Unit 6

Table of Contents

• Audio
• Text&Translation
• Summary&Mindmap
• Analysis
• Paraphrase

Audio

📼 AUDIO TAPE

Text&Translation

Very few white Americans are aware of the extent to which the great majority of black Americans suffer from linguistic schizophrenia—of a unique sort. The diglossia² problem of the lower-class black is unusual because he does not speak a colloquial or "incorrect" form of Standard English. Instead, he speaks a dialect³ that has a strikingly different grammar and sound system, even though to white ears the black appears to be trying to speak Standard English. Anyone who speaks Black English⁴ is likely to find himself stigmatized as a user of an inferior kind of Standard English, whereas actually he is speaking a radically different dialect that is as consistent and elegant as whites consider their Standard English to be.

绝大多数美国白人并未意识到，大部分美国黑人正经历着一种独特的语言分裂之苦。下层黑人面临的双言现象颇为特殊，因为他们说的并非标准英语的口语体或所谓的“不规范”形式。恰恰相反，他们使用的是一种方言，其语法体系和发音特点与标准英语迥然不同，尽管在白人听来，黑人似乎总是在努力模仿标准英语。任何讲黑人英语的人，都很可能被污蔑为说着一口蹩脚的标准英语，然而事实上，他们所讲的乃是一种截然有别的方言，其内在的系统性和精妙之处，足以媲美白人引以为傲的标准英语。

The whole subject of Black English is so tied up with both racism and good intention that it rarely is discussed calmly, even by specialists in the field. At one extreme is the racist, conscious or unconscious, who attributes black speech to some physical characteristic like thick lips or a large tongue; he is certain that it is inferior speech and that it must be eradicated. At the other extreme is the well-intentioned liberal who denies that he detects much of a departure from white speech; he regards Black English as simply a southern United States dialect, and he is likely to attribute any departure from white speech to the black's educational deprivation. Both views are wrong. Black English's radical departure from Standard English has nothing to do with the anatomy of race or with educational deprivation. The history of the English spoken by New World blacks⁵ shows that it has been different from the very beginning, and that it is more different the farther back in time one goes. Of course, some blacks speak exactly like whites, but these cases are both recent and exceptional; the overwhelming majority speak Black English some or all of the time.

关于黑人英语的整个议题，总是与种族主义和所谓的善意纠缠不清，以至于即便在领域内的专家之间，也难得有冷静的探讨。一个极端是自觉或不自觉的种族主义者，他们将黑人言语归咎于诸如厚嘴唇、大舌头之类的生理特征，并断言这是一种低劣语言，必须予以根除。另一个极端则是那些用心良苦的自由派人士，他们否认黑人言语与白人言语有何显著差异，仅将其视为美国南方的一种方言，并倾向于将任何差异归咎于黑人所受教育的匮乏。这两种观点皆属谬误。黑人英语与标准英语的根本差异，既与种族生理构造无关，也与教育缺失无涉。新大陆黑人所用英语的历史表明，它从一开始便与众不同，且年代越是久远，其差异便越是显著。当然，确有一些黑人的英语说得与白人别无二致，但这种情况既属晚近，亦为例外；绝大多数黑人在部分或全部时间里，说的都是黑人英语。

By "Black English" I do not mean the spirited vocabulary⁶ whose adoption by some whites gives them the mistaken impression that they are talking real soul to their black brothers. These rich and metaphoric words are much less important than grammar for a description of Black English. They originated by the same processes that gave rise to the slang, jargon, and argot words⁸ of Standard English, and, like the Standard words, they have seeped out to become part of the general vocabulary. Many words that were once the exclusive property of speakers of Black English—groovy, square, jive, rap, cool, chick, dig, rip off, and so on—are now commonly used by speakers of white Standard English. I do not refer to the superficial vocabulary, which changes from year to year, but to its largely different history, sound system, and basic structure.

