TED英語演講：你以為語言只是交流工具

　　So, I'll be speaking to you using language... because I can. This is one these magical abilities that we humans have. We can transmit really complicated thoughts to one another. So what I'm doing right now is, I'm making sounds with my mouth as I'm exhaling.

　　我們通過語言交流，因為我可以說話。這是我們?nèi)祟悡碛械囊环N神奇能力，我們可以互相傳遞非常復雜的思想。我現(xiàn)在正在做的是，一邊呼氣，一邊用我的嘴巴發(fā)出聲音。

　　I'm making tones and hisses and puffs, and those are creating air vibrations in the air. Those air vibrations are traveling to you, they're hitting your eardrums, and then your brain takes those vibrations fr-om your eardrums and transforms them into thoughts. I hope.

　　我在發(fā)出各種語調(diào)、嘶嘶聲、呼氣，而這些引起周邊的空氣振動。這些空氣振動傳到你那里，它們到達你的耳鼓，然后你的大腦會將你耳鼓接收到的振動轉(zhuǎn)化成思想。至少我希望是這樣的。

　　I hope that's happening. So because of this ability, we humans are able to transmit our ideas across vast reaches of space and time. We're able to transmit knowledge across minds. I can put a bizarre new idea in your mind right now. I could say, "Imagine a jellyfish waltzing in a library while thinking about quantum mechanics."

　　我希望如此。正是因為這種能力，人類能夠?qū)⑽覀兊乃枷肟缭綍r間和空間，傳遞下去我們能夠?qū)⒅�識互相傳遞。比如，我現(xiàn)在就可以給你傳遞一個奇怪的想法。我可以說，“想象一只水母在一個圖書館里一邊跳著華爾茲，一邊思考著量子力學�！�

　　Now, if everything has gone relatively well in your life so far, you probably haven't had that thought before.

　　當然如果大家的生活到目前為止都還比較順利的話，你之前應該沒有這樣想過。

　　But now I've just made you think it, through language.

　　而我現(xiàn)在讓你們有了這個想法，正是通過語言做到的。

　　Now of course, there isn't just one language in the world, there are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world. And all the languages differ fr-om one another in all kinds of ways. Some languages have different sounds, they have different vocabularies, and they also have different structures -- very importantly, different structures.

　　當然，世界上不是只有一種語言，全球有大約7000種語言。這些語言有著各式各樣的區(qū)別。有些語言有不同的發(fā)音，不同的詞匯，還有不同的結(jié)構(gòu)——不同的結(jié)構(gòu)很重要。

　　That begs the question: Does the language we speak shape the way we think? Now, this is an ancient question. People have been speculating about this question forever. Charlemagne, Holy Roman emperor, said, "To have a second language is to have a second soul" -- strong statement that language crafts reality. But on the other hand, Shakespeare has Juliet say, "What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Well, that suggests that maybe language doesn't craft reality.

　　于是，我們會問：我們說的語言是否塑造了我們的思維方式?這其實是個很古老的問題。人們一直以來都在思考這個問題。神圣羅馬帝國的查理曼大帝曾說，“學會了第二種語言就擁有了第二個靈魂”——這是相信語言會創(chuàng)造現(xiàn)實。但另一方面，莎士比亞筆下的朱麗葉又說，“名字本來沒有意義，一朵玫瑰花換個名字也照樣芬芳。”這就指也許語言不能創(chuàng)造現(xiàn)實。

　　These arguments have gone back and forth for thousands of years. But until recently, there hasn't been any data to help us decide either way. Recently, in my lab and other labs around the world, we've started doing research, and now we have actual scientific data to weigh in on this question.

　　這些爭論已經(jīng)持續(xù)了幾千年。但一直以來，都沒有任何數(shù)據(jù)能夠幫助我們確定孰是孰非。最近，在我的實驗室和全球其它一些實驗室，我們開始做研究，現(xiàn)在我們有真實的科學數(shù)據(jù)，可以幫助回答這個問題。

　　So let me tell you about some of my favorite examples. I'll start with an example fr-om an Aboriginal community in Australia that I had the chance to work with. These are the Kuuk Thaayorre people. They live in Pormpuraaw at the very west edge of Cape York. What's coolabout Kuuk Thaayorre is, in Kuuk Thaayorre, they don't use words like"left" and "right," and instead, everything is in cardinal directions: north, south, east and west.

