John McWhorter on Linguistics, Music, and Race (Ep. 89 - Live at Mason)

As a result, it gets more and more complicated, more and more ingrown.

结果，它变得越来越复杂，越来越内生。

Whereas, Finnish, which is a sister language to Estonian, is actually kind of easy.

而芬兰语是爱沙尼亚语的姐妹语言，实际上很简单。

It’s easy Estonian.

爱沙尼亚语很简单。

So Estonian is a small language that’s almost never learned by adults and therefore almost never screwed up.

因此，爱沙尼亚语是一种小语言，成年人几乎从未学过，因此几乎从未搞砸过。

That is why it is so complicated.

That is why it is so complicated.

Most languages vastly overshoot anything that’s necessary, not only to just common sense, but to nuanced communication, and it’s just because they can.

大多数语言都远远超越了任何必要的东西，不仅是常识，而且是细致入微的沟通，这只是因为它们可以。

It’s amazing what a toddler’s head can get its mind around.

幼儿的头脑能掌控一切，真是令人惊奇。

By the time anybody’s old enough to realize that they’re speaking Estonian, it’s too late to fix it.

当任何人长大到意识到自己说的是爱沙尼亚语时，就已经太晚了。

I’m going to get in trouble for that.

I’m going to get in trouble for that.

It would be nice if language were more efficient because it would be easier to learn other people’s languages, et cetera, but it will never happen because languages are like cats.

如果语言更有效，那就太好了，因为学习其他人的语言会更容易等等，但这永远不会发生，因为语言就像猫。

They’re always crawling in and getting dirty or stung or something like that, and here we are.

它们总是爬进去，弄脏或被蜇伤或类似的东西，而我们就在这里。

It would be nice if language were more efficient because it would be easier to learn other people’s languages, but it will never happen because languages are like cats.

如果语言更高效就好了，因为学习其他人的语言会更容易，但这永远不会发生，因为语言就像猫。

They’re always crawling in and getting dirty or stung.

它们总是爬进去，弄脏或被蜇。

There should be an international language that really is ding-dong easy to learn, and it wouldn’t be one that was dumbed-down English.

应该有一种确实非常容易学的国际语言，而且不会是简单的英语。

It would be something that would be hard to recognize by any of us as a language, but that you could pick up in about a month.

我们任何人都很难将其视为一种语言，但你可以在大约一个月内学会。

That’s what we need.

这就是我们所需要的。

Because to tell you the truth, as far as standard English, as normal as this thing we’re speaking feels — to me, this is the language of God, if God existed, this is it — but actually more Indians speak it.

因为说实话，就标准英语而言，我们所说的感觉很正常——对我来说，这是上帝的语言，如果上帝存在，那就是它——但实际上更多的印度人说这种语言。

At this point, if a Martian came down, normal English would be that and this would be just some dialect.

在这一点上，如果火星人下来，那就是正常的英语，而这只是某种方言。

So what I want is for colloquial Indonesian to be the world’s universal language because actually that is the closest thing to an ideal language I have ever encountered.

所以我想要的是印度尼西亚语口语成为世界通用语言，因为实际上这是我遇到过的最接近理想语言的东西。

There were no cabs where I was.

我去的地方没有出租车。

It was just little mopeds, but you could get along.

这只是小型轻便摩托车，但你可以相处。

On pidgin and Creole languages

On pidgin and Creole languages

You don’t have hablo, hablas, habla and no ma mā má mǎ mà.

你没有哈布洛、哈布拉斯、哈布拉，也没有妈妈妈妈妈妈。

You just have a language.

你只是有一种语言。

It’s wonderful.

太棒了。

Then once it’s colloquial, it’s just this beautiful thing.

一旦变成口语，那就是一件美丽的事情了。

It’s human language as she should be spoke.

这是她应该说的人类语言。

Now, anywhere else you go in Indonesia, all of a sudden everything gets normal.

现在，无论你去印度尼西亚的任何其他地方，突然间一切都变得正常了。

But Malay Indonesia, it was a lingua franca for 2,000 years.

但马来印度尼西亚语却是 2000 年来的通用语言。

It’s been shaven of the nonsense.

废话已经被删掉了。

It’s a beautiful thing.

这是一件美好的事情。

But Creole languages were usually borne amidst barbarity.

但克里奥尔语通常是在野蛮中诞生的。

For example, it was a plantation language that arose when slaves were brought somewhere and couldn’t go home.

例如，这是一种种植园语言，当奴隶被带到某个地方并且无法回家时就出现了。

Hawaiian pidgin is actually a Creole, where, because you couldn’t use slaves anymore, you brought people from all corners of the earth to help harvest the pineapples, starting in the 1890s.

夏威夷洋泾浜语实际上是克里奥尔语，因为不能再使用奴隶，所以从 1890 年代开始，他们从世界各地带来了人们来帮助收获菠萝。

That sort of thing is not good, so there aren’t many new Creole languages emerging at this point.

这类事情并不好，所以目前还没有出现很多新的克里奥尔语言。

But to tell you the truth — and it’s interesting — there’s a little debate about this going on right now in a tiny corner of linguistics that somebody has somehow pushed me into.

但说实话——这很有趣——现在在语言学的一个小角落里正在发生一些关于这件事的争论，有人以某种方式把我推入其中。

And I kid you not with how petty academics can be.

我并不是在开玩笑，说学术界有多么狭隘。

There are a couple of linguistic academics who personally dislike me because of some theories that I’ve had about the nature of colloquial Indonesian speech.

有几位语言学者个人不喜欢我，因为我对印尼口语的本质有一些理论。

But it is the way that most people in Indonesia use language and it is — it’s not a pidgin — but it’s a Creole language.

但这是大多数印度尼西亚人使用语言的方式，而且它不是洋泾浜语，而是克里奥尔语。

It’s language born anew and made better that is spoken by a great many people.

这是一种重新诞生并变得更好的语言，被很多人使用。

You and I are not going to speak it.

你和我都不会说出来。

The truth is, the universal language for better or for worse, and mostly worse, is this, what we’re doing right here.

事实是，无论好坏，最糟糕的是，这就是我们在这里所做的事情。

English is that universal language, and I think it’s going to stay that way.

英语是通用语言，我认为它会保持这种状态。

It would be nice for me to say, “And one day it’s going to be Mandarin.” But it’s not because Mandarin’s too hard.

我很高兴说：“有一天它将成为普通话。”但这并不是因为普通话太难。

So English is where, unfortunately, it just is.

不幸的是，英语就是这样。

There’s all sorts of things about Mandarin that are nasty.

普通话有各种各样令人讨厌的东西。

Then, of course, the tones, which if you’re not born to tones, are really difficult.

当然，如果你不是天生擅长音调，那么音调真的很难。

But Mandarin is one of a handful of languages where geopolitical developments meant that, for a while, as many people were probably learning it as a second language, as a first.

但普通话是少数几种语言之一，地缘政治的发展意味着，在一段时间内，很多人可能将其作为第二语言来学习，而不是作为第一语言。

It’s funny — all the evidence that shows that that’s what was happening about 4,000 or 4,500 years ago in China.

这很有趣——所有的证据都表明这就是大约 4,000 或 4,500 年前在中国发生的事情。

And it meant that a language that was originally normal — and in this case, it would have been a language with lots of hablo, hablas, habla — became one with much less of that.

这意味着一种原本正常的语言——在这种情况下，它本来是一种含有大量哈布洛、哈布拉斯、哈布拉的语言——变成了一种含有大量哈布拉语的语言。

So Mandarin is one of those streamlined languages.

所以普通话是那些精简的语言之一。

But the way that you be a different culture, the way that you have yourself as an entity as separate from others, is to have your own code.

但是，要成为不同的文化，要使自己成为一个独立于他人的实体，就必须拥有自己的代码。

And it doesn’t matter how the code is built.

代码如何构建并不重要。

It doesn’t matter what the shape of the words are.

单词的形状并不重要。

But if everybody just speaks what we’re speaking now, what’s really going to happen is, it’s going to be this — Portuguese, Vietnamese, Mandarin, about 25 other languages.

但如果每个人都说我们现在所说的，那么真正会发生的事情将会是这样的——葡萄牙语、越南语、普通话，以及大约 25 种其他语言。

Then several hundred will be the minority languages, and all the rest won’t exist.

那么几百种就是小语种了，剩下的就都不存在了。

It means that there really is less cultural diversity because it’s harder to be a culture if you don’t have your own code.

这意味着文化多样性确实减少了，因为如果没有自己的代码，就很难成为一种文化。

On Saramaccan

萨拉玛坎岛

The English leave the place, and the Dutch come in.