我所说的“黑人英语”，并非指那些生动鲜活的词汇。一些白人学会了这些词，便误以为自己能与黑人兄弟进行真正的“灵魂”沟通。在描绘黑人英语时，这些丰富且富于比喻色彩的词语，其重要性远不及语法。它们的起源过程，与标准英语中俚语、行话和暗语的产生如出一辙；而且，如同标准英语中的那些词汇一样，它们也已逐渐渗透，成为大众词汇的一部分。许多一度为黑人英语使用者专有的词汇——诸如groovy、square、jive、rap、cool、chick、dig、rip off等等——如今已成为讲标准英语的白人普遍使用的词语。我所指的并非那些年年变化的表层词汇，而是其迥然有别的历史源流、语音体系和基本结构。

What we hear today as Black English is probably the result of five major influences: African languages⁹; West African pidgin¹⁰; a Plantation Creole¹¹ once spoken by slaves in the southern United States as well as by blacks as far north as Canada; Standard English; and, finally, urbanization in the northern ghettoes. The influence of African languages on black speech was long denied, until in 1949 Lorenzo Dow Turner¹² published the results of his fifteen-year study of Gullah¹³, a black dialect spoken in the coastal region around Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. Gullah is important in the history of Black English because this region continued to receive slaves direct from Africa as late as 1858—and so any influence from Africa would be expected to survive there longer. Turner accumulated compelling evidence of resemblances in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar between Gullah and various Western African languages. He listed some 4,000 Gullah words for personal names, numbers, and objects that are derived directly from African languages. Some of these words—such as tote, chigger, yam, and tater ("potato")—eventually entered Standard English.

我们今天所听到的黑人英语，或许是五种主要影响交织作用的结果：非洲本土语言、西非皮钦语、一度在美国南方奴隶以及远至加拿大北部的黑人群体中使用的种植园克里奥尔语、标准英语，以及最终形成的北方聚居区的城市化进程。非洲语言对黑人言语的影响曾长期遭到否认，直至1949年，洛伦佐·道·特纳发表了他对古拉语长达十五年的研究成果。古拉语是南卡罗来纳州查尔斯顿和佐治亚州萨凡纳沿海地区的一种黑人方言。古拉语在黑人英语史中之所以重要，是因为该地区直到1858年仍在直接从非洲输入奴隶——因此，任何来自非洲的影响都可能在此地留存更久。特纳收集了大量令人信服的证据，证明了古拉语与多种西非语言在发音、词汇和语法方面的相似之处。他列举了约四千个古拉语词汇，涉及人名、数字和物品名称，均直接源于非洲语言。其中一些词汇——例如tote（搬运）、chigger（恙螨）、yam（山药）和tater（土豆）——最终也进入了标准英语。

The second influence, pidginization, is more apparent because the languages spoken today by the descendants of slaves almost everywhere in the New World—regardless of whether these languages were based on English, French, Dutch, Spanish, or Portuguese—share similarities in sound patterns and in grammar. For example, the common Black English construction He done close the door has no direct equivalent in Standard English, but it is similar to structures found in Portuguese Pidgin, Weskos of West Africa, French Creole of Haiti, the Sranan Creole of Surinam, and so on. An analysis of the speech of slaves—as recorded in eighteenth-century letters, histories, and books of travel—indicates that the great majority of them in the continental United States spoke pidgin English, as much in the North as in the South. This was to be expected since blacks speaking many languages were thrown together in the West African slave factories and they had to develop some means of communication. No matter what their mother tongues were, they had been forced to learn a second language, an African Pidgin English that at least as early as 1719 had been spread around the world by the slave trade. We can be certain of that year because it marked the publication of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe¹⁴, which contains numerous examples of this pidgin and also uses, in the character Friday, the West African and slave tradition of bestowing personal names based on the days of the week.

