單詞零基礎從哪開始背（單詞那些事兒）

2023-04-18 23:27:25

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單詞那些事兒

Johnson Degrees of separation

Words, like people, have tangled and extensive family trees.

學習英語離不開單詞，今天我們就來看一看單詞的來源。單詞和人一樣，有著複雜(tangled)而廣博的（extensive）家譜圖(family trees)。

第一段

It is natural to try to find resemblances in family photos: grandma’s nose here, Uncle Jim’s hairline there. When considering the family of English words, it is tempting to look for the same sort of likenesses. Often they are real; for instance, regal and royal derive from the same source, which was imported into English twice, from both Grandpa Latin and Aunt French.

在家族照片裡找到相似處非常自然：祖母的鼻子，或者叔叔的髮際線。這裡用It’s natural to do sth. 的句型表示做…很自然。緊接著用v-ing表示伴隨，在考慮英語單詞的家族時，人們傾向於（it is tempting to do）尋找(look for)同種類型的(the same sort of)相似度(likeness)。for instance例如。derive from由…起源。be imported into進口到。regal(帝王的)和royal(皇家的)就是同一來源，並且從爺爺拉丁語和嬸嬸法語借來，並且被兩次進口到英文中。這裡是形象的說法，因為拉丁語是法語和英語的起源，所以稱為「爺爺」。

第二段

But often they are not. In the human world, people sometimes find out to their shock that they are adopted, or take a DNA test and discover a surprising parentage. At this point, resemblances that they thought were genetic turn out to be illusory. Similarly, two words can look so alike that it seems they simply must be siblings-yet they aren’t.

在人類世界，人們有時會驚訝地(to their shock)發現(find out)他們是被收養的，或者經過DNA測試後，發現了令人驚訝的身世(parentage)。曾以為的基因(genetic)相似性(resemblance)實際上(turn out to be)是虛假的(illusory)。同樣的（similarly），兩個單詞看起來相似，似乎是同一家族，事實上可能不是。

第三段

Take pawn the verb and pawn the noun. Both have to do with exchanging something for something else of value. In chess, a pawn is sacrificed for strategic advantage; at the pawn shop, a guitar is sacrificed for much-needed cash. Are they variants of the same word? No. While one word can develop many senses-to run a computer program is descended from the word to run with your legs-sometimes two words identical in spelling and pronunciation have entirely separate origins.

拿pawn這個詞作為動詞和pawn作為名詞來講，兩個都是表示將某物與有價值的某物交換。在象棋中，pawn表示為戰略優勢(strategic advantage)做出犧牲(is sacrificed for)。在當鋪(pawn shop)，一把吉他被用來換取急需的(much-needed)現金(cash)。他們是同一個單詞的變體嗎？(variants)。一個單詞可以發展出很多意思-運行(run)電腦程式是從詞組「用四條腿跑步run」傳下來(be descended from)的。有時候兩個單詞在拼寫和發音方面都一樣（identical in），卻有著完全(entirely)不同的起源。

第四段

As with pawn. The verb may be from a Germanic root meaning 「surety」, which made its way into English via French; in modern German, Pfand is a 「deposit」. The chess-piece, though, has totally different story. It came from (Norman) French, as paun, but that in turn came from Latin pedon-a foot soldier (compare pedestrian). Since a foot soldier is slowly and dispensable, it came to mean a sacrificable chess-piece, and, in other languages, a menial laborer. English borrowed peon, another form of the same word, from Spanish. Pawn is related to peon, but not to pawn.

關於(as with)pawn這個詞，動詞可能來源於德語詞根，意思是擔保，通過法語傳入英語。在現代德國，Pfand是存款。而棋子中卻完全不一樣。它來源(come from)於（諾曼）法語paun，反過來paun又來源於拉丁語的pedon-步兵（可以和步行者pedestrian比較）。步兵很慢，不重要，所以後來慢慢含義為可以犧牲的棋子。在其它語言中，就是報酬低的人（menial laborer）。

英語中從西班牙語中借用了peon，同一個詞的另一種形式。Pawn與peon相關(is related to)，卻同時又不是典當的意思。

第五段

This kind of thing is all over the language. Repair (to fix) and repair (as in 「let’s repair to the smoking room」) look like they must be the same word with different meanings. In fact, they are pawn-style homonyms. The 「fix」 word comes from repatriare, to go back to your country.

