好英语网恋爱如何帮我们学习语言？
Cologne, Germany, 1970: Carol, a sparky red-headed Englishwoman catches the eye of a handsome Tunisian man named Chedly. There’s a mutual attraction; just one problem stands in their way: they don’t speak each other’s language.
那是1970年，德国科隆。卡罗尔（Carol），一位活力十足的红头发英国女性，吸引了帅气的突尼斯男人切德里（Chedly）的注意。他们对彼此都有好感；而横亘在二人之间的只有一个问题：他们都不懂对方的母语。
Settling for German, the pair attempt the first words of their fledgling romance in a foreign tongue. Three months later they are engaged and 46 years on from that, children, grandchildren – and some English lessons later – they’re still together.
于是，卡罗尔和切德里选择用彼此的外语——德语，作为恋爱初期的沟通语言。三个月后，二人订婚；在此后的46年里，除了一些英语课之外，孩子、孙子一个个降生，他们现在还是在一起。
Carol and Chedly Mahfoudh’s story is just one of countless others: couples who met, fell in love and forged a relationship despite linguistic and cultural hurdles. “Language, in delineating a boundary that can be transgressed, is full of romantic potential”, writes The New Yorker’s Lauren Collins, whose own adventures in bilingualism feature in her new book When in French: Love in a Second Language, which is in equal parts humorous memoir, love story and serious exploration of the relationship between language and thought.
卡罗尔和切德里·马罕发德的故事只是无数跨国恋爱故事中的一个：两个人相遇、坠入爱河，然后跨越语言和文化障碍恋爱结婚。"语言是可以跨越的界限，能够在情侣间制造出满满的罗曼蒂克情调，"《纽约客》杂志作者劳伦·柯林斯写道。她自身游弋于双语之间的浪漫故事是其新书《身在法国：用一门外语谈情说爱》（When in French: Love in a Second Language）的主题，这本书既是一本幽默的回忆录、一个爱情故事，同时也对语言与思想二者之间的关系做了严肃探究。
Although US-born Collins and her French husband Olivier spent their early years as a couple conversing in English, they couldn’t in his native language. “We didn’t possess that easy shorthand, encoding all manner of attitudes and assumptions, by which some people seem able, almost telepathically, to make themselves mutually known” Collins writes. After a particularly tricky discussion, in which they each painstakingly seek to clarify what the other means, Olivier complains, “Talking to you in English is like touching you with gloves.”
恋爱伊始，生于美国的柯林斯和自己的法国丈夫奥利维尔（Olivier）只能用英文交流，因为他们无法用奥利维尔的母语交流。"有些情侣之间似乎有某种心灵感应，能够解码对方的各种态度和心思，理解对方，可是我们俩似乎缺乏这种快速读心术，"柯林斯写道。经过一番尤为棘手的讨论后——期间二人都费尽心力想要表明自己的观点，奥利维尔说，"跟你用英语对话，简直像是戴着手套拉手。"
“That really crystallised the distance that I would always have to live with if I didn’t learn his language”, Collins tells BBC Culture. “I think we all have these intentions and fantasies about learning a language but it’s a really hard thing to do unless you have a real burning reason,” she continues.
"如果我不开始学习他的语言，那么我就必须接受我们之间一直存在距离这样的事实，"柯林斯告诉BBC文化栏目。"我想我们都有意愿，也梦想着学习一门语言，但是，除非你有什么实实在在的迫切理由，学习语言真不是件容易之事。"柯林斯说道。
Spurred on by a desire to find a deeper connection with her partner, Lauren sets about learning French. She seizes the challenge with gusto – but learning a new language while immersing oneself in an alien culture has its pitfalls (mistakenly telling Olivier’s mother that she’d given birth to the coffee pot is one example) and its frustrations. “My efforts at French leave me feeling at once inert and exhausted, as though I’ve been dog-paddling in a pool of standing water,” she writes.