英国人离开了这个地方，荷兰人进来了。

There’s a trade, and so New Amsterdam becomes New York.

有贸易，所以新阿姆斯特丹就变成了纽约。

Suriname goes from the English to the Dutch.

苏里南从英国人变成了荷兰人。

We here don’t care about the Suriname part, but that was the trade.

我们这里不关心苏里南部分，但这就是交易。

Now the Dutch are running it.

现在是荷兰人在经营它。

You’ve got English and Dutch.

你有英语和荷兰语。

Then some Portuguese-Jewish slave owners come in from Brazil.

然后一些葡萄牙犹太奴隶主从巴西进来。

That’s this whole other story of wandering Jews.

这就是流浪犹太人的另一个故事。

They probably bring slaves with them.

他们可能带着奴隶。

So 350 years later, what is spoken by the slaves there who were lucky enough to escape into the rainforest and were never caught?

那么 350 年后，那些幸运地逃进雨林并且从未被抓到的奴隶们会说些什么呢？

That is what Saramaccan is.

这就是萨拉马坎。

So they have their own language, and it’s been studied by many people, I am one of a great many.

所以他们有自己的语言，很多人都在研究它，我就是其中之一。

But it’s fascinating because it’s a mixture of all these languages.

但它很有趣，因为它是所有这些语言的混合体。

Then it’s got other stuff that it does all by itself and it’s tonal, so it’s absolutely fascinating.

然后它还有其他的东西，都是它自己做的，而且它是音调的，所以它绝对令人着迷。

Once you finish that, you go to Glossika, and you have intermediate sentences that are very idiomatic poured into your ear all day long, however much you want it.

一旦你完成了这些，你就可以进入 Glossika，不管你多么想要，你的耳朵里都会整天灌满非常地道的中间句子。

And by the end of it, you’re at roughly upper intermediate, so that’s something you can do.

到最后，你大致处于中上水平，所以这是你可以做的事情。

Immersion, after a while, is what you have to do unless you are very, very close to some individual who will tolerate listening to you sound bad for years.

一段时间后，你就必须沉浸在其中，除非你和某个人非常非常亲近，而这个人能够忍受多年听你的坏声音。

Other than that, you have to be immersed.

除此之外，你必须沉浸其中。

They were speaking crappy Old English.

他们说的是蹩脚的古英语。

There’s no such thing as newspaper.

没有报纸这样的东西。

There’s no such thing as school.

没有学校这样的东西。

There’s really no such thing as education.

确实没有教育这回事。

All there is is talk.

一切都是谈话。

You are a little girl or a little boy.

你是一个小女孩或一个小男孩。

You’re growing up with Mom speaking Beowulf and Dad speaking this sort of broken English, and maybe you liked Dad better.

在你的成长过程中，妈妈说着《贝奥武甫》，爸爸说着蹩脚的英语，也许你更喜欢爸爸。

Every third person in England talked that way.

英国三分之一的人都这样说话。

Pretty soon, people were speaking what we’re speaking now.

很快，人们就开始谈论我们现在所说的事情了。

We’re speaking shitty Old English.

我们说的是蹩脚的古英语。

That’s how it happened.

事情就是这样发生的。

One of those things — it was just this general cascade of complexities that filtered away — is that hither and thither and whither became archaic instead of current.

其中一件事——正是这种复杂性的普遍级联被过滤掉——是这里、那里、那里变得过时而不是流行。

So we speak a very, shall we say, streamlined Germanic language.

所以我们说的是一种非常流线型的日耳曼语言。

But the formality is key.

但形式是关键。

I kind of like that part.

我有点喜欢那部分。

We need to think of it as grammar rather than as some sort of frill.

我们需要将其视为语法而不是某种装饰。

I think a part of enlightenment can be to learn to read over that.

我认为启蒙的一部分可以是学会阅读它。

And that’s difficult, but I don’t think it’s impossible.

这很困难，但我不认为这是不可能的。

I think that, in many ways, the tenor of our times makes it more possible than it would have been in, say, 1955.

我认为，在很多方面，我们这个时代的基调使得它比 1955 年更有可能实现。

You learn to listen through an accent.

你学会通过口音来听。

I think there are harder things to do than that.

我认为还有比这更难的事情要做。

I don’t think we’ll ever be perfect at it.

我认为我们永远不会在这方面做到完美。

But I would rather teach people that than try to eliminate all of those markers.

但我宁愿教导人们这一点，也不愿试图消除所有这些标记。

One task would be easier than the other, I think.

我认为一项任务会比另一项任务更容易。

On speaking well

关于好好说话

And also, probably, growing up black and hearing people speaking a very nonstandard dialect, who you don’t yet have any reason to suppose are doing anything wrong — all of those things.

而且，很可能，在黑人成长过程中，听到人们说一种非常不标准的方言，你还没有任何理由认为他们做错了什么——所有这些事情。

I hear almost everybody as articulate, and I don’t mean that in the wide-eyed, forced way that it sounds.

我听到几乎每个人都口齿清晰，但我的意思并不是像听起来那样睁大眼睛、强迫自己。

There are some people who don’t speak well.

有些人不太会说话。

I know some, where I will say to people who I’ve primed, “You notice that she never really quite rubs a noun and a verb together?” Or there are people we can think of who really are stunningly inarticulate for the public positions that they’re in.

我知道一些，我会对那些我已经准备好的人说，“你注意到她从来没有真正把名词和动词放在一起吗？”或者我们可以想到有些人对于他们所担任的公共职位确实非常口齿不清。

I remember about 15 years ago even, something had happened, where somebody had done something arrogant.

我什至记得大约15年前，发生过一些事情，有人做了一些傲慢的事情。

A cousin of mine said something like “Blah, blah, blah, blah, did you see this?” I said, “Well, yeah, I imagine that he might have meant that.” And she said, “Yeah, there’s some of that.” Yeah, there’s some of that.

我的一个表弟说了这样的话：“巴拉，巴拉，巴拉，巴拉，你看到这个了吗？”我说：“嗯，是的，我想他可能就是这个意思。”她说：“是的，有一些。”是的，有一些这样的。

That’s the first time I ever heard that expression.

我还是第一次听到这种说法。

Yeah, there’s some of that.

是的，有一些这样的。

I’ve used it ever since.

从那以后我就一直用它。

That was very well put.

说得很好。

I liked that.

我喜欢那个。

Nobody would have called that person articulate, but I was just thinking, that’s a little bit of the art of the language that I hadn’t happened to have.

没有人会说那个人善于表达，但我只是在想，这是我碰巧不具备的一点语言艺术。

That is an honest answer.

这是一个诚实的回答。

Some people don’t talk well, but it’s rare.

有些人不太会说话，但这种情况很少见。

Now some people are just hyper articulate, but what I hear in life is, “That sounded good to me.” And it’s often a slob.

现在有些人只是善于表达，但我在生活中听到的是，“这对我来说听起来不错。”而且往往是个懒鬼。

But radio is what first started erasing those differences, and then when education got better, especially after the GI Bill.

但广播首先开始消除这些差异，然后当教育得到改善，特别是在《退伍军人权利法案》之后。

There are differences in today’s American English, but you have to dig to find a lot of them beyond cute little things like soda and pop.

当今的美式英语存在着差异，但除了苏打水和汽水等可爱的小东西之外，你还必须挖掘才能找到很多差异。

They surprise people.

他们让人们感到惊讶。

Whereas, a 100 years ago you wouldn’t have had to surprise anybody by showing that somebody from Colorado didn’t sound like somebody from Minneapolis.

然而，在 100 年前，如果你证明科罗拉多州的某个人听起来不像明尼阿波利斯的人，你不必让任何人感到惊讶。

No, things are coming together.

不，事情正在一起发生。

They’ll never come completely together because still people talk more to people they live near and spend time with than they do with others.

他们永远不会完全走到一起，因为人们与住在附近并与之共度时光的人交谈的次数仍然多于与其他人交谈的次数。

But, no, dialects are not diverging, unless, once again, I’ve missed something because I am a little bit overstretched, but in this case, I doubt it.

但是，不，方言并没有分歧，除非我再次错过了一些东西，因为我有点过度紧张，但在这种情况下，我对此表示怀疑。

On translating Shakespeare into English

论莎士比亚的英译

It’s that every 10th word, and especially late Shakespeare, means something different than what we think it means.

每十个词，尤其是晚期莎士比亚的作品，其含义都与我们想象的不同。

It goes by, and you’re a little confused if somebody says “generous,” and you think they mean magnanimous, and they mean noble.