　　讓我給大家舉一些我喜歡的例子。先從澳大利亞的一個土著社群開始，我有機會跟他們接觸過。他們是KuukThaayorre人，他們住在約克角城最西邊的Pormpuraaw。KuukThaayorre人有意思的一點是，在這個土著文化里面，他們沒有“左”和“右”這樣的詞，所有的東西都是通過基本方向來表達的：東南西北。

　　And when I say everything, I really mean everything. You would say something like, "Oh, there's an ant on your southwest leg." Or, "Move your cup to the north-northeast a little bit." In fact, the way that you say "hello" in Kuuk Thaayorre is you say, "Which way are you going?" And the answer should be,"North-northeast in the far distance. How about you?"

　　是的，我說的是“所有的東西”。比如，你可以說：“哦，你西南方的那條腿上有一只螞蟻”，或者“把你的杯子往東北偏北邊移一下�！笔聦嵣�，他們打招呼的方式也是：“你往哪里去?”而回答會是：“遠處東北偏北處，你呢?”

　　So imagine as you're walking around your day, every person you greet, you have to report your heading direction.

　　想象一下，你走在路上，你遇見每一個人都要報告一下你朝什么方向前進。

　　But that would actually get you oriented pretty fast, right? Because you literally couldn't get past "hello," if you didn't know which way you were going. In fact, people who speak languages like this stay oriented really well. They stay oriented better than we used to think humans could.

　　但這會讓你很快獲得方向感，不是嗎?因為如果你不知道你前行的方向的話，你連打招呼都沒法進行。事實上，說這類語言的人他們的方向感非常好，遠比我們以為人類可以做到的要好。

　　We used to think that humans were worse than other creatures because of some biological excuse: "Oh, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales." No; if your language and your culture trains you to do it, actually, you can do it. There are humans around the world who stay oriented really well.

　　我們曾經(jīng)以為人類的方向感要比其他生物差，而我們也找了生物原因方面的借口：“哦，我們沒有可以感測磁場的鳥嘴或魚鱗”。事實并非如此。如果你的語言和文化給了你這方面的訓練，你是可以做到的。世界上有些人的方向感就非常好。

　　And just to get us in agreement about how different this is fr-om the way we do it, I want you all to close your eyes fora second and point southeast.

　　為了確保我們大家都同意在這點上我們的思維方式有多大差異，請大家閉上眼睛，然后指向東南方。

　　Keep your eyes closed. Point. OK, so you can open your eyes. I see you guys pointing there, there, there, there, there... I don't know which way it is myself --You have not been a lot of help.

　　先不要睜開眼睛，請指向東南方。現(xiàn)在，你們可以睜開眼睛了。我看到你們有指向那兒、那兒、那兒、那兒的……我自己也不知道哪邊是東南方，你們也沒能幫到我。

　　So let's just say the accuracy in this room was not very high. This is a big difference in cognitive ability across languages, right? Where one group -- very distinguished group like you guys --doesn't know which way is which, but in another group, I could ask a five-year-old and they would know.

　　暫且就說，在座的大家在這個問題上的準確度不是很高。這就是不同語言之間的認知能力的巨大差異，一群像在座的各位一樣非常優(yōu)秀的人分不清哪里是哪里，而如果換做另一群人，一個5歲的孩子也知道答案。

　　There are also really big differences in how people think about time. So here I have pictures of my grandfather at different ages. And if I ask an English speaker to organize time, they might lay it out this way, fr-om left to right. This has to do with writing direction. If you were a speaker of Hebrew or Arabic, you might do it going in the opposite direction, fr-om right to left.

　　人們思考時間的方式也非常不同。這里是幾張我的祖父在不同年齡段的照片。如果我讓一個英語使用者將它們按時間進行排列，他們可以會這樣排，從左到右。這跟寫字的方向有關。如果你說的是希伯來語或阿拉伯語，你則可能會以相反的方向排列，從右到左。

　　But how would the Kuuk Thaayorre, this Aboriginal group I just told you about, do it? They don't use words like"left" and "right." Let me give you hint. When we sat people facing south, they organized time fr-om left to right. When we sat them facing north, they organized time fr-om right to left. When we sat them facing east, time came towards the body.

　　那KuukThaayorre人——我剛才提到的土著民會怎么排呢?他們沒有“左”和“右”的概念。我來提示一下大家。當我們讓他們面朝南方的時候，他們將時間順序從左向右排;當面朝北方的時候，他們將時間順序從右到左排;當他們面朝東方的時候，他們將時間從遠到近排。

　　What's the pattern? East to west, right? So for them, time doesn't actually get locked on the body at all, it gets locked on the landscape. So for me, if I'm facing this way, then time goes this way, and if I'm facing this way, then time goes this way. I'm facing this way, time goes this way -- very egocentric of me to have the direction of time chase me around every time I turn my body. For the Kuuk Thaayorre, time is locked on the landscape. It's a dramatically different way of thinking about time.