迫于想要与伴侣有更深层的交流这一强烈意愿，劳伦下定决心，开始学习法语。她充满热情地迎接挑战——然而她发现，将自己浸入陌生文化环境中学习新语言，也会让自己遭遇尴尬（比如错误地告诉奥利维尔的母亲自己生了一个咖啡壶）；同时还有挫折："我很努力地学习法语，但这也让我一下子察觉到自己的迟钝，我感到筋疲力尽，我就像是在一滩死水里狗刨一般，"她写道。
Tongue twisters
绕口令
Lauren Collins isn’t alone in that experience. “I found it really frustrating and I remember feeling like my tongue hurt, getting my tongue and my mouth around different vowels”, is how Anna Irvin, who moved to Paris in 2011 to live with her French partner Christophe Sigal, recalls the experience, at first, of speaking French all day long.
劳伦·柯林斯的经历不是个例。安娜·欧文（Anna Irvin）2011年搬去巴黎，与自己的法国伴侣克里斯托弗·西格尔（Christophe Sigal）同住，她回忆自己刚开始一整天讲法语时的经历时说道："我感到很沮丧，我还记得那时候为了练习不同的元音，不停运动自己的舌头和嘴巴，舌头都开始发疼了。"
Both Anna and Christophe describe the process of learning a language as a continual discussion and discovery that unfolded in tandem with their relationship, one that required patience, reliance and dogged determination. For Anna it’s meant trusting Christophe to reveal the important distinction between dégoûtant and dégueulasse; for Christophe it’s figuring out the difference between the English ‘it’s ridiculous’ and the French c’est ridicule. (The latter, in both cases, is far ruder.)
安娜和克里斯托弗将学习语言描述为男女感情发展中继续讨论和发现的过程，这一过程需要耐心、信赖和顽强的决心。对安娜来说，这意味着信任克里斯托弗在如何区分dégoûtant和dégueulasse这两个词上的看法，对克里斯托弗来说，这意味着区分英语中的"It's ridiculous"和法语中的c'est ridicule（在以上两对比较中，后者的表达都更粗鲁一些。）
And understanding a partner’s unfamiliar cultural background adds an extra layer of complexity to language learning. “Because I’m from a village in the countryside in the south of France,” says Christophe, “it’s not just the language it’s the politics that are different.”
让语言学习难上加难的是，语言学习者还需要理解伴侣背后那个自己不熟悉的文化环境。"因为我来自法国南部乡村，"克里斯托弗说道，"所以不仅仅是语言，政治环境也不一样。"
This is also characteristic of Carol and Chedly Mahfoudh’s nearly half-a-century-long marriage. Negotiating cultural differences has proven a balancing act for both. “For us and any other couple from a mixed marriage you are having to work that wee bit harder the whole time to understand the mentality” Carol says, then continues, with a laugh: “I’m never quite certain whether I am pissed off with him because he’s Tunisian, because he’s French, because he’s a man… or whether just because he’s old!”
卡罗尔和切德里·马罕发德在二人近半个世纪长的婚姻中，也一直感受着如此差异的存在。讨论文化差异成了他们二人的生活平衡术。"我们和其他跨国婚姻伴侣一样，需要多努努力，去理解双方的思维方式，"卡罗尔说道。卡罗尔笑了笑，接着说："我永远也搞不清，我生气是因为他是突尼斯人，他是法国人，他是个男人……还是仅仅因为他老了！"
As you might expect, these difficulties come to the fore in arguments between bilingual couples. “That’s the time when it really comes out, what you can and can’t express, because it matters, words matter so much in that situation,” Anna Irvin says.
可以想见，如果双语夫妻遇到不得不争论的问题，困难就会涌现出来。"在争论中，困难会出现，因为有的想法你知道怎么说，有的却无法表达，所以语言很重要，在这样的场合尤为重要，"安娜·欧文说道。
Dr Aneta Pavlenko, Professor of Applied Linguistics at Temple University, who has conducted research into emotions including anger in bilingual relationships, agrees. “Differences become particularly acute during arguments, because arguments are the time when you have the least control of your language but at the same time you need most to express your emotions,” she says.