這種現象出現在所有語言中。Repair(修理)，repair to…去一個特殊的地方。看起來他們似乎是同一個單詞，有不同的含義。事實上，他們是pawn這種類型的同形異義詞。fix來源於repatriare, 回到自己的國家。

第六段

Isle and island seem to be obvious relatives. In fact their resemblance is happenstance combined with human error. 「Isle」 comes from Latin insula; its 「s」 became silent in its voyage through French. But island is Germanic (the-land is a hint, and the 「I」 is reminiscent of cousins like Icelandic eyja). Medieval writers mistakenly thought that the word, then written as iland, came from insula too. They inserted the 「s」 to reflect that (incorrect) etymology. It has never been pronounced.

Isle和island看起來似乎是明顯有關聯的詞。事實上它們的相似性只是人類錯誤的偶然產物（happenstance）。「Isle」來源於insula，s在單詞經過法語時失去了發音(become silent)。但是island是德語的詞彙（land是暗示，提示，「I」是回憶表親的）。中世紀作家(medieval writers)錯誤地認為單詞寫成iland的，也來源於insula。他們將s插入（insert）來反應（錯誤的）詞源，但從來不發s音。

第七段

In fact, odd as it may seem, island is related to aquatic. The source of nearly every language in Europe and many in the Middle East and South Asia is Proto-Indo-European (PIE), spoken perhaps 5,000 years ago. That’s enough time for some truly scrambling sound changes: PIE’s akwa mutated into agwjo, aujo and ieg in the Germanic branch of family before becoming the 「I」 in island. In the Romance branch, it stayed closer to its roots and became Latin aqua. Reconstructing PIE is one of the unsung achievements of modern science. Working backwards from today’s language through written classical ones allowed philologists to discover systematic changes, which in turn let them peer further into the past to posit what the unwritten PIE would have sounded like.

事實上，奇怪的是（odd as it may seem），island與aquatic(水的)相關。歐洲幾乎每種語言的來源和中東、南亞的很多語言都是5000年前說的原始印歐語Proto-Indo-European (PIE)。有足夠的時間讓發音也發生改變：比如原始印歐語的akwa在變成「island」中的「I」之前變異為(mutate into)德語分支的agwjo, aujo, ieg. 在羅曼語言分支(Romance Branch)，它與詞根（root）更接近(stay closer to)，變成拉丁語的aqua.重建(reconstructing)PIE是現代科學未唱響的成就（unsung achievements）之一。通過傳統的書面語言（written classical ones），用現在的語言到過去的時代探尋語言，讓語言學家(philologist)發現系統的(systematic)變化，反過來讓他們窺視(peer into)到過去，假設（posit）沒寫下來的PIE如何發音。

第八段

Browsing through an index of Indo-European roots (the American Heritage Dictionary website has an excellent one) enables verbal discoveries as startling as the fact that Dick Cheney is distantly related to Barack Obama. Dyeu (to shine) not only yielded day and diary but deity and divine, plus the gods』 names Jove, Jupiter, Zeus and Tiu. That last term, for a Norse god, appears in Tuesday-which therefore includes dyeu twice.

瀏覽印歐語系(Indo-European)詞根的索引（index）（美國傳統詞典網站有一個較好的索引）讓語言發現(verbal discoveries)與事實一樣驚人：迪克·切尼和歐巴馬有遙遠的關聯。Dyeu不僅僅產生（yield）day和diary,也產生deity和divine,還有一些神的名字如Jove, Jupiter, Zeus和Tiu.最後一個Tiu,挪威（Norse）神，出現在星期二，因此包含兩次dyeu。

第九段

Since PIE’s descendants are now spoken from Donegal to the Bay of Bengal, the 「family」 in question is not just the vocabulary of English but that of some 3bn people speaking over 400 modern languages. The stories of words that are surprisingly unrelated (pawn-pawn, repair-repair) are overwhelmed by the number of those that are just as startlingly connected (island-aquatic, divine-Tuesday). Those links are a good reminder of just how big the circle of family can be drawn, if you are open-minded enough in today’s nervously nationalist age. Time and distance can too easily obscure the fact that words-like people-have many more relatives than they might seem to.

從多內加爾(Donegal)到孟加拉灣(the Bay of Bengal)都使用PIE演變的語言以來，家族問題就不僅僅是英語詞彙而是30億人講400種語言的事情。那些毫不相關到讓人驚訝的(surprisingly unrelated)單詞的故事充斥著相關聯到讓人驚訝的(startlingly connected)單詞數量。（island-aquatic, divine-Tuesday）在當今這個民族主義者(nationalist)時代，如果你足夠思想開明(open-minded)，這些聯繫都能很好地提醒(a good reminder)人們究竟這個家譜圖可以畫多大。時間和距離太容易模糊(obscure)事實，像單詞一樣的人會比看起來有更多的親戚。