渐渐地，如果有人说“慷慨”，你会有点困惑，你认为他们的意思是宽宏大量，他们的意思是高尚。

The line doesn’t make any sense, and you go “Huh?” Then about 10 lines later, somebody says “wit,” and what they really mean is knowledge, and you’re wondering why the line was funny.

这句话没有任何意义，你会说“嗯？”大约 10 行之后，有人说“机智”，他们真正的意思是知识，你想知道为什么这句话很有趣。

What, what?

什么，什么？

So you’re confused again.

于是你又迷茫了。

After that happens about 10 times, frankly, you’re bored if you’re seeing it in real time, for the first time.

坦率地说，这种情况发生大约 10 次后，如果你第一次实时看到它，你会感到无聊。

Now, if you’ve read it, fine.

现在，如果你已经读过它了，那就好了。

Some people would say — and I think that this is a legitimate answer — everybody should be expected to have read a Shakespeare play before they see it, in which case, it’s okay.

有些人会说——我认为这是一个合理的答案——每个人都应该在看莎士比亚戏剧之前读过它，在这种情况下，没关系。

I’ve done that.

我已经做到了。

Even as nerdy, obsessive me, if I haven’t read it, or I haven’t read it in a while, I will openly admit that, especially with Shakespeare, after about his first 10 minutes, if I go and see a production live, even if the people are British, and even if I’ve had coffee, I don’t know what the hell any of those people are saying.

即使我是一个书呆子、痴迷者，如果我没有读过它，或者我有一段时间没有读过它，我会公开承认，尤其是莎士比亚，在他的前十分钟之后，如果我去看现场制作，即使人们是英国人，即使我喝过咖啡，我也不知道那些人到底在说什么。

I think we need translations.

我认为我们需要翻译。

Conrad Spoke — I’m going to put in a word for Conrad Spoke, and I’m going to make sure he listens to this.

康拉德·斯波克（Conrad Spoke）——我要为康拉德·斯波克说几句话，我要确保他能听到。

He’s done, not translations, not like “Yo, yo, yo, Mercutio,” or something like that.

他已经完成了，不是翻译，不是像“哟，哟，哟，茂丘西奥”之类的东西。

It’s not that.

不是那样的。

It’s that you take each one of those little words that doesn’t make any sense.

而是你把这些小词中的每一个都理解为没有任何意义。

Somebody says “a haggard” and you’re thinking “A saggy-faced what?” And they mean a falcon.

有人说“憔悴”，你会想“下垂的脸是什么？”他们的意思是猎鹰。

Just put in damn falcon, and then you can go on.

只要放入该死的猎鹰，然后你就可以继续了。

If you do that, then all of a sudden Macbeth is like being at the Glass Menagerie.

如果你这样做，那么突然间《麦克白》就像置身于玻璃动物园一样。

You have to listen, and you might get lost every now and then, but you’re actually seeing a play, and you don’t have to have read it before.

你必须听，有时你可能会迷失方向，但你实际上是在看一场戏，而且你不必以前读过。

Translate Shakespeare last week, please.

请翻译上周莎士比亚的作品。

It’s interesting.

这很有趣。

You can read about the texting of people who do not have the benefit of any particular education.

您可以阅读有关未受过任何特定教育的人发短信的信息。

Almost every time they put their thumb to that pad, they’re creating some kind of poetry.

几乎每次他们把拇指放在那个垫子上时，他们都在创作某种诗歌。

So, no, the love letter’s not dead, it’s just that “The kids are doing it a different way.” And I don’t really mind.

所以，不，情书并没有死，只是“孩子们以不同的方式做这件事”。我真的不介意。

I don’t mind.

我不介意。

On remote interviewing

关于远程面试

But I would rather just hear the person.

但我宁愿只听听这个人的声音。

Maybe that’s because I’m kind of linguist-centric.

也许那是因为我有点以语言学家为中心。

I’m not sure what you’re getting at there.

我不确定你在那里得到了什么。

On things under- and overrated

关于被低估和高估的事情

But, no, he’s a — no one will ever ask me about this in public again — he is a very thin talent who got very lucky.

但是，不，他是——没有人会再在公开场合问我这个问题了——他是一位非常瘦弱的人才，但非常幸运。

He has a terrible sense of lyricism.

他有一种可怕的抒情感。

He does his job.

他做他的工作。

He’s not offensive, but he doesn’t have anything that I would call genius.

他并不具有攻击性，但他没有任何我称之为天才的东西。

Richard Rodgers could sit down and write a tune drunk, having yelled at somebody sometime in the ’50s, and had more of a melodic gift than Lloyd Webber has ever come up with more than about seven times.

理查德·罗杰斯 (Richard Rodgers) 在 50 年代的某个时候曾对某人大喊大叫，他可以坐下来写一首醉酒的曲子，他的旋律天赋比劳埃德·韦伯 (Lloyd Webber) 的天赋还要高出七次以上。

And when he comes up with a good melody, he often doesn’t have the decency to write a bridge to the song.

当他想出一首好旋律时，他常常没有礼貌地为这首歌写一个过渡。

A very thin talent.

一个非常单薄的人才。

Whenever I think of him, I think he made an awful lot of money, and he’s still making it, based on a thin talent.

每当我想起他时，我都会觉得他赚了很多钱，而且他仍然在靠着微薄的天赋赚到钱。

Some people get lucky.

有些人很幸运。

He was great.

他很棒。

He was a sad man.

他是一个悲伤的人。

He had certain problems that I think kept him from producing as much as he could have.

我认为他有某些问题，这些问题使他无法发挥出应有的水平。

But he did really great music, and his sheets are very pianistic.

但他的音乐确实很棒，而且他的乐谱也很有钢琴风格。

It’s always fun playing Harold Arlen songs because you can tell he really had a say in how they were written out.

演奏 Harold Arlen 的歌曲总是很有趣，因为你可以看出他对歌曲的创作方式确实有发言权。

Yeah, Harold Arlen — that’s an artist.

是的，哈罗德·阿伦——他是一位艺术家。

And look what happens to him.

看看他会发生什么。

He ends up dying miserable, and he’s this footnote, where most of us don’t know who he is, where Andrew Lloyd Webber is coming out of your faucet in the morning.

他最终悲惨地死去，他就是这个脚注，我们大多数人都不知道他是谁，安德鲁·劳埃德·韦伯早上从你的水龙头里出来。

It’s a tough life we live, Tyler.

我们的生活很艰难，泰勒。

No, the New York subway — it’s an American tragedy, and I’m surprised that the romance that a lot of people find in it .

不，纽约地铁——这是一场美国悲剧，我很惊讶很多人在其中找到了浪漫。

.

。

.

。

I’m beginning to sound like a curmudgeon, and it’s because I am, so there you go.

我开始听起来像个脾气暴躁的人，因为我就是个脾气暴躁的人，所以你就这样吧。

Rodgers and Hart — their work is like .

罗杰斯和哈特——他们的工作就像。

.

。

.

。

You know what it’s like?

你知道那是什么样子吗？

It’s like the fruitier and more interesting flavors of Jell-O.

这就像果冻的果味和更有趣的味道。

You can have cherry Jell-O, and you don’t care, and you were probably in some facility somewhere.

你可以吃樱桃果冻，但你不在乎，而且你可能在某个地方的某个设施里。

When Rodgers and Hart were really going, say, in Pal Joey or the Boys from Syracuse or — here’s one for the nerds — Heads Up.

当罗杰斯和哈特真的要参加《Pal Joey》或《来自锡拉丘兹的男孩》时，或者——这是为书呆子们准备的——《Heads Up》。

Ones like that.

诸如此类。

Good, good stuff.

好东西，好东西。

I’ve collected it all.

我已经全部收集起来了。

So I can’t say The Power Broker because everybody reads that.

所以我不能说《权力掮客》，因为每个人都读过它。

But ones that just came and went — that one really killed me.

但那些来来去去的人——那个真的杀了我。

And then last year, one of Weegee.

然后去年，Weegee 之一。

You always see the photographs of Weegee, some person laying on the pavement.

你总是会看到维吉的照片，有人躺在人行道上。

You think, “Weegee — he was short.” No, there was more to Weegee than that.

你会想，“Weegee——他个子矮。”不，Weegee 的意义远不止于此。

And Bonanos’s biography last year of Weegee, and I’m not just pushing this because I happen to be on the National Book Critics Circle — that’s over, but that was a really good book that I suspect is going to get lost amidst some glossier biographies.

去年，博纳诺斯为《维吉》写了传记，我之所以推动这本书，不仅仅是因为我碰巧是国家书评人圈子里的一员——这已经结束了，但那是一本非常好的书，我怀疑它会在一些更光彩夺目的传记中迷失。

And as wonderful as the melodies are — Boy, am I going to catch it for this, but I’m sorry.