美国天普大学（Temple University）应用语言学教授安妮塔·帕弗兰克博士（Dr Aneta Pavlenko）就包括双语伴侣面临的诸如愤怒等情绪问题进行了研究，她赞同以上看法。"在为某件事情争论时，双方的差异性就会体现得尤为明显，因为在争论过程中，你对语言的把控力最弱，而这恰恰又是你最需要清晰表达自我想法的时候，"她说道。
Even the way different cultures perceive anger can affect arguments, Pavlenko, a native Russian speaker, continues. “English-language scholars often treat anger as a universal concept, but, as a Russian speaker coming to this culture, it was at first hard for me to understand exactly, because in Russia we make somewhat different distinctions. I found the gap between English anger and the two Russian concepts, serdit'sia (to be cross at someone) and zlit'sia (to be angry, irritated with someone) somewhat difficult to navigate at first. The way psychologists explain this is that situations trigger certain feelings in us, but the way we name these experiences differs depending on our native languages.”
甚至不同文化看待愤怒的方式也会影响情侣间的争论，母语为俄语的帕弗兰克博士补充道。"英语语言学者经常将anger（愤怒）看作是全球概念，但是，作为母语为俄语的人，当我第一次踏进这样一个文化环境，我很难明确理解这一点，因为在俄国，我们对此有不同的定义。我发现英语的anger和俄语概念的serdit'sia (生某人的气) and zlit'sia (被某人惹恼而感到愤怒)都有差别，所以一开始我感到自己完全摸不着头脑。心理学家解释说，这是因为我们所处的环境会激发我们的内心感受，但是由于母语不同，所以我们命名这些感受的方式是有差别的。"
This means than in an argument, every word counts – which has a surprising upside, Anna Irvin explains. “It slows everything down” she says. “But I think that actually that can lead to a more solid basis,” she says. “It forces you to be more careful about the way you speak and what you say and how you say it”.
这意味着，在一场争论中，说出的每一个字都扮演重要角色——文字的积极作用是惊人的，安娜·欧文解释道。"文字让一切慢下来，"她说。"我认为这会让双方的争论更理性沉稳，"她说。"会迫使你更小心地处理自己的说法方式和内容。"
It’s all relative
一切都是相对的
“It felt good to touch Olivier in his own language – to be able to push his buttons, graze his pleasure points”, Lauren Collins writes, after gaining fluency in her partner’s language brings her closer to him. And an understanding of the French language, and the importance it gives to the separation of formal and informal addresses, helps her unpick some of her own misunderstandings of his attitudes. “I had once interpreted Olivier’s reticence as pessimism, but I now saw the deep romanticism, the hopefulness, of not wanting to overstate or to overpromise”, she writes.
"能用奥利维尔的语言故意激怒他，或者逗他开心，这让我感觉很好，"劳伦·柯林斯写道，随着劳伦能够更流利地讲伴侣的母语，她也拉近了自己与奥利维尔的距离。理解法语，以及法语中正式和非正式称呼的区别，有助于劳伦纠正自己先前对伴侣态度的误会。"我曾经将奥利维尔的沉默看作是一种消极表现，但我现在从中看出了深深的浪漫和希望，以及不愿意过分夸大或承诺过多的态度，"她这样写道。
But the process of learning a second language – similar perhaps to acquiring any new skill, like taking up a musical instrument or painting – led Lauren to an epiphany of sorts. Although the catalyst for her to learn a new language was love for her partner, it did far more, opening her up to new experiences ̶ and perspectives. “French became this parallel love affair for me” she says. As she writes early on in the book, “I have no way of foreseeing that French will reshape the contours of my relationships, that I won’t always consider people intimates until proven not to be.” This shift intrigues her: can learning a new language really change the way we think?
