On the Origin of Languages論語(yǔ)言的起源

It’s tempting to think that they have clear beginnings. They don’t.

人們往往認(rèn)為語(yǔ)言有明確的誕生時(shí)間，實(shí)則不然。

In a church hewn out of a mountainside， just over a thousand years or so ago， a monk was struggling with a passage in Latin. He did what others like him had done， writing the tricky bits in his own language1 between the lines of text and at the edges. What makes these marginalia more than marginal is that they are considered the first words ever written in Spanish.

大約一千多年前，在一座從半山腰雕鑿出來(lái)的修道院中，有位修士正在冥思苦讀一篇拉丁語(yǔ)文章。同其他修士一樣，他會(huì)用母語(yǔ)標(biāo)注文中費(fèi)解之處，或在行間，或在頁(yè)邊。這些文字存在的意義不只是用作旁注，因?yàn)樗鼈儽徽J(rèn)為是西班牙語(yǔ)最早的文字記載。

The “Emilian glosses” were written at the monastery of Suso， which was founded by St Aemilianus （Millán， in Spanish） in the La Rioja region of Spain. Known as la cuna del castellano， “the cradle of Castilian”， it is a UNESCO world heritage site and a great tourist draw. In 1977 Spain celebrated 1，000 years of the Spanish language there.

上述“埃米利安努斯注釋”誕生于西班牙拉里奧哈自治區(qū)的蘇索修道院。該修道院由圣埃米利安努斯（西班牙語(yǔ)名為“米連”）建立，被稱作“西班牙語(yǔ)的搖籃”，不僅是聯(lián)合國(guó)教科文組織認(rèn)定的世界文化遺產(chǎn)，也是熱門的旅游景點(diǎn)。1977年，西班牙還在這座修道院慶祝了西班牙語(yǔ)誕生1000周年。

Everyone loves a superhero origin story. Spanish is now the world’s third-biggest language， with over 500 m speakers， and it all began with a monk scrawling on his homework. But as with the radioactive bite that put the Spider into Spider-Man， there is more than a little mythmaking going on here.

超級(jí)英雄的起源故事令所有人著迷。如今，西班牙語(yǔ)是世界第三大語(yǔ)言，使用人數(shù)超過(guò)五億，而這一切都要從一位修士為功課做的潦草筆記說(shuō)起。然而，就像蜘蛛釋放的放射性物質(zhì)成就了超級(jí)英雄蜘蛛俠一樣，西班牙語(yǔ)的起源故事也有相當(dāng)一部分是虛構(gòu)的。

First， while “Castilian” and “Spanish” are synonymous for most Spanish-speakers2， philologists argue that what the anonymous monk wrote is closer to the Aragonese3 than to the Castilian variety of Romance4 . In any case， the Suso monk’s scribblings have been pipped by the discovery in nearby Burgos province of writings that may be two centuries older.

首先，盡管大多數(shù)說(shuō)西語(yǔ)的人往往將“西班牙語(yǔ)”和“卡斯蒂利亞語(yǔ)”畫等號(hào)，語(yǔ)言學(xué)家認(rèn)為那位不知名修士寫下的文字更接近羅曼語(yǔ)族的阿拉貢語(yǔ)而非卡斯蒂利亞語(yǔ)。不管怎樣，有人在鄰近拉里奧哈自治區(qū)的布爾戈斯省發(fā)現(xiàn)了一處字跡，可能比蘇索修道院的修士筆記還早兩百年，更接近語(yǔ)言的源頭。

Even those are not the origin of Spanish. The very idea treats languages like a person， with a name， birth date and birthplace. But languages are not like an individual. They are much more like a species， gradually diverging from another over many years. It would be as accurate to describe such jottings as degenerate Latin as it is to call them early Spanish—but that would probably not draw as many tourists.

