and so that ought to give you some sense of when to give junior or juniorette lessons in another language. Bilingualism is healthy.

06:14

And then, third -- languages are just an awful lot of fun. Much more fun than we're often told. So for example, Arabic: "kataba," he wrote, "yaktubu," he writes, she writes. "Uktub," write, in the imperative. What do those things have in common? All those things have in common the consonants sitting in the middle like pillars. They stay still, and the vowels dance around the consonants. Who wouldn't want to roll that around in their mouths? You can get that from Hebrew, you can get that from Ethiopia's main language, Amharic. That's fun.

06:54

Or languages have different word orders. Learning how to speak with different word order is like driving on the different side of a street if you go to certain country, or the feeling that you get when you put Witch Hazel around your eyes and you feel the tingle. A language can do that to you.

07:13

So for example, "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back," a book that I'm sure we all often return to, like "Moby Dick." One phrase in it is, "Do you know where I found him? Do you know where he was? He was eating cake in the tub, Yes he was!" Fine. Now, if you learn that in Mandarin Chinese, then you have to master, "You can know, I did where him find?He was tub inside gorging cake, No mistake gorging chewing!" That just feels good. Imagine being able to do that for years and years at a time.

07:44

Or, have you ever learned any Cambodian? Me either, but if I did, I would get to roll around in my mouth not some baker's dozen of vowels like English has, but a good 30 different vowels scooching and oozing around in the Cambodian mouth like bees in a hive. That is what a language can get you.

08:10

And more to the point, we live in an era when it's never been easier to teach yourself another language. It used to be that you had to go to a classroom, and there would be some diligent teacher -- some genius teacher in there -- but that person was only in there at certain times and you had to go then, and then was not most times. You had to go to class. If you didn't have that, you had something called a record. I cut my teeth on those. There was only so much data on a record, or a cassette, or even that antique object known as a CD. Other than that you had books that didn't work, that's just the way it was.

08:43

Today you can lay down -- lie on your living room floor, sipping bourbon, and teach yourself any language that you want to with wonderful sets such as Rosetta Stone. I highly recommend the lesser known Glossika as well. You can do it any time, therefore you can do it more and better. You can give yourself your morning pleasures in various languages. I take some "Dilbert" in various languages every single morning; it can increase your skills. Couldn't have done it 20 years agowhen the idea of having any language you wanted in your pocket, coming from your phone, would have sounded like science fiction to very sophisticated people.

09:25

So I highly recommend that you teach yourself languages other than the one that I'm speaking, because there's never been a better time to do it. It's an awful lot of fun. It won't change your mind, but it will most certainly blow your mind.

09:42

Thank you very much.

The End