尽管旋律很美妙——天啊，我能抓住它吗，但我很抱歉。

You people who are going to write me, you know it’s true — The melodies are absolutely wonderful, the harmonies are spectacular, the lyrics can be very good, but they are a very limited theme.

你们这些要给我写信的人，你们知道这是真的——旋律绝对美妙，和声壮观，歌词也很好，但它们的主题非常有限。

All of the moon, June, love stuff.

整个月亮，六月，都喜欢东西。

Why does it always have to be about love?

为什么总是和爱情有关？

We’re so used to that, just like we’re used to cartoon characters being about three feet tall and wearing gloves.

我们已经习惯了这一点，就像我们习惯了身高约三英尺、戴着手套的卡通人物一样。

You don’t think that’s the only way a cartoon character could be?

你不认为这是卡通人物的唯一方式吗？

Why do the songs always have to be about “I loved you, but you didn’t love me”?

为什么歌曲总是要表达“我爱你，但你不爱我”？

Cole Porter could have done so much more interesting work if he didn’t live when he did.

如果科尔·波特没有活着，他本可以做更多有趣的工作。

I say that as a great lover of the form.

我是作为一个形式的热爱者这么说的。

These days, if you talk about, say, Paul Simon, frankly, the music is different.

如今，如果你谈论保罗·西蒙，坦率地说，音乐是不同的。

It’s less structured than what Harold Arlen did.

它的结构不如哈罗德·阿伦所做的那样。

But he writes, frankly, about, very often, more interesting things.

但坦率地说，他经常写更有趣的事情。

“Stormy Weather” — frankly, that’s a good poem, but Paul Simon, richer, I think.

《暴风雨天气》——坦率地说，这是一首好诗，但我认为保罗·西蒙更富有。

Dylan, richer than Oscar Hammerstein, for example.

例如，迪伦比奥斯卡·汉默斯坦更有钱。

It’s just that where’s the bounce?

只是反弹在哪里？

Now, Taylor Swift — that’s generated kind of synth-y-pop-y stuff, which has its place.

现在，泰勒·斯威夫特——它产生了一种合成流行音乐的东西，它有它的地位。

There is lemon Jell-O.

有柠檬果冻。

He had more training than Duke Ellington, and so at the time, he happened to be able to do it.

他比艾灵顿公爵受过更多的训练，所以在当时，他恰好能够做到这一点。

Duke, who I adore, couldn’t have pulled that off.

我崇拜的杜克不可能做到这一点。

Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein — they do Showboat.

杰罗姆·科恩 (Jerome Kern) 和奥斯卡·汉默斯坦 (Oscar Hammerstein) — 他们是演戏的。

Showboat is towering as well.

Showboat 也高耸入云。

I know people on Facebook who are in tears about the 1988 recording of Showboat in the original orchestrations, and I remember feeling the same way at the time.

我认识 Facebook 上的一些人，他们对 1988 年录制的 Showboat 的原始编排感到热泪盈眶，我记得当时也有同样的感觉。

Showboat, though, is thinner art than Porgy and Bess.

不过，《Showboat》是比《波吉与贝丝》更薄弱的艺术。

It’s got wonderful things in it, but in the original Showboat, Queenie was played by a white woman in blackface.

里面有很多精彩的东西，但在最初的《Showboat》中，奎妮是由一位黑脸的白人女性扮演的。

It was a show of its time.

这是当时的一场表演。

So I love Showboat, but Kern was like Porter — he did what he did very well, but he was no Arlen.

所以我喜欢 Showboat，但科恩就像波特一样——他做得很好，但他不是阿伦。

He was a seasoned songwriter.

他是一位经验丰富的歌曲作者。

That’s what he did.

他就是这么做的。

No, I like Porgy and Bess better.

不，我更喜欢波吉和贝丝。

Porgy and Bess, to me, is a human being.

对我来说，波吉和贝丝是一个人。

They’re times when, if life isn’t going well, I will put on the Houston Opera production of Porgy and Bess and lay down on a couch, and just sit there and listen and lose myself in somebody having created something where you wonder where it came from.

有时，如果生活不顺利，我会欣赏休斯顿歌剧院制作的《波吉与贝丝》，躺在沙发上，只是坐在那里聆听，迷失在某人创造的东西中，你想知道它来自哪里。

Showboat to me is not that.

对我来说，炫耀并不是那样。

I’m fully aware of the existence of racism, fully.

我完全意识到种族主义的存在。

However, that does not belie what I just said.

然而，这并不与我刚才所说的相反。

Such that it seems to me, take it another couple of generations afterward, and to say that if there was an Eminem, if there was an Adele, if there were people of this kind, can we really not have a white person playing a black person with it having a different meaning than it did when Tess Gardella was up on stage playing Queenie in 1927?

在我看来，再过几代人之后，如果有一个阿姆，如果有一个阿黛尔，如果有这样的人，我们真的不能让白人扮演黑人，这与 1927 年苔丝·加德拉 (Tess Gardella) 在舞台上扮演奎妮时的意义不同吗？

I think we have to get there, and I can see it already in maybe the children of today’s children.

我认为我们必须达到这个目标，而且我可能已经在今天的孩子们身上看到了这一点。

It’ll start peeping through because we’re not really past race until that can be.

它会开始窥视，因为在那之前我们还没有真正结束比赛。

I think we’re in a strange place where there was a great love for blackness that co-exists with a great hatred for other aspects of blackness.

我认为我们正处在一个奇怪的地方，人们对黑人有着极大的热爱，但同时又对黑人的其他方面深恶痛绝。

Now, it could be it just stays that way forever.

现在，它可能会永远保持这种状态。

However, if it did, that would be the first time in human history that things were that static.

然而，如果确实如此，这将是人类历史上第一次事物如此静态。

I think that even when it comes to race in America, things can move, and that would be one symptom of it.

我认为即使涉及到美国的种族问题，事情也会发生变化，这就是其中的一个症状。

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was reparations.

1977 年的《社区再投资法案》就是赔偿。

So much has been reparations.

赔偿就这么多了。

Some of it worked.

其中一些有效。

Some of it didn’t.

其中一些没有。

It already happened, but I hear that, today, those things somehow don’t count.

它已经发生了，但我听说，今天，这些事情不知怎的已经不算数了。

You talk about how you have to move along in time, that things evolve, and I don’t want to be a curmudgeon.

你谈到你必须及时前进，事物不断发展，而我不想成为一个脾气暴躁的人。

I’ve said recently —

我最近说过——

All evidence is that, one, that would not change the lives of black America to any significant degree.

所有证据都表明，第一，这不会在任何程度上改变美国黑人的生活。

And more to the point, once that happened — Tyler, this is the hardest thing — that could happen in two weeks.

更重要的是，一旦发生这种情况——泰勒，这是最难的事情——可能会在两周内发生。

Those checks would go out.

这些支票将会被发放出去。

I’d get one, and I’d probably give it to somebody else.

我会得到一个，而且可能会把它送给别人。

But I’m black.

但我是黑人。

Thank you for this money for somebody who went through things who I never knew.

感谢您为一个经历过我不知道的事情的人提供这笔钱。

Thank you.

谢谢。

I don’t really want that, but I know many black people would feel differently.

我真的不想这样，但我知道很多黑人会有不同的感觉。

But once that happened, I think that we’re in an ideological place in our society where before the ink was dry on those checks, the fashionable thing to say among our best and brightest black writers would be, “They better not think that they can just write us off with a check.”

但一旦发生这种情况，我认为我们的社会就处于一个意识形态的境地，在这些支票上的墨迹未干之前，我们最优秀、最聪明的黑人作家中流行的说法是，“他们最好不要认为他们可以用一张支票来注销我们。”

And on t-shirts, it would be — on t-shirts!

在 T 恤上，它会是——在 T 恤上！

— there would be memes going around and gifs going around saying reparations is just the beginning, not an end.

——会有一些表情包和动图流传开来，说赔偿只是开始，而不是结束。

It wouldn’t solve any problems.

它不会解决任何问题。

But people who are agitating for it now would be just as angry, just as indignant.

但现在鼓动它的人也会同样愤怒、同样愤慨。

And it’s not because I’m saying that they line their pockets or that it’s their career to be angry.

我并不是说他们中饱私囊，也不是说他们的职业就是生气。

But I think that it is a psycho-social position to feel that way about race that doesn’t go away on the basis of anything in the real world having changed.