可能就像是掌握任何新技能，比如学习乐器或者画画，劳伦斯在学习外语的过程中有了许多顿悟。虽然促使她开始学习外语的是对自己伴侣的爱，但后来的学习为她带来了许多新体验——以及新观点。"对我来说，法语就是我的另一份爱情，"她这样说道。正如一开始在书中提到的，"我从未预料到法语会重绘我的人际关系轮廓；在情况清楚之前，我不再总是将自己与他人的关系看得过于亲密。"这一改变引发了劳伦的好奇心：学习新语言真的可以改变人们的思维方式吗？
The idea that thought is affected by language - known as linguistic relativism and determinism - gained popularity in the mid-20th Century with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Human beings “are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society,” writes Sapir. This theory has since been largely undermined: Noam Chomsky’s theory of universalism used the fact that children are able to learn any language with the same ease to disprove it, while the linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker expanded on Chomsky in The Language Instinct (1994), stating that language was an innate rather than cultural faculty of the brain.
在20世纪中期，随着萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说（Sapir-Whorf hypothesis）的兴起，语言影响思想——即语言的相对论和决定论——这一观点开始受到越来越多人的欢迎。萨丕尔写道，"特定的语言会成为某一社会的表达媒介，而该社会中的人往往受制于该语言"。其后，对该理论的推崇逐渐衰退：诺姆·乔姆斯基（Noam Chomsky）的语言普遍论用孩子们能够同样轻松地学习任何语言这一事实驳斥了萨丕尔的观点，而语言学家和认知科学家史蒂文·平克（Steven Pinker）在1994年出版的著作《语言本能》（The Language Instinct）中，进一步完善了乔姆斯基的这一观点，他表明，语言是人类的一种先天本能，而非社会文化的产物。
But in recent years, a more pared-back version of linguistic relativism, called 'neo-Whorfianism', has been met – in some scientific circles – with a warmer reception. So rather than believing that untranslatable words – like Kummerspeck and hygge – mean that we view the world in radically different ways, rather we place a slightly different emphasis on things depending on the language we are speaking, where we speak it and to whom.
然而近年来，"新沃尔夫主义"（neo-Whorfianism），一种语言相对论的简化版在某些学术圈内受到热情欢迎。该流派认为，不可翻译单词的存在——诸如Kummerspeck（德语，指因伤心悲痛而饮食过量，体重增加）和hygge（丹麦语，指舒适惬意的生活状态）——并不意味着讲该语言的人与讲其他语言的人看待世界的眼光有多么不一样，它仅仅意味着，由于我们所讲语言、在哪里讲，以及对谁讲的不同，我们对各种事物的着重点也有所不同。
It is even the rather unlikely basis for the current movie blockbuster, Arrival, which stars Amy Adams as Dr Louise Banks, a linguist brought in by the US military to decipher the language of mysterious aliens who have landed on Earth. These extra-terrestrial ‘heptapods’ communicate in a language that means they perceive time in a completely non-linear way.
该理论甚至成为最近上映的电影大片《将临》（Arrival）的基调。在其中，艾米•亚当斯（Amy Adams）饰演语言学家路易丝·班克斯博士（Dr Louise Banks），美国军队派她前去解密降临在地球上的神秘外星生物的语言。这些外星生物名为"heptapods"，其所讲的语言表明了它们以一种完全非线性的方式看待时间。
Arrival’s script was adapted from a short story by Ted Chiang, Story of Your Life. In this passage, Louise describes how learning Heptapod B (the aliens’ written language) alters her perception of time and memory:“Before I learned how to think in Heptapod B, my memories grew like a column of cigarette ash, laid down by the infinitesimal sliver of combustion that was my consciousness, marking the sequential present. After I learned Heptapod B, new memories fell into place like gigantic blocks, each one measuring years in duration”.
《降临》的故事脚本改编自姜峯楠（Ted Chiang）的短篇小说《你一生的故事》（Story of Your Life）。在某一脚本片段中，路易斯形容了学习Heptapod B（外星生物的书面语言）如何改变她对时间和记忆的看法："在我学习如何用Heptapod B思考之前，我的记忆就像一柱香烟灰，上面是燃烧过后飘忽的微微青丝，也就是我的意识，代表了按时序排列的当下。学习Heptapod B之后，新的记忆就像巨大的块体不断填充进来，每一块记录的时间跨度都连续多年。"
Chiang’s story does not offer a prescriptive determinist view, but suggests nevertheless that languages (even alien ones) influence thought. “My mind was cast in the mold of human, sequential languages, and no amount of immersion in an alien language can completely reshape it. My worldview is an amalgam of human and heptapod”, Louise says.