　　發(fā)現(xiàn)規(guī)律了么?從東到西，對嗎?因此對他們來說，時間跟身體的方向無關，而是跟地理有關。對我來說，如果我面向這邊，時間就是這樣走的;如果我面向這邊，時間就是這樣走的;如果我面向這邊，時間就是這樣走的——完全以我為中心，我每次一轉(zhuǎn)身，時間也要跟著我改變方向。對KuukThaayorre人來說，時間是跟地理有關的。這是一種思考時間的截然不同的方式。

　　Here's another really smart human trick. Suppose I ask you how many penguins are there. Well, I bet I know how you'd solve that problem if you solved it. You went, "One, two, three, four,five, six, seven, eight." You counted them. You named each one with a number, and the last number you said was the number of penguins. This is a little trick that you're taught to use as kids. You learn the number list and you learn how to apply it. A little linguistic trick.

　　再給大家說一個人類的聰明之處。假設我問你，這里有多少只企鵝，我敢說我知道你會怎么解決這個問題。你會“一二三四五六七八”地數(shù)過去。你讓每一只企鵝對應一個數(shù)字，你念出的最后一個數(shù)字就是企鵝的總數(shù)。這是你小時候就學會了的技巧，你學會了數(shù)數(shù)，你也學會了怎么用它。這是一種語言學的技巧。

　　Well, some languages don't do this, because some languages don't have exact number words. They're languages that don't have a word like "seven" or a word like"eight." In fact, people who speak these languages don't count, and they have trouble keeping track of exact quantities. So, for example, if I ask you to match this number of penguins to the same number of ducks, you would be able to do that by counting. But folks who don't have that linguistic trick can't do that.

　　但有些語言不是這樣的，因為有些語言沒有精確的數(shù)字詞匯。有一些語言是沒有比如“七”或者“八”之類的數(shù)字的。事實上，對那些使用沒有數(shù)字的語言的人來說，他們不會數(shù)數(shù)，計算精確的數(shù)量對他們來說是很難的。比如，如果我讓你把這么多的企鵝跟同一數(shù)量的鴨子匹配起來，你數(shù)一下就可以做到了。但對那些沒有這一語言特征的人來說卻無法做到。

　　Languages also differ in how they divide up the color spectrum -- the visual world. Some languages have lots of words for colors, some have only a couple words, "light" and "dark." And languages differ in where they put boundaries between colors. So, for example, in English, there's a word for blue that covers all of the colors that you can see on the screen, but in Russian, there isn't a single word.

　　語言的差異還體現(xiàn)在我們?nèi)绾畏直骖伾�，那些視覺的東西。有些語言有很多的顏色詞匯，有的則很少，就只有“淺色”和“深色”。這些語言差異體現(xiàn)在不同顏色之間的界限在哪里。比如，在英語里面，我們有藍色這個詞，它包含了你在屏幕上看到的所有顏色。但是在俄語里面，卻沒有這樣的一個詞。

　　In stead, Russian speakers have to differentiate between light blue, "goluboy,"and dark blue, "siniy." So Russians have this lifetime of experience of, in language, distinguishing these two colors. When we test people's ability to perceptually discriminate these colors, what we find is that Russian speakers are faster across this linguistic boundary. They're faster to be able to tell the difference between a light and dark blue.

　　相反，俄語使用者要把淺藍色“goluboy”和深藍色“siniy”區(qū)別開來。所以俄語使用者一生都會在語言上區(qū)別這兩種顏色。當我們測試人們辨別這些顏色的能力的時候，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)俄語使用者能夠更快地進行這種概念切換，他們能夠更快地分辨淺藍色和深藍色。

　　And when you look at people's brains as they're looking at colors -- say you have colors shifting slowly fr-om light to dark blue -- the brains of people who use different words for light and dark blue will give a surprised reaction as the colors shift fr-om light to dark, as if, "Ooh, something has categorically changed," whereas the brains of English speakers, for example, that don't make this categorical distinction, don't give that surprise, because nothing is categorically changing.

　　當你觀察人們在看這些顏色的大腦時，假設你給他們看從淺藍色到深藍色的漸變，那些用不同詞形容“淺藍”和“深藍”的人的大腦會在顏色從淺到深的轉(zhuǎn)換時表現(xiàn)出驚訝，仿佛“哦，某些事情發(fā)生了根本的變化”，而不做這種分辨的英語使用者的大腦則不會表現(xiàn)出驚訝，因為沒發(fā)生什么根本的變化。

　　Languages have all kinds of structural quirks. This is one of my favorites. Lots of languages have grammatical gender; every noun gets assigned a gender, often masculine or feminine. And these genders differ across languages. So, for example, the sun is feminine in German but masculine in Spanish, and the moon, the reverse. Could this actually have any consequence for how people think?