第二个影响因素是皮钦化过程，这一点更为显见，因为如今新大陆几乎所有奴隶后裔所讲的语言——无论其基础是英语、法语、荷兰语、西班牙语还是葡萄牙语——在语音模式和语法结构上都存在着相似之处。例如，黑人英语中常见的表达“He done close the door”（意为“他已经关了门”）在标准英语中并无直接对应，但它与葡萄牙皮钦语、西非的维斯克斯语（Weskos）、海地的法语克里奥尔语、苏里南的苏拉南克里奥尔语（Sranan Creole）等语言中的结构颇为相似。对十八世纪信件、史书和游记中所载奴隶言语的分析表明，在美国大陆，无论南北，他们中的绝大多数人当时说的都是皮钦英语。这种情况本在预料之中，因为在西非的奴隶贸易站，操着不同语言的黑人被强行聚集一处，他们必须设法发展出某种交流工具。无论其母语为何，他们都被迫学习第二语言——一种非洲皮钦英语；这种语言最迟在1719年就已通过奴隶贸易传遍了世界。我们之所以能确定这一年份，是因为丹尼尔·笛福的《鲁滨逊漂流记》于该年出版。书中不仅有大量这种皮钦语的实例，并且通过“星期五”这一角色，运用了西非及奴隶群体中依照星期几给孩子命名的传统。

Therefore most slaves must have arrived in the New World speaking a pidgin that enabled them to communicate with each other and eventually also with overseers. In the succeeding generations a small number of blacks were taught Standard English. But the great majority apparently expanded their pidgin into a Creole language—called Plantation Creole by some linguists even though it was also spoken in the North—by grafting an English vocabulary onto the structures of their native languages and pidgins.

因此，大多数奴隶初抵新大陆时，说的必定是一种皮钦语，这种语言使他们能够相互沟通，并最终也能与监工交流。在后世子孙中，少数黑人获得了学习标准英语的机会。然而，绝大多数人显然是将他们的皮钦语发展成了一种克里奥尔语——一些语言学家称之为“种植园克里奥尔语”，尽管这种语言在北方亦有流传——其方式便是将英语词汇嫁接到他们本土语言及皮钦语的既有结构之上。

The wonder is that it took people so long to realize that Black English is neither a mispronunciation of Standard English nor an accumulation of random errors made in the grammar of Standard English. Utterances in Black English are grammatically consistent and they are generated by rules in the same way that utterances in Standard English are generated by rules. People may not regard utterances in Black English to be “good English”—but that is beside the point, because Black English is using a different set of rules than those of Standard English.

令人费解的是，人们竟花费了如此漫长的时间才认识到：黑人英语既非标准英语的讹误发音，亦非标准英语语法中随意错误的堆砌。黑人英语的语句表达在语法上是连贯一致的，并且与标准英语一样，都是依照特定规则生成的。人们或许不认为黑人英语的表达是“规范的英语”——但这并不重要，因为黑人英语所遵循的是一套与标准英语迥然相异的规则体系。

Summary&Mindmap

English Summary The article asserts that Black English is a distinct, rule-governed linguistic system, often misunderstood as "incorrect" Standard English due to racism or well-meaning but misguided views. It emphasizes BE's unique grammar and sound system, separate from its vocabulary. The author traces BE's complex origins to African languages, West African pidgin, Plantation Creole, Standard English, and urbanization, concluding that BE is internally consistent and not an accumulation of errors.

中文概括 文章论证了黑人英语是一种独特的、有规则的语言系统，常常因种族主义或善意但被误导的观点而被误解为“不正确的”标准英语。文章强调黑人英语拥有其独特的语法和发音体系，这与其词汇是分开的。作者追溯了黑人英语的复杂起源，包括非洲语言、西非皮钦语、种植园克里奥尔语、标准英语以及城市化进程，并总结道，黑人英语内部逻辑一致，并非错误的累积。

Analysis

1. Very few white Americans are aware of the extent to which the great majority of black Americans suffer from linguistic schizophrenia—of a unique sort.

