On the Origin of Languages論語言的起源

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

人們往往認為語言有明確的誕生時間，實則不然。

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的修道院中，有位修士正在冥思苦讀一篇拉丁語文章。同其他修士一樣，他會用母語標注文中費解之處，或在行間，或在頁邊。這些文字存在的意義不只是用作旁注，因為它們被認為是西班牙語最早的文字記載。

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（西班牙語名為“米連”）建立，被稱作“西班牙語的搖籃”，不僅是聯(lián)合國教科文組織認定的世界文化遺產(chǎn)，也是熱門的旅游景點。1977年，西班牙還在這座修道院慶祝了西班牙語誕生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.

超級英雄的起源故事令所有人著迷。如今，西班牙語是世界第三大語言，使用人數(shù)超過五億，而這一切都要從一位修士為功課做的潦草筆記說起。然而，就像蜘蛛釋放的放射性物質(zhì)成就了超級英雄蜘蛛俠一樣，西班牙語的起源故事也有相當一部分是虛構的。

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)說西語的人往往將“西班牙語”和“卡斯蒂利亞語”畫等號，語言學家認為那位不知名修士寫下的文字更接近羅曼語族的阿拉貢語而非卡斯蒂利亞語。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的源頭。尋找語言淵源的想法是把語言當成了人，認為語言有名字、生日和出生地，但語言和人不同，它們更像是一個物種，從另一物種歷經(jīng)無數(shù)年分化而成。上述匆匆寫下的注釋既可以說是早期西班牙語，又可稱為退化的拉丁語——兩個說法都很準確，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渡形式最為準確：其中的單詞sieculos（世紀）幾乎完全介于拉丁文saecula與現(xiàn)代西班牙語siglos的中間。如此看來，產(chǎn)生這些注釋的修道院就如同西班牙語演進的一面鏡子。西班牙語在不斷發(fā)展的過程中，吸收了西哥特語、莫扎拉布語（受摩爾文化影響的語言）以及更近代的語言風格。正如參觀古跡的許多游客所看到的那樣，很難對已使用數(shù)百年的建筑追根溯源，因為最初的建筑早已所剩無幾，展現(xiàn)在游客面前的不過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.

想為語言書寫英雄史詩般的起源故事，恰恰反映了人們想于混亂中建立秩序的渴望。《貝奧武甫》和《羅蘭之歌》分別作為最早的英語和法語范例，被教授給以其他歐洲語言為母語的學生，由此語言演變這條宏大的故事線有了一個易于理解的開端。然而，文學本質(zhì)上依賴語言的存在，語言是詩歌和史詩寫就的前提。將一份書面作品描繪成某種語言的開端，無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.

將某種語言最早的文字記載類比作一個特定物種最早的化石痕跡似乎更為恰當。不過即便如此，人們也不應誤以為這就是該物種起源的時間。畢竟，古生物學家繪出的生命之樹上，那一個個排列整齊的節(jié)點只是對混亂復雜的歷史進程的簡化。

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言起源的確切日期。谷歌搜索“歐洲最古老的語言巴斯克語”，看看有多少人認為巴斯克語的歷史比西班牙語更悠久，哪怕這種語言出現(xiàn)的具體時間并不明確（尚不知巴斯克語從何種語言逐漸演化而來）。巧的是，古老的巴斯克語最早的文字記載只有六個單詞，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。再來看看近代的一個例子：諾亞·韋伯斯特在19世紀早期發(fā)起了適度的美式英語改革，如重塑center的拼法。有關美式英語的《被遺忘的開國元勛》一書意在將其視為英雄之舉，似乎是人們在尋求自身文化起源時的必然操作。

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.

美利堅合眾國這樣的法律實體的確有一個誕生日期，但語言并沒有。美式英語、卡斯蒂利亞西班牙語和其他各種歷經(jīng)緩慢、混亂變化過程的語言，并沒有清晰的起源故事。記住這個事實很有好處，它能提醒人們：大家同屬一個大家庭。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而非歷史。

（譯者單位：湖南師范大學）

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

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

5英國英雄史詩《貝奧武甫》是英國文學中第一部重要作品。這部作品用古英語寫成，是繼希臘、羅馬史詩之后歐洲最早的一部用本民族語言寫成的史詩。 6法國中世紀英雄史詩武功歌的代表作品。

7 lend oneself to sth適合于。