　　語言還有各種各樣的結(jié)構(gòu)特征。這個是我最喜歡的。很多語言都有語法上的詞性，每個名詞都有一個指定的詞性，通常是陽性或陰性。這些詞性在不同語言中有所不同。比如，太陽在德語中是陰性的，在西班牙語中則是陽性的，月亮則相反。那這會不會影響人們的思考方式呢?

　　Do German speakers think of the sun as some how more female-like, and the moon somehow more male-like? Actually, it turns out that's the case. So if you ask German and Spanish speakers to, say, describe a bridge, like the one here -- "bridge" happens to be grammatically feminine in German, grammatically masculine in Spanish -- German speakers are more likely to say bridges are "beautiful," "elegant"and stereotypically feminine words. Whereas Spanish speakers will be more likely to say they're "strong" or "long," these masculine words.

　　德語使用者會覺得太陽更女性化，而月亮更男性化嗎?事實的確如此。如果你讓德語使用者和西班牙語使用者描述一座橋，就像這一座，“橋”在德語中是陰性的，在西班牙語中則是陽性的。德語使用者更傾向于說橋“美麗”或“優(yōu)雅”以及其他很女性化的詞，而西班牙語使用者則傾向于說橋“強壯”或“綿長”，那些更男性化的詞。

　　Languages also differ in how they describe events, right? You take an event like this, an accident. In English, it's fine to say, "He broke the vase." In a language like Spanish, you might be more likely to say, "The vase broke," or, "The vase broke itself." If it's an accident, you wouldn't say that someone did it.

　　語言的差異還體現(xiàn)在它們對事件的描述上。以這件事為例，一個意外。在英語里面，你可以說“他打碎了花瓶”。在西班牙語里面，你更可能會說“花瓶碎了”，或者“花瓶自己碎了”。如果這是一個意外，你不會說是誰打碎的。

　　In English, quite weirdly, we can even say things like, "I broke my arm." Now, in lots of languages, you couldn't use that construction unless you are a lunatic and you went out looking to break your arm -- (Laughter) and you succeeded. If it was an accident, you would use a different construction.

　　在英語里面，很奇怪的是，我們甚至會說，”我弄傷了我的手臂“。在很多語言里面，你完全不會這樣說，除非你是一個瘋子，你試圖弄傷自己的手臂，而且還成功了。如果它是一場意外，你會使用不一樣的語言結(jié)構(gòu)。

　　Now, this has consequences. So, people who speak different languages will pay attention to different things, depending on what their language usually requires them to do. So we show the same accident to English speakers and Spanish speakers, English speakers will remember who did it, because English requires you to say, "He did it; he broke the vase." Whereas Spanish speakers might be less likely to remember who did it if it's an accident, but they're more likely to remember that it was an accident. They're more likely to remember the intention.

　　這會造成不同的結(jié)果。使用不同語言的人關注的點會不一樣，這取決于他們的語言是怎么要求的。如果我們讓英語使用者和西班牙語使用者看同樣的意外事件，英語使用者會記得這件事是誰干的，因為英語需要你說“是他做的，他打碎了花瓶”;而西班牙語使用者則不太可能會記得是誰干的——如果這是一個意外事件的話，他們更可能會記得這是一個意外，他們更可能記得意圖。

　　So, two people watch the same event, witness the same crime, but end up remembering different things about that event. This has implications, of course, for eyewitness testimony. It also has implications for blame and punishment. So if you take English speakers and I just show you someone breaking a vase, and I say, "He broke the vase," as opposed to "The vase broke," even though you can witness it yourself, you can watch the video, you can watch the crime against the vase, you will punish someone more, you will blame someone more if I just said, "He broke it," as opposed to, "It broke." The language guides our reasoning about events.

　　所以兩個人看同樣的事件，目睹同樣的罪行，但記得的卻不一定一樣。在目擊證詞方面，這是值得深思的，這對責備和懲罰也有影響。如果我給英語使用者看一個人不小心打碎花瓶，然后我說“他打碎了花瓶”，而不是說“花瓶碎了”，即使你自己親眼看到了事件的經(jīng)過，你看了那段視頻，你可以看到花瓶的“罪行”，但是你卻會更傾向于懲罰、責備那個人——僅僅因為我說“他打碎了花瓶”，而不是“花瓶碎了”。語言會引導我們對事件的認知。

　　Now, I've given you a few examples of how language can profoundly shape the way we think, and it does so in a variety of ways. So language can have big effects, like we saw with space and time, where people can lay out space and time in completely different coordinate frames fr-om each other.