   • 中文翻译: 很少有美国白人意识到，绝大多数美国黑人在何种程度上承受着一种独特的“语言精神分裂症”。
   • 详尽解释:
     • "the extent to which...": 这是一个常见的从句引导结构，表示“到……的程度”。这里指美国白人没有意识到美国黑人承受痛苦的“程度”有多深。
     • "linguistic schizophrenia": “语言精神分裂症”。这是一个比喻性表达。“Schizophrenia”（精神分裂症）指人格分裂，这里用来形容黑人使用者在标准英语和黑人英语之间可能感受到的那种语言上的内在冲突、不适感或身份认同的分裂。他们可能在不同场合需要切换语言，或者因为使用黑人英语而感到被主流社会排斥，从而产生一种语言上的“分裂”感。
     • "—of a unique sort": 破折号后的内容是对“linguistic schizophrenia”的补充说明，强调这种“语言精神分裂症”是“一种独特的类型”，突出了其特殊性。

2. Anyone who speaks Black English is likely to find himself stigmatized as a user of an inferior kind of Standard English, whereas actually he is speaking a radically different dialect that is as consistent and elegant as whites consider their Standard English to be.

   • 中文翻译: 任何讲黑人英语的人都很可能发现自己被污名化，被认为是标准英语的一种劣等使用者，而实际上，他讲的是一种截然不同的方言，这种方言的连贯性和优雅程度，与白人认为他们标准英语所具有的程度相当。
   • 详尽解释:
     • "find himself stigmatized as...": “发现自己被污名化为……”。"Stigmatized" 意为“被贴上污名标签，被羞辱”，这里是被动语态，强调说话者所遭受的外部评价。
     • "whereas": 连接词，表示强烈的对比或转折，相当于“然而”、“但实际上”，引出与前述情况相反的事实。
     • "radically different dialect": “截然不同的方言”。"Radically" 意为“根本上地”、“彻底地”，强调黑人英语与标准英语之间的差异是本质性的，而非表面上的。
     • "that is as consistent and elegant as whites consider their Standard English to be (consistent and elegant)": 这是一个复杂的定语从句，修饰 "dialect"。核心是 "as...as..." 的同级比较结构，比较的是“连贯性”（consistent）和“优雅性”（elegant）。特别之处在于比较的后半部分 "whites consider their Standard English to be (consistent and elegant)"，表明比较的基准是“白人认为他们的标准英语所具有的（连贯性和优雅性）”。这暗示了黑人英语自身的语言价值不亚于标准英语，挑战了主流社会对标准英语优越性的固有认知。末尾的 "to be" 后面省略了形容词 "consistent and elegant"，避免重复。

3. The whole subject of Black English is so tied up with both racism and good intention that it rarely is discussed calmly, even by specialists in the field.

   • 中文翻译: 整个关于黑人英语的话题与种族主义和善意（的动机）如此紧密地交织在一起，以至于即使是该领域的专家也很少能平静地讨论它。
   • 详尽解释:
     • "is so tied up with...": 这是一个固定搭配的引申用法，字面意思是“被捆绑在一起”，引申为“与……紧密相关联/纠缠在一起”。这里指黑人英语这个话题与“种族主义”和“善意（动机）”这两个看似矛盾但都可能导致误解的因素复杂地联系在一起，使得客观讨论变得困难。
     • "good intention": “善意”。指那些可能出于帮助或平等的良好愿望，但由于不了解或采取了错误视角（如否认黑人英语的独特性），反而阻碍了对黑人英语的正确认识。
     • "so...that...": 这是一个经典的结果状语从句引导结构，表示“如此……以至于……”。由于前述的紧密纠缠，导致了“它（指黑人英语这个话题）很少能被平静地讨论”的结果。
     • "rarely is discussed calmly": “很少被平静地讨论”。这里 "is discussed" 是被动语态，"rarely" 放在助动词前加强了否定的语气。

4. At the other extreme is the well-intentioned liberal who denies that he detects much of a departure from white speech; he regards Black English as simply a southern United States dialect, and he is likely to attribute any departure from white speech to the black's educational deprivation.

