紐約時報丨我們都在說著一種即將滅絕的語言

Aug,

2020

語言是人與人之間交流的橋樑。每個人，無論來自哪個國家，哪個地方，都說著屬於自己的語言，這種語言交雜著自己的母語，地方的方言以及後來學會的外語，從而形成了自己獨一無二的語言體系。而母語，無論經過千山萬水，都將一直在腦海中佔據一隅之地，永遠無法撼動。

今天我們分享一篇來自紐約時報的文章，"我們都在說一種即將滅絕的語言(We All Speak a Languge That Will Go Extinct." 作者Sara Goudarzi出生於伊朗，年少時在肯亞生活了一段時間，後來移居美國。在成長的過程中，波斯語，伊朗地方方言和英語加在一起，成為了屬於她自己獨特的語言。

下面是來自紐約時報的全文。

我們每個人都在說著一種即將滅絕的語言

We All Speak a Language That Will Go Extinct

By Sara Goudarzi

“我們不能一起打網球，因為你沒有網（net）。”我站在康涅狄格州布里斯托爾一條安靜的郊區街道上，這時隔壁的男孩Eric對我說了這句話。手裡拿著兩個球拍，我感到臉上火辣辣的。然後憤怒透過我10歲的瘦小身軀蔓延開來，從我的嘴裡瞬間爆發了。

“我沒有網？”我大叫。“我沒有網？”我又重複了一遍。“你才沒有網！你爸爸沒網！你媽媽沒有網！”我不停地說，用我認為最侮辱的話轟擊他。我想攻擊他最脆弱的地方，他的家人，這是我們伊朗人民最常用的策略。我只需要讓我的小夥伴明白我多有"網"。

Eric目瞪口呆。他承認，他和他的家人的確沒有網球場也沒有網，但他似乎無法理解為什麼我對這個點有這麼大的反應。

其實我至今也仍然不明白，作為一個新來美國的人，帶著有限的英語詞彙，我一直認為“網（net)”的意思是“禮貌(manner)”，Eric不想和我一起玩，因為我缺乏禮貌。直到我衝進房子後，我的哥哥才跟我解釋我哪裡出了問題，他已經在美國呆了將近十年了。

語言，我們一直用來發送和接收資訊，表達想法和情感，而這從一開始就是不夠的。即使我們說同一種語言，理解和被理解也是一場鬥爭。再加上用外語交流的挑戰，混亂和歡樂也隨之而來，這也是很多情景喜劇作家筆下的段子來源。

當我和父母到達內羅畢時，肯亞的電視上沒有太多激動人心的節目。那時候，再過幾個月，我就要成為一名青少年了，三年後我將登上我人生的第三個大陸。如果我記得沒錯的話，電視裡只有兩個頻道主要在晚上播出，而裡面只有很少一部分我感興趣的節目，“Mind Your Language（注意你的言辭）”就是其中之一。這是一部20世紀70年代的英國情景喜劇，場景設定在一個課堂裡，一個年輕的英國老師教一群來自中國、印度、法國、西班牙、義大利和希臘的學生。

在第一集的第一個場景中，一個未來的學生對學校的女負責人說“squeeze me（擠壓我）”，而不是“excuse me（打擾了）”。他看著一份教學大綱（syllabus），對她說: “I’m hopping to be unrolled like it says on your silly bus（我跳著要被展開，就像你那輛愚蠢的公共汽車上說的那樣）。”

注：這個學生髮音不標準，正確的讀法應該是："I'm hoping to be enrolled like it says on your syllabus."

我在肯亞學校裡學到，炸薯條是chips，橡皮擦是rubber。(當我來到美國之後，我在一次高中課堂上大聲喊我需要一個rubber，於是引起了教室裡一段長久的沉默。）因為儘管我在內羅畢和新澤西的高中都說同一種語言–英語，但我發現語言與文化其實密不可分。

注：美式英語中炸薯條是fresh fries，rubber表示避孕套

我永遠不會忘記我第一次告訴一個美國男朋友“I was so hot I am going to die"。他真誠地回答說:“不，你不會的。”那時我才明白，我的第一種語言，那種搖籃曲孕育了我最早夢想的語言，天生具有戲劇性。最近幾年，我不再說一個我們經常在波斯語中用來代替再見的短語“ghorboonat beram”，因為我後來意識到它的字面意思是“我將為你犧牲我自己。”