　　那我給了大家?guī)讉�語言如何影響我們思考的例子，它主要通過幾個方式。語言可以造成大的影響，我們舉了時間和空間的例子，人們對時間和空間的排列可以迥然不同。

　　Language can also have really deep effects -- that's what we saw with the case of number. Having count words in your language, having number words, opens up the whole world of mathematics. Of course, if you don't count, you can't do algebra, you can't do any of the things that would be required to build a room like this or make this broadcast, right? This little trick of number words gives you a stepping stone into a whole cognitive realm.

　　語言還可以有很深的影響，我們舉了數(shù)字的例子。如果你的語言里有數(shù)量詞，有數(shù)字，這會開啟一個全新的數(shù)學世界。如果你不能數(shù)數(shù)，你自然也不會代數(shù)學，你將不能做任何需要數(shù)學的事情，像建一個這樣的演講廳，或進行轉(zhuǎn)播，對吧?小小的數(shù)字給我們提供了踏進一整個認知領域的墊腳石。

　　Language can also have really early effects, what we saw in the case of color. These are really simple, basic, perceptual decisions. We make thousands of them all the time, and yet, language is getting in there and fussing even with these tiny little perceptual decisions that we make. Language can have really broad effects. So the case of grammatical gender may be a little silly, but at the same time, grammatical gender applies to all nouns. That means language can shape how you're thinking about anything that can be named by a noun. That's a lot of stuff.

　　語言的影響還可能很早就發(fā)生，我們舉了顏色的例子。這是非常簡單、基本、感知型的決定，我們無時無刻不在做這樣的決定，而語言就在那里影響著我們做的這些小小的決定。語言可以有很廣闊的影響，我們舉了語法上的詞性的例子看似微不足道，但它卻適用于所有名詞。這意味著語言可以影響你如何思考所有能用名詞表達的東西。那可是很多東西。

　　And finally, I gave you an example of how language can shape things that have personal weight to us -- ideas like blame and punishment or eyewitness memory. These are important things in our daily lives.

　　最后，我舉了一個語言可以如何影響跟我們切身相關的事件的例子，如責備、懲罰和目擊證詞。這些是我們的日常生活中非常重要的方面。

　　Now, the beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is. Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but 7,000 -- there are 7,000 languages spoken around the world. And we can create many more --languages, of course, are living things, things that we can hone and change to suit our needs. The tragic thing is that we're losing so much of this linguistic diversity all the time. We're losing about one language a week, and by some estimates, half of the world's languages will be gone in the next hundred years.

　　語言多樣性的美麗在于它向我們揭示了人類的大腦是多么巧妙和靈活。人類大腦創(chuàng)造的不是一個認知體系，而是7000個，世界上有7000種語言。而我們還可以創(chuàng)造更多。語言是有生命的，是我們可以打磨和改變以滿足我們需求的東西。不幸的是，這種語言多樣性正在不斷喪失。大概平均每個星期就有一種語言消失，據(jù)估計，在接下來的120xx年里世界上一半的語言將會消失。

　　And the even worse news is that right now, almost everything we know about the human mind and human brain is based on studies of usually American English-speaking undergraduates at universities. That excludes almost all humans. Right? So what we know about the human mind is actually incredibly narrow and biased, and our science has to do better.

　　更糟糕的是，現(xiàn)在幾乎我們所知道的所有關于人類大腦和思維的東西都是基于大學中說美式英語的學生的研究。這就幾乎排除了所有人類，不是嗎?所以其實我們對人類思維的了解是非常狹隘和具有偏見的，而我們的科學應該做得更好。

　　I want to leave you with this final thought. I've told you about how speakers of different languages think differently, but of course, that's not about how people elsewhere think. It's about how you think. It's how the language that you speak shapes the way that you think. And that gives you the opportunity to ask, "Why do I think the way that I do?" "How could I think differently?" And also," What thoughts do I wish to create?"

　　最后，我想再讓大家思考一個問題。我已經(jīng)講了不同語言的使用者思考的不同方式，當然，這不是是關于其他地方的人怎么思考，而是關于你怎么思考，關于你說的語言如何影響了你的思維方式。大家可以問問自己：“我為什么是這樣思考問題的?”“我能換種方式思考嗎?”還有，“我想創(chuàng)造什么樣的想法?”

　　Thank you very much.(Applause)

　　非常感謝。(鼓掌)