姜峯楠的故事并未体现决定论者的一贯观点，但依然认为，语言（即使是外星生物的语言）决定思想。"我的思维生而就被设定为人类的思维模式，语言是时序性的，无论我在外星生物的语言中浸入多长时间，这一点也不会被完全改变。我的世界观是人类与heptapod世界观的混合物，"路易斯这样说。
And although many linguists are sceptical on the matter, bilinguals often report that their personality is affected by the language they are speaking – often expressing a sense of freedom in their non-native tongue. “For languages that are learned later in life, in teenage years, in adulthood, we don’t have the same emotional connection to the particular emotional aspects of the languages, like taboo words,” explains Aneta Pavlenko. “So it’s easier to swear in a second language, it’s easier to say ‘I love you’ in a second language even if you cannot say so in your first language.”
虽然许多语言学家对这件事表示怀疑，许多有双语能力的人纷纷认为，他们的个性确实会被所讲语言影响——在讲非母语时，他们往往能够更自由地表达。"如果我们从少年期或成年期开始学习新语言，那么我们与新语言中的情绪表达——如各种禁忌词——的情感连接就不会那么深入。"安妮塔·帕弗兰克解释说。"所以，许多我们用母语说不出口的话反而可以更轻松地用外语说出来，比如我们更容易用外语说脏话，也更容易用外语说出'我爱你'。"
Lauren Collins sympathises with the neo-Whorfian view to a point. Her experience of learning a second language as an adult opened her up to a different view of the world – a less radical change, but comparable to how Louise, in Arrival, becomes aware of a new perception of time through a certain linguistic empathy. It’s a subtle difference: “it’s not what you may do in a language,” explains Collins, “it’s what you must do”.
劳伦·柯林斯与新沃尔夫主义理论在某一观点上是一致的。作为成年人，她学习外语的经历为她呈现了另一种世界观——这并非一种彻底的转变，但与路易斯在《降临》中的感受不无相似之处，通过某种语言上的共情，路易斯对时间产生了一种新的看法。这是微妙的差别："不是说你可以在学习新语言时做出这样的变化选择，"柯林斯解释道，"而是说你一定会体会到这一改变。"
Collins’ book is an incredibly appealing and persuasive argument for learning a partner’s language – or any language for that matter. But for couples in bilingual relationships, there’s no right or wrong way, says Pavlenko. “I think people find happiness in different ways… I would never say that this is a recipe for happiness. I myself am married to an English-speaking American who knows only a few Russian words and we have been delightfully happy for 20 years!”
不论是学习伴侣的母语，还是学习其他任何一门外语，柯林斯的新书都提供了非常引人入胜和具有说服力的讨论。然而，对于那些处于双语关系当中的情侣来说，没有对错，帕弗兰克这样说。"我认为人们会利用不同方式找到快乐……我不会说这就是快乐的处方。我自己嫁给了一个讲英语的美国人，而他仅仅会说几个俄语单词，但我们已经在一起快乐地生活了20年了！"
But according to Collins, for those willing to try it, there could be a surprising outcome. “I felt there was this secret part of Olivier that I would never get to know if I didn’t speak his language but the great surprise, the great joy of learning French has been that there was a secret part of me too, or maybe not a secret part maybe it’s just a new part. Maybe French created it.”
然而，柯林斯则认为，那些愿意尝试的人很可能收获令人意想不到的结果。"我发现，如果我不学习奥利维尔的母语，那么我就永远也不会了解奥利维尔身上那对我来说具有神秘感的一部分。而另一份惊喜和快乐则是，我发现我身上也有神秘的一部分，也许它不是神秘的一部分，而是新的一部分，是学习法语这件事在我身上创造的一部分。"