   • 中文翻译: 在另一个极端是那些善意的自由主义者，他们否认自己察觉到（黑人语言与白人语言有）太大的差异；他把黑人英语仅仅看作是美国南方的一种方言，并且他很可能将（黑人语言）与白人语言的任何差异归因于黑人所受的教育剥夺。
   • 详尽解释:
     • "At the other extreme is...": 这是一个倒装句，正常语序是 "The well-intentioned liberal... is at the other extreme"。将地点状语 "At the other extreme" 提前，用以强调与前文所述“种族主义者”相对的另一种极端观点。
     • "well-intentioned liberal": “善意的自由主义者”。指那些在政治或社会观点上倾向自由、平等，出发点是好的，但其观点同样可能基于误解或片面认识。
     • "denies that he detects much of a departure from white speech": “否认他察觉到与白人语言有很大差异”。"Departure from" 意为“偏离，差异”。这里的自由主义者为了避免显得“歧视”，反而否认了黑人英语的独特性。
     • "attribute any departure from white speech to the black's educational deprivation": “将（黑人语言）与白人语言的任何差异归因于黑人所受的教育剥夺”。"attribute...to..." 是固定搭配，意为“把……归因于……”。这种观点将语言差异简化为教育水平问题，忽视了黑人英语自身独特的历史和语言系统。

5. The history of the English spoken by New World blacks shows that it has been different from the very beginning, and that it is more different the farther back in time one goes.

   • 中文翻译: 新大陆黑人所讲英语的历史表明，它从一开始就有所不同，而且时间越往回追溯，它的差异性就越大。
   • 详尽解释:
     • "The history of the English spoken by New World blacks shows that...": 主句是“历史表明……”，其主语是一个较长的名词短语，核心词是 "history"，修饰成分是 "of the English spoken by New World blacks"（新大陆黑人所讲的英语的）。后面跟了两个由 "that" 引导的并列宾语从句，共同说明历史所揭示的内容。
     • "it has been different from the very beginning": 第一个宾语从句，强调黑人英语的独特性是自始至终的。“from the very beginning” 语气强烈，指从最早的源头算起。
     • "and that it is more different the farther back in time one goes": 第二个并列的宾语从句。这个从句的难点在于其内部的比较结构 "the + 比较级..., the + 比较级..." (此处为 "the more different..., the farther back...")。这个结构表示“越……，就越……”。原句调整了语序，可以理解为 "the farther back in time one goes, the more different it (Black English) is/becomes"。意思是“一个人在时间上回溯得越远，（黑人英语与标准英语的）差异就越大”。这强调了黑人英语并非标准英语的退化，而是有其独立发展并随时间演变的轨迹。

6. By "Black English" I do not mean the spirited vocabulary whose adoption by some whites gives them the mistaken impression that they are talking real soul to their black brothers.

   • 中文翻译: 我所说的“黑人英语”，并非指那些生动的词汇，这些词汇被一些白人采纳后，让他们错误地以为自己正在和他们的黑人兄弟进行“真正的灵魂交流”。
   • 详尽解释:
     • "By "Black English" I do not mean...": “我所说的‘黑人英语’，并非指……”。这是一种澄清定义的表达方式，作者在此明确排除一种常见的对黑人英语的片面理解。
     • "the spirited vocabulary": “生动的词汇”。"Spirited" 意为充满活力的，生动的，通常指俚语或具有文化特色的表达。
     • "whose adoption by some whites gives them the mistaken impression that...": 这是一个定语从句，修饰 "vocabulary"。
       • "whose adoption by some whites": “它（指词汇）被一些白人所采纳”。"Whose" 是关系代词，指代 "vocabulary's"，引导定语从句。
       • "gives them the mistaken impression that...": “给了他们一种错误的印象，即……”。"that" 引导一个同位语从句，具体解释 "mistaken impression"（错误的印象）的内容。
     • "they are talking real soul to their black brothers": “他们正在和他们的黑人兄弟进行‘真正的灵魂交流’”。
       • "talking real soul": 这是一个俚语或习惯表达，具有文化特定性。它不仅仅指说话，更深层地指进行真诚的、深层次的、发自内心的、能够引起共鸣的交流，尤其是在非裔美国人文化语境内，强调的是一种情感和文化上的连接。作者指出，仅仅使用一些黑人英语的词汇并不能达到这种深层交流，反而可能是一种肤浅的模仿或误解。

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