但我认为，对种族有这种感觉是一种心理社会立场，这种立场不会因为现实世界发生任何变化而消失。

But if there could be that kind of reparations, and there could be an agreement among the black pundit-ocracy and the yell-ocracy and the twitter-ocracy, that it was going to matter, that we’re going to do this — we’re going to have the checks and maybe a few other things, and then we’re going to admit that something happened — then I’d get behind it because life isn’t perfect, and I’d come up with something to do with that check.

但是，如果可以有这种赔偿，并且黑人专家统治、叫喊统治和推特统治之间可以达成一致，那就很重要，我们要做这件事——我们会得到支票，也许还有其他一些事情，然后我们会承认发生了一些事情——然后我就会支持它，因为生活并不完美，我会想出一些与支票有关的事情。

I guess it would put one of my daughters through college or something.

我想这会让我的一个女儿读完大学或者其他什么。

But I can’t see that happening, and I would not wish to get behind extra reparations that would not be accepted as significant, with people telling me that I was unsophisticated for thinking that it was.

但我看不到这种情况发生，我也不希望支持额外的赔偿，因为人们告诉我，我认为这是不重要的，所以不会被认为是重要的。

That’s my position about reparations.

这就是我对赔偿的立场。

I can name some people.

我可以说出一些人的名字。

I’ll name one of them who I enjoyed a lot 10, 15 years ago: Star Parker.

我将说出 10、15 年前我非常喜欢的其中一位：Star Parker。

She was there, she was around.

她就在那儿，她就在身边。

But for some reason — I’m not sure what the reason is that a non-male person is not on that list.

但出于某种原因——我不确定非男性不在该名单上的原因是什么。

It’s a short list, but still, I don’t know.

这是一个简短的清单，但我仍然不知道。

And even though people’s intentions toward other races may not be worse — possibly they’re better — but that still racism, in practical terms today, is a larger problem than it was, say, in the 1990s.

尽管人们对其他种族的意图可能并不更糟——可能更好——但从今天的实际角度来看，种族主义仍然是一个比 20 世纪 90 年代更大的问题。

True or false?

是真是假？

More to the point, even if what you were saying were true, and I’m not saying that it’s not, but let’s say that were true.

更重要的是，即使你说的是真的，我并不是说它不是，但我们可以说这是真的。

The question is how decisive the effect is.

问题是效果有多大决定性。

I would say that we tend to suppose — and I’m not sure what the answer to this is; I really am not sure what the answer to this is — we tend to suppose the conditions in a certain post-industrial society — starting in the late 20th century after the death of Christ, that particular time, and then going into the early 21st century — that somehow conditions then made it uniquely impossible for a certain group, the descendants of several generations past, of African slaves, to succeed.

我想说的是，我们倾向于假设——但我不确定答案是什么；我真的不确定这个问题的答案是什么——我们倾向于假设某个后工业社会的条件——从基督死后的 20 世纪末开始，那个特定的时间，然后进入 21 世纪初——不知何故，这些条件使得某个群体，即过去几代非洲奴隶的后裔，独特地不可能取得成功。

That their problems had to have been due to something that we call racism, with the implication that it’s discrimination, with the idea being that if it wasn’t discrimination, then just the fact that there was the discrepancy means that there was racism, and if somebody puts it that way, you give them a National Book Award.

他们的问题一定是由于我们称之为种族主义的东西造成的，这意味着它是歧视，其想法是，如果不是歧视，那么只要存在差异这一事实就意味着存在种族主义，如果有人这样说，你就给他们颁发国家图书奖。

I’m not quite sure what the justification for that view is.

我不太确定这种观点的合理性是什么。

I know that the problems black America has are not black America’s fault, and I’ve tried to write about that.

我知道美国黑人面临的问题不是美国黑人的错，我也试图写下这一点。

It’s not that somebody’s lazy.

并不是某人懒惰。

It’s not that somebody’s a poverty pimp.

这并不是说某人是一个贫穷的皮条客。

It’s not that somebody’s lining their pockets.

这并不是说有人中饱私囊。

It’s a complex cocktail of socio-historical factors that have put it in this place.

它是社会历史因素的复杂混合体，才导致它处于这个位置。

But to say that racism is the main problem —

但要说种族主义是主要问题——

It’s more complicated.

情况更复杂。

So, yes, I can accept that, but I don’t think that’s what we should think of when we try to figure out how to solve the problems.

所以，是的，我可以接受这一点，但我认为当我们试图找出解决问题的方法时，我们不应该考虑这一点。

Because if we say that we want to get rid of the racism, it seems that we don’t know how to do that, and so that would mean nothing can happen at all.

因为如果我们说我们要消除种族主义，我们似乎不知道如何去做，所以这意味着什么也不会发生。

And once social scientists started telling us that that’s the way it was going to go, starting in the late ’60s, when the big keyword was automation, et cetera.

从 20 世纪 60 年代末开始，社会科学家开始告诉我们事情将会如此，当时的大关键词是自动化等。

Unfortunately, just when people got really comfortable with, for example, the deindustrialization hypothesis, a massive influx of immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa started coming into American cities and not living glorious lives, but showing that there was something you could do.

不幸的是，就在人们真正接受去工业化假说时，来自加勒比海和非洲的大量移民开始涌入美国城市，并没有过着辉煌的生活，而是表明你可以做一些事情。

And that doesn’t mean that black Americans are somehow worse, that this was black American’s fault.

这并不意味着美国黑人在某种程度上更糟糕，这并不意味着这是美国黑人的错。

Once again it was a series of cocktails, but if you’ve got .

这又是一系列鸡尾酒，但如果你有的话。

.

。

.

。

for example, here we are in Washington, DC.

例如，我们在华盛顿特区。

The person who drove me here was Ethiopian.

开车送我来这里的人是埃塞俄比亚人。

I notice whenever I come to DC, the person who drives me somewhere in a cab is black.

我注意到每当我来到华盛顿时，开出租车载我去某个地方的人都是黑人。

They’re often black American.

他们通常是美国黑人。

Now that’s probably not the greatest job in the world.

现在这可能不是世界上最伟大的工作。

It’s not as good as that job in the tire plant 50 years ago, but there were things one could do.

虽然不如 50 年前在轮胎厂的工作那么好，但还是有一些事情可以做的。

The issue is why so many people back then got lost.

问题是为什么当时有那么多人迷路了。

So I take your point, but the result didn’t have to be what happened starting roughly in the early ’80s.

所以我同意你的观点，但结果不一定是大约在 80 年代初开始发生的事情。

On the John McWhorter production function

关于约翰·麦克沃特生产函数

Friends Select School was a wonderful place.

Friends Select School 是一个很棒的地方。

I’m sure some people from it will hear me saying this, but Friends Select School, from 1977 to 1981 — I learned some things about the nuclear freeze and about being a peaceful person.

我确信其中的一些人会听到我这么说，但是从 1977 年到 1981 年，在朋友精选学校——我学到了一些关于核冻结和成为一个和平的人的事情。

But, frankly, I was a hormonal teenager, and what I learned was that geometry was hard and what Rosh Hashanah and Seder are.

但是，坦率地说，我是一个荷尔蒙旺盛的青少年，我学到的是几何学很难，而犹太新年和家宴是什么。

Yes, I became Jewish, and I learned homework, and I played the cello.

是的，我成为了犹太人，我学了家庭作业，我拉了大提琴。

Whole nine yards — I learned it all from her.

整整九码——我从她那里学到了这一切。

It’s part of why I try to put myself in the head of her equivalent today when thinking, “Why do some black people disagree with me about this, that, and the other?” I think, “Well, how would Mom have put it?”

这就是为什么我今天在思考“为什么有些黑人在这个、那个和其他问题上不同意我的观点时”时，试图将自己置于她的同等人的头脑中。我想：“那么，妈妈会怎么说呢？”

It’s time for me to stop saying this because I think it’s gotten to the point that people do know.

现在是我停止这么说的时候了，因为我认为这已经到了人们确实知道的地步。

Ten years ago, I would say, “Actually I’m a liberal.” And people would just throw pumpkins and watermelons.

十年前，我会说：“实际上我是一个自由主义者。”人们只会扔南瓜和西瓜。

Now, maybe I’ll get one peach or something like that because what I am is, I’m a cranky liberal.

现在，也许我会得到一个桃子或类似的东西，因为我是一个脾气暴躁的自由主义者。

I’m not a Republican, I have never been a conservative.

我不是共和党人，我从来都不是保守派。

But Mom taught me “the right way to think.” She taught me what that side was.

但妈妈教会了我“正确的思考方式”。她告诉我那一面是什么。

I think that she was too pessimistic, but then again, she grew up in the deep South in the ’40s and ’50s.

我认为她太悲观了，但话又说回来，她是在 40 年代和 50 年代的南方腹地长大的。

I would have come out of that deeply pessimistic too.