注：I am so hot不表示我很熱，hot表示火辣，性感。

到我基本成年的時候，英語已經成為我的主導語言，並在我的大腦中佔據了一個龐大的位置，將波斯語逼到了一個很小的角落，以至於有時讓我很擔心我會失去這種聯絡，或者削弱這種聯絡，這讓我感覺是毀滅性的。但事實證明，語言不會從你的腦海中溜走。事實上，在2014年的一項研究中，研究人員發現，即使我們不使用母語，我們的母語也會在我們的嬰兒大腦中產生神經模式，並一直伴隨著我們。

幾天前，我在白天睡著了，這種情況像日食一樣罕見，我醒來時很困惑，於是問我丈夫現在幾點了。我用波斯語說：“Saat chande?” 而他只聽得懂一點點波斯語，於是非常困惑。慌亂中，我又重複了一遍，“Saat chande?” 在睡眠和清醒之間的困惑時刻，我會求助於讓我感到安全的語言，那種在我的大腦中刻下印記的語言。

我的父母都來自伊朗西部的一個地區，從洛雷斯坦省來的人都說著一種方言。有些單詞和短語不同於波斯語中的對等詞，所以有時候會更有趣、更尖銳、更辛辣。我喜歡這些話，時常會把它們與笑聲和茶的味道聯絡在一起，與我祖母家的夏天聯絡在一起。

因為我在10歲之前就離開了伊朗，所以我忘記了不是所有的伊朗人都會這種語言。時不時我會在紐約跟這裡的伊朗朋友說這種方言。我對他們說“gamelas”，這個詞是指懶惰或無能的人——但我沒法直接翻譯出來。這不僅僅是懶惰；這是一種感覺，真的，一種受到文化背景影響的感覺。說著說著我就笑起來，因為這是一個有趣的詞。但是我的朋友都用好奇的眼神看著我，等待著我用母語翻譯一下。但事實並非如此，這就是我的母語，將英語，波斯語和盧瑞語的一種博魯傑迪方言(我甚至不能流利地說這種方言)加在一起，成為了某種獨特的融合，這就是我家的語言，一家五口的語言。現在是四口了。這是一種即將滅絕的語言。

語言就是這樣。雖然我們可以給每種語言起一個名字，但沒有兩個人說的是同一種語言。但是在尋求被理解的過程中，我們抓住我們認為的共同語言，就像在語言表達的海洋中抓住的救生筏，我們經常拋棄舊的詞語和諺語，為新的詞語和諺語騰出空間。隨著舊的詞語慢慢漂遠，它們對我們來說變得越來越陌生，像現在的德黑蘭對我一樣陌生。它們是我們的“ghorbooni”–犧牲品，是我們為了得到認可和壯大而放棄的東西。好像我不得不放棄波斯語來徹底學會英語。

儘管這些詞可能會消失，或者僅僅佔據我們大腦的一小部分，但它們仍然潛伏在我們無意識的大腦中，“gamelas”總會讓我笑出來，雖然我也不知道究竟是為什麼。

We All Speak a Language That Will Go Extinct

Even when we speak the same tongue, understanding and being understood can be a struggle. I would know.

By Sara Goudarzi

“We can’t play tennis because you don’t have a net.”

I was standing on a quiet, suburban street in Bristol, Conn., when Eric, the boy next door, said that to me. Two rackets in hand, I felt my face ablaze. Then anger spread through my slight 10-year-old frame and my mouth erupted.

“I don’t have net?” I yelled. “I don’t have net?” I repeated for effect. “You don’t have net. Your father doesn’t have net. Your mom doesn’t have net,” I continued, bombarding him with what I thought were insults. I wanted to hit him where it hurt — his family — a common tactic among my people, Iranians. I just had to make my playmate understand that I had plenty of net.

Eric was dumbfounded. He confessed that indeed, he and his family had neither a tennis court nor a net, but he seemed unable to make sense of my reaction to this shortcoming.