但即使是這些文字也不是西班牙語(yǔ)的源頭。尋找語(yǔ)言淵源的想法是把語(yǔ)言當(dāng)成了人，認(rèn)為語(yǔ)言有名字、生日和出生地，但語(yǔ)言和人不同，它們更像是一個(gè)物種，從另一物種歷經(jīng)無(wú)數(shù)年分化而成。上述匆匆寫下的注釋既可以說(shuō)是早期西班牙語(yǔ)，又可稱為退化的拉丁語(yǔ)——兩個(gè)說(shuō)法都很準(zhǔn)確，只是后者可能沒法吸引如今日這般眾多的游客。

Most accurate would be to call the monk’s prose an intermediate form： words like sieculos （centuries） in the text are almost perfectly halfway between Latin’s saecula and modern Spanish’s siglos. In its way， the church in which the glosses were written is a mirror of such evolution. It includes arches in Visigothic， Mozarabic （Moorish-influenced） and more recent styles， added as it was expanded. As many visitors to an ancient site find， it can be hard to date buildings in use for centuries. Little of the original remains; all is layers upon layers.

把那位修士的注釋視作一種過(guò)渡形式最為準(zhǔn)確：其中的單詞sieculos（世紀(jì)）幾乎完全介于拉丁文saecula與現(xiàn)代西班牙語(yǔ)siglos的中間。如此看來(lái)，產(chǎn)生這些注釋的修道院就如同西班牙語(yǔ)演進(jìn)的一面鏡子。西班牙語(yǔ)在不斷發(fā)展的過(guò)程中，吸收了西哥特語(yǔ)、莫扎拉布語(yǔ)（受摩爾文化影響的語(yǔ)言）以及更近代的語(yǔ)言風(fēng)格。正如參觀古跡的許多游客所看到的那樣，很難對(duì)已使用數(shù)百年的建筑追根溯源，因?yàn)樽畛醯慕ㄖ缫阉o(wú)幾，展現(xiàn)在游客面前的不過(guò)是厚重歷史的層層堆疊。

The desire to create heroic origins of languages is an urge to impose order on chaos. Students of other European languages are offered Beowulf5 or La Chanson de Roland6 as the earliest exemplars of English or French， which gives the grand story a comprehensible beginning. But literature， by its nature， requires the language to exist before poems and epics could be written. Imagining that a piece of writing represents the beginning of a language is like thinking the first picture of a baby is the beginning of its life.

想為語(yǔ)言書寫英雄史詩(shī)般的起源故事，恰恰反映了人們想于混亂中建立秩序的渴望?！敦悐W武甫》和《羅蘭之歌》分別作為最早的英語(yǔ)和法語(yǔ)范例，被教授給以其他歐洲語(yǔ)言為母語(yǔ)的學(xué)生，由此語(yǔ)言演變這條宏大的故事線有了一個(gè)易于理解的開端。然而，文學(xué)本質(zhì)上依賴語(yǔ)言的存在，語(yǔ)言是詩(shī)歌和史詩(shī)寫就的前提。將一份書面作品描繪成某種語(yǔ)言的開端，無(wú)異于將嬰兒的第一張照片視作其生命的開始。

A better analogy is that the first written records of a language are like the first fossil traces of a distinct species. But even this should not be mistaken for the moment at which the species emerged. After all， the neat nodes on a palaeobiologist’s tree of life are just simplifications of a messy continuum.

將某種語(yǔ)言最早的文字記載類比作一個(gè)特定物種最早的化石痕跡似乎更為恰當(dāng)。不過(guò)即便如此，人們也不應(yīng)誤以為這就是該物種起源的時(shí)間。畢竟，古生物學(xué)家繪出的生命之樹上，那一個(gè)個(gè)排列整齊的節(jié)點(diǎn)只是對(duì)混亂復(fù)雜的歷史進(jìn)程的簡(jiǎn)化。

The urge to put dates on the founding of languages seems universal. Google “Basque Europe’s oldest language” to see how many people think this language （which evolved gradually from some now-unknown ancestor） is somehow older than Spanish， though Basque has no clear birthday， either. By quite a coincidence， the first known words written in Old Basque—just six of them—also appear in the Emilian glosses， though the site makes much less of this fact. Or to take a more modern example， a book on American English called The Forgotten Founding Father aims to give Noah Webster’s modest early-19th-century reforms， such as respelling “center”， the heroic role humans seem destined to seek in the birth of their cultures.