我也会从那种极度悲观的情绪中走出来。

I learned the left catechism from her.

我从她那里学到了左教义问答。

I can always hear it in my head, and almost all of it was correct.

我脑子里总能听到这句话，而且几乎全部都是正确的。

But my sense is, where do you go from that?

但我的感觉是，你该何去何从？

And that’s easier for me to think of, having grown up Jewish in the ’70s as opposed to having participated in sit-ins in the ’50s and ’60s.

对我来说，我更容易想到这一点，因为我是在 70 年代长大的犹太人，而不是在 50 年代和 60 年代参加过静坐。

That stuck with me because now, I’ve seen almost every Looney Tune.

这一直困扰着我，因为现在我几乎看过每一部乐一通。

It’s one of these ridiculous things that I collect and do, like the Jell-O.

这是我收集和做的荒谬的事情之一，就像果冻一样。

It is one of the joys of my life.

这是我一生的乐趣之一。

My little girls are now watching them and learning the titles because that’s what I am.

我的小女儿们现在正在观看它们并学习它们的标题，因为这就是我。

That’s part of my identity.

这是我身份的一部分。

Other than that though, what Dad taught me was music really.

但除此之外，爸爸教我的其实是音乐。

He was — it’s hard to say this now — imagine Bill Cosby as we knew him before.

他是——现在很难说——想象出我们以前认识的比尔·科斯比。

That was the demeanor.

这就是风范。

He was that same age.

他也是那个年纪。

He wore those same sweaters.

他穿着同样的毛衣。

He could play every musical instrument and he taught me that.

他会演奏所有乐器，他教了我这一点。

I teach a music history class at Columbia to avoid boredom, and about every third thing, I find, Dad taught me that.

为了避免无聊，我在哥伦比亚大学教音乐历史课，我发现大约有三分之一的事情都是爸爸教给我的。

Clinking his bourbon, he would say, “Well, that’s a pedal point.

他一边碰着波本酒，一边说：“嗯，这是一个踏板点。

That’s a Picardy third.

这是皮卡第第三。

You should be able to play a boogie-woogie bottom with your left hand.

您应该能够用左手演奏布吉伍吉底部。

Play it, play it!

玩吧，玩吧！

Can’t you play it?” That sort of thing.

你不能玩吗？”诸如此类的事情。

So, I learned that from him.

所以，我从他那里学到了这一点。

But no, I didn’t learn much about university administration from him, as a child.

但不，小时候我并没有从他那里学到太多关于大学管理的知识。

It is equally divided between people from all over the world, or at least most parts of the world, and then NPR–two kid–over-educated people such as me, so you’ve really got everything in the world.

来自世界各地，或者至少是世界大部分地区的人们，以及 NPR——两个孩子——像我这样受过过度教育的人，都平等地分配了这些资源，所以你真的拥有了世界上的一切。

And there’s a KFC and a Denny’s, so you’re talking about real diversity as opposed to just Tibetan food and stuff like that.

还有肯德基和丹尼，所以你谈论的是真正的多样性，而不仅仅是西藏食物和类似的东西。

It is a wonderful, wonderful neighborhood.

这是一个非常棒的社区。

There just isn’t enough parking, but nothing’s perfect.

只是停车位不够，但没有什么是完美的。

I can walk to LaGuardia.

我可以步行到拉瓜迪亚。

On a clear day, I can walk to LaGuardia.

天气晴朗时，我可以步行到拉瓜迪亚机场。

It’s a pleasure.

我的荣幸。

Then also the ones who — there’s no time for this — but the question of the difference between phoneme and an allophone.

然后还有那些——没有时间——但音素和音位变体之间的区别问题。

For example, I can say “bottle,” or I can say “botel.” Now, if I say “botel,” you all think of it as a kind of a T.

例如，我可以说“bottle”，或者我可以说“botel”。现在，如果我说“botel”，你们都会认为它是一种 T。

So uh in American English is an allophone of T, of T-ness.

所以在美式英语中，uh 是 T、T-ness 的变体。

Whereas, if I say “bobble,” that’s a different word from bottle.

然而，如果我说“bobble”，那是与瓶子不同的词。

So bu and tu in English are phonemes, real sounds.

所以英语中的 bu 和 tu 是音素，真实的声音。

Tu and uh are just variations on one another.

Tu 和 uh 只是彼此的变体。

They’re allophones.

它们是同音异体。

That distinction takes three weeks to get through, and some people never get it.

这种区别需要三周的时间才能完成，而有些人却永远无法理解。

To watch a student learn what a phoneme is — you see the light bulb on go over their head.

看着学生学习音素是什么——你会看到灯泡在他们的头顶上亮起。

Then you think, “She’s not one of them.” That’s always nice.

然后你会想：“她不是他们中的一员。”这总是好的。

So phonemes — Russian and Chinese.

所以音素——俄语和汉语。

I didn’t really know what “it” was.

我真的不知道“它”是什么。

But I thought, “Well, if she says it, and she’s British, then it must be my calling.” So I went on.

但我想，“好吧，如果她这么说，而且她是英国人，那么这一定是我的使命。”所以我继续说下去。

It was then.

就在那时。

Although actually, there was a guy later in college.

虽然实际上，大学后来有一个人。

I asked this linguist — his name was Tom.

我问了这位语言学家——他的名字叫汤姆。

He ought to be ashamed of himself.

他应该为自己感到羞耻。

He had a handlebar mustache.

他留着八字胡。

You out there, Tom?

汤姆，你在外面吗？

And I said, “I want to be a linguist.” And he said, “Well, no it’s all been done.

我说：“我想成为一名语言学家。”他说：“好吧，不，一切都已经完成了。

It’s all been figured out.” That derailed me for about three years.

一切都已经弄清楚了。”这让我脱轨了大约三年。

Goddamn you, Tom.

该死的你，汤姆。

It was that British lady.

就是那位英国女士。

The last one I did, I’d been thinking about genes — not dungarees, but DNA — genes and language and what the two can say about one another.

在我做的最后一件事中，我一直在思考基因——不是工装裤，而是 DNA——基因和语言，以及两者可以如何评价彼此。

I just thought, “Well, let’s do the show about that.” That’s the one that’s dropping the day after we are taping tonight.

我只是想，“好吧，让我们来做这个节目吧。”这是我们今晚录制后第二天发布的。

It’s really just giving the audience my toys.

这实际上只是给观众我的玩具。

Some of it is, how do you get it across to an audience that doesn’t want to be taken too far into the weeds?

其中一些问题是，如何才能让那些不想陷入困境的观众明白这一点？

And teaching, in general, helps you with that.

一般来说，教学可以帮助你做到这一点。

But really, for me, it’s just, “Here’s my toy box.

但实际上，对我来说，这只是，“这是我的玩具盒。

Let’s just jump in.”

我们就跳进去吧。”

Q&A

问答

In particular, I will tell you that I was at Duke at the time, and I got to know your work through a great black conservative, Kenny Williams, who was on the faculty in the English department.

我要特别告诉你，我当时在杜克大学，通过一位伟大的黑人保守派肯尼·威廉姆斯（Kenny Williams）了解了你的工作，他是英语系的教员。

She was pretty much the only conservative in the English department and one of the only people who defended the idea of the author against the deconstructionism that was running at Duke.

她几乎是英语系中唯一的保守派，也是唯一捍卫作者思想反对杜克大学解构主义的人之一。

She was a great admirer of yours, and I’d like to hear your thoughts about the deconstructionist moment, the attack on the idea of authorship, those views of language — how you saw them in the culture wars at the time when you were involved in a debate over Ebonics, and how you see them playing out today.

她是你的崇拜者，我想听听你对解构主义时刻的看法，对作者身份观念的攻击，对语言的看法——当你卷入关于黑人黑人的辩论时，你在文化战争中如何看待它们，以及你如何看待它们今天的表现。

The Ebonics controversy was less about authorship than about an oppressed group of people making a claim about education and where your allegiance lay, depending on your politics.

Ebonics 的争议与其说是关于作者身份，不如说是关于一群受压迫的人对教育和你的效忠对象提出主张，这取决于你的政治观点。

That was the beginning of me in the media.

这就是我从事媒体工作的开始。

That’s beginning to seem so abstract that, for me, the reason I’m sitting here is probably because I was on the wrong side of the Ebonics debate because I said the reason that black kids are having trouble in school is because of home lives and neighborhood problems and not the difference between isn’t and ain’t on the page.

