2019年经济学人 拉丁语的演化发展(1)（在线收听）

Books and Arts

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Johnson

《约翰逊》语言专栏

The Roman way

罗马精神

Latin is dead—yet, as Italian (and French, and Spanish), it lives on

拉丁语已经消亡了，但是，它仍然以意大利语(法语和西班牙语)的形式存在

Cicero, the Roman statesman whose prose is thought to represent the peak of style in Latin, was also a bit of a snob about it. Few others, he complained in a tome written in 46bc, used the language properly any more. His gripes would be worse today. At a recent mass at the Vatican attended by your columnist, some of the Latin used by Pope Francis was impeccable. But much of it was downright dismal; it would have been incomprehensible to Cicero. Strangely, the pope’s remarks were translated into several other species of terrible Latin.

西塞罗是罗马政治家，其散文被认为时拉丁语风格顶峰的代表，他本人对此也有点自命不凡。他在一部写于公元前46年的大部头著作中抱怨说，很少有人再正确地使用这种语言了。要是今天他可能抱怨更多。在本专栏作家最近在梵蒂冈参加的一次弥撒上，方济各教皇使用的一些拉丁语是无懈可陈的。但大部分情况下拉丁语的使用不尽人意；这对西塞罗来说是无法理解的。奇怪的是，教皇的话被翻译成其他几种糟糕的拉丁语。

That is because the pope’s dismal Latin is also known as “Italian”. Francis’s native language, Spanish, is another kind of deformed Latin. The French in which his interpreter greeted some of the faithful is yet another variety.

这是因为教皇所讲的没落的拉丁语也被称为“意大利语”。弗朗西斯的母语西班牙语是另一种变形的拉丁语。他的翻译问候一些忠实的信徒时使用的法语，这是另一种变体。

Family trees of languages typically show Spanish, French and Italian descending from Latin in the same way that you are descended from your mother. But this is misleading. There was no birth of Italian, nor any definitive death of Latin. Instead, there were centuries of infinitesimal changes. Those who noticed them would, like Cicero, have considered them mistakes. But most people didn’t care, which is how such tweaks took hold, and spread. As they accumulated, Latin did not create Italian and its sister languages. It became them.

语言的家谱通常显示，西班牙语、法语和意大利语是从拉丁语演变而来的，如同你是你母亲的后裔一样。但这是一种误导。没有意大利语的诞生，也没有确切的拉丁语的消亡。然而，却经历了几个世纪的微小变化。那些注意到它们的人，会像西塞罗一样，认为它们是错误的。但大多数人并不在意，这就是这种调整是如何生根发芽并传播开来的。随着变化的累积，并不是拉丁语创造了意大利语和姊妹语言。而是演变成了这些语言。