Or, for that matter,
French or Portuguese?
本文作者从英语起源国英国的角度，论述了英语走遍世界之后，将不再是英国的英语，也不再是盎格鲁撒克逊国家的英语。英语走遍世界让作者自豪，但是对于其他文化对英语，特别是英语语法的改变，作者也表示了担忧。
WHAT COUNTRY does French belong to? The answer seems
obvious: France, as it says on the label. But there are roughly four times as
many speakers of French outside France as there are within it. Who does
Portuguese belong to? You might now hesitate to blurt out “Portugal”, remembering that Brazil’s population is about
20 times bigger than Portugal’s. Maybe Portuguese belongs
jointly to them both. But then 70m people live in African
countries in which Portuguese is an official language. Perhaps it belongs to
them, too.
注："Blurt out" 的意思是"脱口而出"，指在不经过思考的情况下，突然说出某个观点。例如，"I didn't mean to blurt out that secret about her, it just slipped
out."（我不是有意泄露她的秘密，只是不小心脱口而出了。）
本段中提到，法国以外说法语的人数是法国本土的四倍，而葡萄牙之外说葡语的除了人口是葡萄牙20倍之多的巴西以外，还有7000万非洲人将葡语作为官方语言。
The English can
be under no illusion that the
language of the same name is exclusively theirs. The small matters of the other
nations in the British Isles, and of the superpower across the Atlantic, make
clear that it is joint property. But these countries—along with Canada,
Australia and other Anglophonepeoples—must at some point come to terms
with the fact that, even collectively, their language no longer belongs to
them. Of the estimated billion people who speak English, less than half live in
those core English-speaking countries.
注："Under no
illusion" 的意思是"没有幻想"，这里指英国人不能有英语是英国的英语这种幻想。that从句是illusion的同位语。
"Anglophone" 指的是说英语的人或地区，通常用于描述那些英语是主要或官方语言的国家或地区。例如，加拿大可以被称为是一个"Anglophone
country"。同样的，美国、英国、澳大利亚、新西兰、南非等国家也是。
"Come to
terms with the fact" 的意思是"接受事实"，通常用来描述一个人经过一段时间的思考、反省等过程后，终于接受了某个不愉快或不可避免的事实。例如，"After
months of denial, he finally came to terms with the fact that his marriage was
over."（经过数月的否认，他终于接受了他的婚姻已经结束的事实。）
Every day, the
proportion of English-speakers born outside the traditional Anglosphere grows.
Perhaps 40% of people in the European Union speak English,
or about 180m—vastly more than the combined population of Britain, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand. In India, calculations range from 60m to 200m. Most
such estimates make it the second-biggest Anglophone country in the world.
注：在欧洲，有1.8亿人会说英语，而在印度，说英语的人口在6000万到2亿之间，印度是世界上第二大以英语为母语的国家。
English-speakers
pride themselves on the spread of the language,
and often attribute that to an open, liberal-minded attitude whereby it has
happily soaked up words from around
the world. In the coming century, though, English will do more than borrow
words. In these non-Anglophone countries, it is becoming not just a useful
second language, but a native one. Already it is easy to find children in
northern Europe who speak as though they come from Kansas, the product of
childhoods immersed in subtitled films and television in English, along with
music, gaming and YouTube.
注："Soak up" 的意思是"吸收"或"吸取"，本义是类似海绵吸水那种吸收，引申指对于某种信息、知识、经验等的吸收和学习。例如，"She soaked up all the information in the book in just one evening."（她在一个晚上就吸收了书中所有的信息。）
Today, many
learners still aim for an American or British standard. Textbooks instruct
Indian English-speakers to avoid Indianisms such as “What is your good name?”
for “What is your first name?”, or “I am working here for years” instead of “I
have been working here for years.” A guide to avoiding Europeanismshas long circulated in European Union institutions, to keep French-or
German-speakers from (for example) using “actual” to mean “current”, as it does
in their languages.
Yet as hundreds
of millions of new speakers make English their own, they are going to be less
keen to sound British or American. A generation of post-colonial novelists has
been mixing native words and phrasings into their English prose, without
translation, italics or explanation. Academic movements such as “English as a lingua franca” (ELF)
have been developing the ideology that speakers—no longer referred to as
“non-native” but rather “multilingual”—should feel free to ignore British or
American norms. Karen Bennett of Nova University in Lisbon says the university
website has been translated using words common in southern European
English—like “scientific” for “academic”, or “rector” for “vice-chancellor”.
The appropriate local dialect is not British or American but ELF.
注："Lingua franca" 是指在不同语言和文化的地区广泛使用的共同语言。在国际交流中，英语被认为是一种lingua franca。
Given enough time, new generations of native speakers contribute not
just words but their own grammar to the language they learn—from older
speakers’ point of view, distortingit in the process. “I am working
here for years” is a mistake today, but it is not hard to imagine it becoming
standard in the future in culturally confident Anglophone Indian circles.
注：作者在担心其他地区的英语使用者会改变英语的用法。
"Distort" 的意思是"扭曲"、"歪曲"或"曲解"，通常用来描述某种信息、事实或观点被有意或无意地改变或误解。例如，"The
media often distorts the truth to get more attention." （媒体经常会为了吸引更多关注而歪曲事实。）
If this disturbs
you, remember that this column is written in a mangled version of Anglo-Saxon,
learned badly by waves of Celts, Vikings, Normans and others until it became an
unrecognisably different tongue. And take comfort in the fact that such changes
usually happen too slowly to affect comprehension in a single lifetime. Written
language is less volatile than the spoken kind and exerts a stabilising force.
注："Mangled" 的意思是"毁坏的"、"弄乱的"或"损坏的"，指某个物体或事物被严重破坏、损伤或弄乱的状态。例如，"The car was
mangled in the accident" 表示"车在事故中被撞毁了"。本文中，作者认为，英语本来就是凯尔特人、维京人、诺曼人等共同形成的一种语言。
"Anglo-Saxon" 指古代盎格鲁-撒克逊人（Anglo-Saxon people）以及他们的文化和语言。盎格鲁-撒克逊人原本是在公元5世纪左右从德国和丹麦等地迁移到英国的日耳曼族人。在语言方面，英语的起源可以追溯到古代的盎格鲁-撒克逊语（Anglo-Saxon language）。在现代英语中，"Anglo-Saxon" 还可以指英国或英国人的文化和传统。
But if language
is always evolving (true to the point of cliché), the adaptations are even more
profound when they come as a result of new speakers hailing from different
linguistic worlds. No language has ever reached more speakers than English. It
is hard to predict how they will change it, but easy to rule out the notion
that they will not change it at all. In the end, it will be theirs too.
"True to the point of cliché" 指语言总是在进化这一观点其实是陈词滥调。例如，"His behavior was true to the point of cliché, he was the typical arrogant businessman" 表示"他的行为非常符合刻板印象，是典型的傲慢商人"。
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