这开始显得如此抽象，以至于对我来说，我坐在这里的原因可能是因为我在黑人辩论中站在了错误的一边，因为我说黑人孩子在学校遇到麻烦的原因是家庭生活和邻里问题，而不是“不在”和“不在页面上”之间的区别。

I had no idea that anybody was going to consider that the wrong thing to say.

我不知道有人会认为这是错误的说法。

But it was considered disloyal, and so it got me attention for about five minutes, which I hadn’t expected.

但这被认为是不忠诚的，所以它引起了我大约五分钟的注意，这是我没想到的。

But to tell you the truth, to go out of my bailiwick, to the extent that people are beginning gradually to be allowed to read books for aesthetic pleasure again in literature departments, and although it’s just a squeak from what I’ve heard, I’d say that that’s a good thing.

但说实话，走出我的管辖范围，文学系又开始逐渐允许人们为了审美愉悦而读书，虽然只是我听到的吱吱声，但我想说这是一件好事。

But no one ever asked me to toss my hat in on that.

但从来没有人要求我参与其中。

Linguists study grammar rather than the literacy code.

语言学家研究语法而不是识字代码。

Is that the answer that you wanted, or am I missing something?

这是你想要的答案，还是我遗漏了什么？

So, although there is always a diversity of opinions, I think that what was called the culture wars back then has been won by the left in terms of a certain orthodoxy, a certain set of ideas that you’re considered to at least have to grapple with.

因此，尽管总是有各种各样的观点，但我认为，当时所谓的文化战争是左派凭借某种正统观念、某种你被认为至少必须应对的思想而赢得的。

And this is within the rarefied world of the university and college town.

这是大学和大学城的稀有世界。

I think that elsewhere, there’s particularly a pushback against it now, especially over the past 10 years.

我认为，在其他地方，现在尤其是在过去的十年里，它受到了特别的抵制。

But in terms of what I sense is your world and the one that I have maybe six of my toes in, I think that it’s not even a war at this point.

但就我所感受到的你的世界和我可能有六个脚趾的世界而言，我认为此时此刻甚至不是一场战争。

And to tell you the truth — it’s funny.

说实话——这很有趣。

Don’t take this wrong, but you’re asking that question as if it was 50 years ago, the idea that you might want to take elocution lessons.

别误会，但你问这个问题就像是 50 年前一样，你可能想参加演讲课程。

To be honest, it’s part of these culture wars.

老实说，这是这些文化战争的一部分。

To be honest, the way that you speak today is a plus.

说实话，你今天说话的方式是一个优点。

It makes you distinctive.

它让你与众不同。

There is, for better or for worse, a cult of authenticity, which can be good and bad.

无论好坏，都存在着一种对真实性的崇拜，这可能是好是坏。

But people will listen to you more, and I think you would elicit more sympathy with the accent that you have.

但人们会更多地听你说话，我认为你的口音会引起更多同情。

Your facial expression suggests that you’re really surprised to hear this from me.

你的面部表情表明你对我说的这个消息感到非常惊讶。

But, no, I would love to speak the way you speak, unless I’m missing something.

但是，不，我很想像你一样说话，除非我遗漏了什么。

It gives you a calling card, no?

它会给你一张电话卡，不是吗？

But Esperanto is just Italian made easy with some other stuff thrown in.

但世界语只是意大利语，加入了一些其他东西，变得简单。

Esperanto verbs, if you grow up, really, almost anywhere else on earth, are a nightmare.

世界语动词，如果你长大后，真的，几乎在地球上的任何地方，都是一场噩梦。

Zamenhof is assuming that a language has to have things like, “He had seen the book when he went to the store.” Languages often leave that nuance to context.

Zamenhof 假设一种语言必须具有类似这样的内容：“他去商店时看到了这本书。”语言常常将这种细微差别留给上下文。

So Esperanto’s a fun toy.

所以世界语是一个有趣的玩具。

Of all of the artificial languages it is the handiest.

在所有人工语言中，它是最方便的。

Volapük, for example, the other one that was really popular — somebody made up an artificial language that was hard, so why would you bother?

例如，沃拉普克语（Volapük）是另一种非常受欢迎的语言——有人创造了一种很难的人工语言，那么你为什么要费心呢？

So where is that margin?

那么这个余量在哪里呢？

Is it just trivial things or, to take one example, do political brandings like saying someone is “pro-life” instead of “anti-abortion” — does that influence the way people reason or not reason about subjects like that?

这只是一些微不足道的事情，还是举个例子，政治品牌比如说某人“反堕胎”而不是“反堕胎”——这是否会影响人们对此类话题的推理或不推理的方式？

Does that influence real opinions and real outcomes?

这会影响真实的观点和真实的结果吗？

Pro-life, pro-choice — those are very clever terms, and we’ve gotten a bead on them.

反对堕胎、反对堕胎——这些都是非常聪明的术语，我们已经了解了它们。

We know what they mean.

我们知道他们的意思。

That’s what’s always going to happen.

这就是总会发生的事情。

Language affects thought in sweet little ways that you can tease out by hooking wires up to somebody’s head and showing that they have some tiny distinction.

语言以甜蜜的小方式影响思维，你可以通过将电线连接到某人的头上并显示他们有一些微小的区别来梳理出这些方式。

Russian has two words for blue.

俄语中有两个词表示蓝色。

One of them means light blue and one of them doesn’t.

其中之一表示浅蓝色，而其中之一则不是。

And you can do an experiment that shows that Russians are infinitesimally more sensitive to noticing when the blue shades from one blue to another.

你可以做一个实验来证明，当蓝色从一种蓝色变为另一种蓝色时，俄罗斯人对注意到的程度要敏感得多。

Is that a worldview?

这就是世界观吗？

I certainly hope not.

我当然希望不会。

But terminology — yeah, you can move things along, but you have to realize that you’re going to have to keep on renewing the terms.

但是术语——是的，你可以推动事情的发展，但你必须意识到你必须不断更新术语。

It’s thought that you have to change, not the language.

人们认为你必须改变，而不是语言。

Now, obviously, you want to be intentional.

现在，显然，你想要有意识地这样做。

You want to be a smart, rational person, but the pressure of that baton is always at your back.

你想成为一个聪明、理性的人，但接力棒的压力始终在你背后。

So I want to know what you would say, even to your daughters, who are growing up in a time when people like Rosa Parks seem like ancient dinosaurs, but they were around only a few decades ago.

所以我想知道你会说什么，即使是对你的女儿们，她们成长在一个像罗莎·帕克斯这样的人看起来像古代恐龙的时代，但他们只在几十年前出现。

This is my real answer.

这是我真正的答案。

People talk about singing — well, no, people don’t always talk about this, but they should.

人们谈论唱歌——嗯，不，人们并不总是谈论这个，但他们应该。

If you’re trying to hit a high note, one way that you hit the high note is you look up at it, and you go ahhh , and you think of it as an effort.

如果你想达到高音，达到高音的一种方法是你抬头看它，然后你会“啊”，然后你认为这是一种努力。

If you have a really high note, what a good singer does is imagine themselves looking down on it.

如果你有一个非常高的音符，一个好的歌手所做的就是想象自己俯视它。

That’s how you hit a high note — ahhh — like that.

这就是你如何唱出高音的——啊——就像那样。

In the same way, if you’re thinking of being black as a burden, and I don’t know what your personal circumstances are, but often you’re taught that you’re working against all of this flak from the outside because people are leveling microaggressions at you, et cetera.

同样，如果你认为黑人是一种负担，而且我不知道你的个人情况是什么，但你经常被告知，你正在对抗来自外界的所有这些批评，因为人们对你进行微侵犯，等等。

And, you know, they are.

而且，你知道，他们是。

But as far as I’m concerned, and I think this is the way someone thought before about 50 or 60 years ago — talk about the culture wars and how you can forget that you’re making assumptions rather than dealing with truth — is that, if somebody throws a little something like that at you, you look down on it.

但就我而言，我认为这是大约 50 或 60 年前有人的想法 - 谈论文化战争以及你如何忘记你正在做出假设而不是处理事实 - 如果有人向你抛出类似的小东西，你就会看不起它。

And if anybody tells you that that makes you arrogant, well, then, frankly, I guess it does.

如果有人告诉你这会让你变得傲慢，那么，坦率地说，我想确实如此。

But keep being arrogant because I have never understood the idea that some person calls me nigger, and I’m supposed to fall down crying and run to the diversity coordinator because that hurt me, when, frankly, it didn’t.

但继续傲慢，因为我从来不理解有人叫我黑鬼，我应该哭着跑到多样性协调员那里，因为这伤害了我，但坦率地说，它没有。

Really, I’m better than the person who said that.

确实，我比说这句话的人好多了。

That’s the way I always felt, and somewhere past 30, I realized, “Oh, that’s supposed to make me cry.”

