Why don't "tough" and "dough" rhyme? - Arika Okrent

翻译人员: Rana Al kilaney 校对人员: Lexi Ding

It was June 2010.

2010 年 6 月，

Inside the Scripps National Spelling Bee,

在全美拼字比赛中，

contestants between 8- and 15-years-old wrestled words

8 到 15 岁的参赛者们 艰难地应对着

like brachydactylous and leguleian.

诸如 brachydactylous 和 leguleian 这样的单词。

Outside, a crowd protested the complexity of English spelling conventions.

而在比赛现场外面，民众正在 抗议复杂的英语拼写惯例。

Indeed, spelling reformers have been around for centuries,

事实上，拼写改革者 已经存在了几个世纪，

advocating for overarching changes to make English spelling more intuitive.

他们主张进行全面变革， 使英语拼写更加简便。

The English language is chock-full of irregularities.

英语这种语言充满了不规则性。

One commonly used example of this: take the “g-h” sound from “enough,”

举个常用的例子： 取 “enough”中 “g-h” 的发音、

the “o” sound from “women,” and the “t-i” sound from “action,”

“woman” 中 “o” 的发音 和 “action” 中 “t-i” 的发音，

and you could argue that “g-h-o-t-i” spells “fish.”

你就能说 “g-h-o-t-i” 拼作 “fish”。

So, how did English get like this?

那么，英语是怎么演变成这样的呢？

English arose from old Germanic tribes that invaded the British Isles

英语起源于 1500 多年前

more than 1,500 years ago.

入侵不列颠群岛的古日耳曼部落。

Their languages coalesced and evolved into Old English.

他们的语言融合并演变为古英语。

When Roman missionaries arrived around 600 CE,

当罗马传教士在公元 600 年 前后到达不列颠群岛后，

they devised ways to write it down using the Latin alphabet,

他们想出了用拉丁字母 来书写古英语的方法，

supplementing it with some Germanic runes for sounds they didn’t have letters for.

对于没有拉丁字母能表示的发音， 就用一些日耳曼符文来补充。

Then came the Norman invasion of 1066 when French speakers conquered England.

然后是 1066 年的诺曼入侵， 法语使用者征服了英格兰。

French became the language of authority and high society.

法语成为官方和上流社会的语言。

But English remained the dominant spoken language.

但是英语仍然是主要的口语。

Over time, those descended from French speakers also became English speakers,

慢慢地，法语使用者的后代 也开始说英语了，

but some French words snuck into the language.

但有些法语单词则进入了英语中。

Some English speakers were also familiar with Latin through the church

一些英语使用者还通过 教会和正规教育

and formal education.

熟悉了拉丁语。

By the mid-1400s, people were writing in English again—

到了 15 世纪中期， 人们又开始用英语写作，

but it was unstandardized.

但当时的英语还没有标准化。

They used a mix of influences to determine word choice and spelling,

人们综合多种因素来确定 单词的选择和拼写方法，

including the French they knew, the Latin they studied,

包括他们认识的法语、学过的拉丁语

and the English they spoke.

和他们所说的英语。

So, things were already pretty messy.

因此，到这儿英语就已经很混乱了。

Then, in 1476, the printing press arrived in England.

接着，1476 年， 印刷机进入英格兰。

Some of the people working the presses may have mainly spoken Flemish—

一些在新闻界工作的人 可能主要讲佛兰德语，

not English.

而不是英语。

And they were given manuscripts that varied widely in their spelling.

他们收到的手稿拼写差异很大。

Without standardization, different writers went with various spellings

由于英语书写没有标准化，

based in part on what they happened to encounter while reading.

作家们会根据他们在阅读时 遇到的情况而使用不同的拼写。

Many words had a multitude of spellings.

许多单词有很多种拼写。

The word “dough,” for instance,

比如说 “dough” 这个词，

used to be spelled in all these ways and was originally pronounced “dach.”

曾被拼写为以上这些形式， 它最初的发音是 “dach”。

The guttural Germanic sound it ended with was one the Latin alphabet didn’t cover.

它结尾的日耳曼语喉音 没有对应的拉丁字母代表，

It eventually came to be represented with “g-h.”

最终以 “g-h” 表示。

But, for some “g-h” words,

但是，有些带 “g-h” 的单词，

English speakers eventually dropped the guttural sound altogether;

英语使用者最终 完全去掉了这个喉音；

for others, they ended up pronouncing it as “f” instead,

有些单词中的这个喉音 最终被 “f” 代替了，

as exemplified in “dough” versus “tough.”

比如 “dough” 和 “tough”。

Printing presses memorialized the spelling

尽管发音最终发生了变化，

even though the pronunciation eventually changed.

但印刷机记住了它们的拼写。

And this wasn’t just the case with “g-h.”

不仅仅只是 “g-h” 存在这种情况。

Some letters in other words also fell silent:

有些字母在其他单词中也不发音：

words like knife, gnat, and wrong

像 knife、gnat 和 wrong，

all contain the vestiges of past pronunciations.

都有过去发音的痕迹。

But while the printing press was solidifying spellings,

但在印刷机固化拼写的同时，

the English language was also undergoing what scholars call the Great Vowel Shift.

英语也在经历着学者们 所谓的 “元音大移位”。

Between the 14th and 18th centuries,

在 14 至 18 世纪之间，

the way English speakers pronounced many vowels changed significantly.

英语中许多元音的 发音方式发生了重大变化。

For instance, “bawt” became “boat.”

例如，“bawt” 变成了 “boat”。

This displaced the word for “boot,”

它也取代了 “boot” 这个词，

which had up until then been pronounced “boat,”

在此之前，“boot ” 的发音 一直是 “boat”，

and pushed it into the high “u” vowel position it maintains today.

“boot ” 中的元音也被提高到了 如今的高元音 “u” 的位置

Words that already had this high “u” often became diphthongs,

而原本的 “u” 音变成双元音，

with two vowels in a single syllable.

即一个音节中有两个元音。

So, “hus” became “house.”

因此，“hus” 变成了 “house”。

As with so many linguistic matters, there's no clear reason why this happened.

与许多语言问题一样， 这种情况发生的原因并不明确。

But it did.

但它确实发生了。

And how the vowel shift affected a word depended on various things,

元音移位对单词的影响 取决于多种因素，

including the other sounds in the word.

包括单词中的其他发音。

The word “tough” was once “tōh,” among other variations.

“tough” 曾经读作 “tôh”， 还有其他变体。

“Through” was once “thruch” and “dough” “dah.”

“through” 曾经读作 “thruch”， “dough” 曾经读作 “dah”。

These words all started with different vowel sounds

这些单词都以不同的元音开头，

that were then affected differently by the vowel shift.

然后受到元音移位的不同影响。

The “o-u” spelling they all adopted was a haphazardly applied French influence.

它们中都有的 “o-u” 拼写 源自法语偶然的影响。

So, eventually they wound up with still distinct vowel sounds,

所以，最终的发音不同，

but similar spellings that don’t really make much sense.

相似的拼写并没有多大意义。

All this means English can be a difficult language

以上这些都意味着， 对于非母语人士来说

for non-native speakers to learn.

英语可能是一门难学的语言。

And it reveals the many ways history, in all its messiness,

这也揭示了历史以多种方式 对英语产生影响，

acted upon English, making it especially tough.

这些方式错综复杂， 使英语变得尤为艰难。