For reasons I still don’t understand, as a new arrival to the United States, armed with a limited palette of English words, I had presumed that “net” meant “manners.” Eric didn’t want to play with me because I lacked good manners. It was only after I stormed back into the house that my brother, who had been breathing American air for close to a decade, explained where I had gone wrong.

Language, which we use to send and receive information, ideas and emotions, is at best inadequate to begin with. Even when we speak the same tongue, understanding and being understood can be a struggle. Add to that the challenges of communicating in a foreign language, and confusion and hilarity ensues — a phenomenon that isn’t lost on sitcom writers.

There wasn’t a lot of exciting programming on Kenyan television when my parents and I arrived in Nairobi. I was several months away from becoming a teenager, landing on my third continent in three years. If I’m not mistaken, there were only two channels that mostly operated in the evenings with very few shows I was interested in watching. “Mind Your Language” was one of those. A 1970s British sitcom, the show was set in a classroom of adults where a young Englishman taught a cast of students from countries including China, India, France, Spain, Italy and Greece.

In one of the first scenes of the first episode, a prospective student says “squeeze me,” instead of “excuse me,” to the woman in charge of the school. Looking at a class syllabus, he says to her, “I’m hopping to be unrolled like it says on your silly bus.”

I learned in my Kenyan school that French fries were chips and eraser was rubber. (This last one prompted a drawn-out silence when I returned to the United States and asked for one aloud during a high school class.) Because despite my speaking the same language in both my Nairobi and New Jersey high schools, I found that language is inextricably bound to culture.

I best understood this the first time I told an American boyfriend I was so hot I was going to die. He responded with genuine feeling, “No, you won’t.” It dawned on me then that my first language, the one whose lullabies cradled my earliest dreams, was inherently dramatic. In recent years, I broke down a phrase we often use in Farsi as a substitute for goodbye, “ghorboonat beram,” and only then realized that it literally means “I will sacrifice myself for you.”

By the time I reached early adulthood, English had become my dominant language and made a sprawling home in my brain, forcing Farsi into a tiny corner, so much so it worried me at times. To lose that connection, or have it weaken, felt devastating. But as it turns out, a language doesn’t just slip out of your mind. In fact, in a 2014 study, researchers found that our mother tongue creates neural patterns on our infant brains that stay with us even if we don’t use the language.

Several years ago, after I fell asleep during the day — an occurrence as rare as a solar eclipse — and woke up confused, I asked my husband what time it was. “Saat chande?” I said in Farsi, a language of which he only understands a few words. He was baffled. Flustered, I repeated, “Saat chande?” In that confused moment between sleep and wakefulness, I resorted to the language that makes me feel safe, the one that has literally etched patterns in my brain.

My parents are both from an area in western Iran. People from that region of Lorestan Province speak a dialect. Some words and phrases are different from the equivalent in Farsi, at times funnier, sharper, tangier. I enjoy these words and associate them with laughter and the smell of tea, with summers at my grandmother’s house.

Because I left Iran before I was 10, I forget that not all Iranians know those words. At times, I use them with Iranian friends here in New York. I’ve said the word “gamelas”to signify a lazy or incompetent person — but I can’t translate it. It’s more than just lazy; it’s a feeling, really, weighed by cultural context. I start laughing, because it’s a funny word. But my friends look at me with inquisitive eyes, waiting for a translation of what to me is our mother tongue. But it’s not. It’s my mother tongue, concentric circles of English, Farsi and a Borujerdi dialect of Luri (in which I’m not even close to fluent) that center in to some unique amalgamation of all those things, the language of my family, population five. Now four. A language that will go extinct.

That’s the thing with languages. Though we can give each a name, no two people really speak the same one. But in a quest to feel understood, we hold on to what we presume is a common one like a life raft in a sea of expressions, often orphaning old words and sayings to make room for new ones. And as the old float farther out, they become as unfamiliar and foreign to us as Tehran is to me now. They are our “ghorbooni,” the victims of the sacrifice, what we give up in order to be recognized, to expand. As if I had to give up Farsi to gain all this English.

But though the words might disappear, or occupy a smaller parcel of our minds, they continue to lurk in our unconscious brain, and the feelings, well, “gamelas,” will always make me laugh, even if I don’t quite remember why.

Sara Goudarzi (@saragoud) is a writer and poet.

From：https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/opinion/language-translation.html