这就是我一直以来的感受，在 30 多岁的时候，我意识到，“哦，这应该让我哭泣。”

I inculcate that in anybody I know because it’s the way I always felt.

我向我认识的每个人灌输这一点，因为这是我一直以来的感受。

And to be honest, with the way both of my daughters act — they’re going to hear this one day — the way both of them act, I can tell that I’m not even going to have to teach them.

说实话，从我两个女儿的行为方式来看——她们有一天会听到这个——她们俩的行为方式，我可以看出我什至不需要教她们。

The idea is, if anybody gives you any of that, well, they messed up and you have a lot to live for, and life is never perfect, and think about the good dinner we’re having tonight.

这个想法是，如果有人给你任何这样的东西，那么，他们搞砸了，你有很多值得生活的东西，生活永远不会完美，想想我们今晚吃的美味晚餐。

That’s not a bromide.

那不是溴化物。

Be a little snobbish.

有点势利。

Don’t let people tell you that you’re supposed to bend yourself down to the insults that other people lob at you, especially when they’re subtle and abstract.

不要让别人告诉你，你应该屈服于别人对你的侮辱，尤其是当他们是微妙和抽象的时候。

You’re better.

你好多了。

You’re just better.

你只是更好了。

And I know that that’s not what I’m supposed to be saying to you as a 54-year-old person with a certain responsibility, but I think I’m right.

我知道这不是我作为一个 54 岁、负有一定责任的人应该对你说的话，但我认为我是对的。

And I guess that means that I’m arrogant, but then again, in that sense most black people were arrogant in about 1950.

我想这意味着我很傲慢，但话又说回来，从这个意义上说，1950 年左右的大多数黑人都是傲慢的。

Be like old people.

像老人一样。

What is the effect of that kind of control on the development of a language, and I guess, creativity or innovation or the culture in a larger macro sense?

这种控制对语言的发展有什么影响，我想是创造力、创新或更宏观意义上的文化？

For example, in terms of blackboard grammar rules, the only one in English that has really ever worked is the one that says “Billy and I went to the store” rather than “Billy and me.” Almost everybody in this room probably has mastered saying “Billy and I” except when you’re drunk or something like that.

例如，就黑板语法规则而言，唯一真正有效的英语规则是“比利和我去了商店”而不是“比利和我”。几乎这个房间里的每个人都可能已经掌握了说“比利和我”，除非你喝醉了或类似的情况。

That’s because that’s become this matter of shame.

那是因为这已经成为一件耻辱的事情。

But otherwise, all those rules that we learn, the things that everybody breaks all the time, and it never really changes.

但除此之外，我们学到的所有规则，每个人都一直违反的规则，而且从来没有真正改变过。

Now Korea is interesting.

现在韩国很有趣。

If you’re talking about having an utterly opaque writing system that doesn’t fit the language structure meaningfully at all, that’s going to exert a certain downward pressure on the ability of the masses to express themselves in writing, and therefore, you’re not going to have creativity from down below that anybody is going to record because nobody can write.

如果你谈论的是一个完全不透明的书写系统，根本不符合语言结构，这将对大众以书面形式表达自己的能力施加一定的下行压力，因此，你不会有任何人都会记录的创造力，因为没有人会写。

But even there, it’s surprising in that the Chinese writing system — and Korean King Sejong came up with this perfect writing system that is now the envy of the world — the Chinese writing system, I would say, is a great lover of Mandarin Chinese.

但即便如此，令人惊讶的是中文书写系统——朝鲜世宗大王发明了这个完美的书写系统，现在令全世界羡慕——我想说，中文书写系统非常喜欢普通话。

I’ve been working the past five years on this, and it’s at the point that I can walk by a sign and get most of it and pat myself on the back because I decided I’m going to learn that shit because, I can tell, they don’t want me to learn it, so that is why.

过去五年来我一直在做这件事，现在我可以走过一个标志，了解其中的大部分内容，并拍拍自己的背，因为我决定我要学这些东西，因为我可以看出，他们不想让我学，所以这就是原因。

But the Chinese writing system is an utter, hair-raising, ridiculous, indefensible nightmare.

但中文的书写系统完全是一场令人毛骨悚然、荒唐可笑、站不住脚的噩梦。

Utter nightmare, created basically for scribes to use among themselves.

完全是噩梦，基本上是为抄写员之间使用而创建的。

It’s all like this running joke.

这一切就像这个流行的笑话。

And yet, what’s interesting is that ordinary people do use it.

然而，有趣的是普通人确实在使用它。

It’s amazing what toddlers can take in.

幼儿能接受的东西真是令人惊奇。

It’s amazing what a populous can do.

一个人口众多的国家能做到的事情真是令人惊奇。

You’re in a Chinese restaurant and the waiter’s doing this.

你在一家中餐馆，服务员正在做这件事。

That guy knows thousands of these things.

那家伙知道成千上万的事情。

It’s amazing what people can do, but you don’t want to overdo it and have Korean written in Chinese.

人们能做的事情令人惊奇，但你不想做得太过分，把韩语写成中文。

That was, frankly, if I may insult your country — but it was 600 years ago — that was barbaric.

坦率地说，如果我可以侮辱你们的国家的话——但那是 600 年前的事了——那是野蛮的。

But it’s amazing what people can make do with.

但人们可以用这些来凑合着用，真是令人惊奇。

It’s nice, but I always go to the full thing when it comes to Porgy and Bess.

这很好，但当谈到波吉和贝丝时，我总是会全力以赴。

Miles Davis, in general, yes, he’s represented about seven times.

迈尔斯·戴维斯，总的来说，是的，他代表了大约七次。

They do have phonemes.

他们确实有音素。

They do have allotones, and it’s a very interesting analysis because what you see is people using their hands.

他们确实有allotones，这是一个非常有趣的分析，因为你看到的是人们使用他们的手。

You think, well, the one thing they don’t seem to have is sound.

你想，嗯，他们似乎没有的一件事就是健全的。

But you do have the equivalent of that.

但你确实有同等的东西。

They are complex.

它们很复杂。

They have all the stuff that regular languages have.

它们拥有常规语言所拥有的所有东西。

Actually, Tyler, you asked about Creoles.

事实上，泰勒，你问的是克里奥尔语。

I remember you were talking about if new ones were being born.

我记得你在谈论是否有新的诞生。

I knew there was something I wasn’t saying.

我知道我有话没说。

Sign languages being born are that happening.

手语的诞生就是这样的事情。

There are many of them being born, for some reason, in Asia in particular, yes.

是的，由于某种原因，他们中的许多人出生在亚洲，尤其是在亚洲。

They’re actually a very interesting new language genesis story.

它们实际上是一个非常有趣的新语言起源故事。

This suffix means that.

这个后缀就是这个意思。

This suffix means that.

这个后缀就是这个意思。

This suffix means that.

这个后缀就是这个意思。

They’re elegant in that way.

他们在这方面很优雅。

Mongolian gets fun in that there are hybrid languages spoken, for example, in Tibet, where some dialect of Mandarin, some dialect of Tibetan — and Tibetan is really like 30 different languages — and then some Mongolian language, all have a train wreck, and they create this mixture language that nobody’s ever heard of outside of the village.

蒙古语的有趣之处在于，有混合语言，例如，在西藏，有一些普通话方言，一些藏语方言——藏语真的就像30种不同的语言——然后还有一些蒙古语，所有这些都有一个火车残骸，他们创造了这种在村子之外没有人听说过的混合语言。

That has happened a lot.

这种事已经发生过很多次了。

If by any chance, you are Mongolian, this happens with, for example, the Baarin variety, so there’s that.

如果万一你是蒙古人，这种情况就会发生在巴林品种上，所以就是这样。

Then the other thing about Mongolian is that you could be a Mongolian speaker and run China for a long time, or a language related to Mongolian, and it can have no real effect on the system at all because they didn’t really talk to the population.

关于蒙古语的另一件事是，你可能是一个说蒙古语的人，并长期统治中国，或者是一种与蒙古语相关的语言，但它根本不会对系统产生真正的影响，因为他们并没有真正与民众交谈。

But the fact is, Chinese has existed in relationship to many Mongolian-speaking people up in the north for a long time.

但事实是，汉语与北方许多蒙古语民族的关系已经存在很长时间了。

So a lot of the things that make Chinese hard are because it’s mixed with Mongolian, and you end up having this sort of hybrid system.

因此，很多让汉语变得困难的事情是因为它与蒙古语混合在一起，最终形成了这种混合系统。

That’s the Mongolian story of all things.

这就是蒙古万物的故事。