世界各地的人似乎都迫切希望確定語(yǔ)言起源的確切日期。谷歌搜索“歐洲最古老的語(yǔ)言巴斯克語(yǔ)”，看看有多少人認(rèn)為巴斯克語(yǔ)的歷史比西班牙語(yǔ)更悠久，哪怕這種語(yǔ)言出現(xiàn)的具體時(shí)間并不明確（尚不知巴斯克語(yǔ)從何種語(yǔ)言逐漸演化而來(lái)）。巧的是，古老的巴斯克語(yǔ)最早的文字記載只有六個(gè)單詞，它們也出現(xiàn)在了埃米利安努斯注釋中，但蘇索修道院大大淡化了這一事實(shí)。再來(lái)看看近代的一個(gè)例子：諾亞·韋伯斯特在19世紀(jì)早期發(fā)起了適度的美式英語(yǔ)改革，如重塑center的拼法。有關(guān)美式英語(yǔ)的《被遺忘的開國(guó)元?jiǎng)住芬粫庠趯⑵湟暈橛⑿壑e，似乎是人們?cè)趯で笞陨砦幕鹪磿r(shí)的必然操作。

Legal entities like the United States of America really do have a birth date. But languages do not. American English， Castilian Spanish and all other products of slow， disorderly change do not lend themselves to7 neat origin stories. Remembering this is a good thing， reminding people of their membership in a common family. The need for stories of a glorious past is part of human nature， too. But like Beowulf or La Chanson de Roland， these are often best seen as literature， not history.

美利堅(jiān)合眾國(guó)這樣的法律實(shí)體的確有一個(gè)誕生日期，但語(yǔ)言并沒有。美式英語(yǔ)、卡斯蒂利亞西班牙語(yǔ)和其他各種歷經(jīng)緩慢、混亂變化過(guò)程的語(yǔ)言，并沒有清晰的起源故事。記住這個(gè)事實(shí)很有好處，它能提醒人們：大家同屬一個(gè)大家庭。希望歷史故事精彩輝煌也是人之常情，但通常情況下，就像《貝奧武甫》和《羅蘭之歌》一樣，這類故事也最好被視作文學(xué)而非歷史。

（譯者單位：湖南師范大學(xué)）

1當(dāng)時(shí)書面使用古典拉丁語(yǔ)，口頭使用通俗拉丁語(yǔ)，而通俗拉丁語(yǔ)在各地以不同形式的方言存在。為了幫助當(dāng)?shù)厝死斫夂驼b讀經(jīng)典，修士們會(huì)在經(jīng)書中用當(dāng)?shù)胤窖赃M(jìn)行簡(jiǎn)單的注釋。

2西班牙語(yǔ)起源于西班牙卡斯蒂利亞地區(qū)，故又稱卡斯蒂利亞語(yǔ)。 3阿拉貢語(yǔ)是西班牙北部阿拉貢自治區(qū)的一種方言。 4羅曼語(yǔ)族屬于印歐語(yǔ)系，由民間“俗拉丁語(yǔ)”衍生而來(lái)。

5英國(guó)英雄史詩(shī)《貝奧武甫》是英國(guó)文學(xué)中第一部重要作品。這部作品用古英語(yǔ)寫成，是繼希臘、羅馬史詩(shī)之后歐洲最早的一部用本民族語(yǔ)言寫成的史詩(shī)。 6法國(guó)中世紀(jì)英雄史詩(shī)武功歌的代表作品。

7 lend oneself to sth適合于。