【外刊英语精读】希腊语被英语充斥 | Greek deluged by English terms

The Greeks had a word for it … until now, as language is deluged by English terms全球热词“Pandemic（疫情）”的娘家竟然在希腊A leading linguist pleads for moderation as a huge outbreak of ‘Greenglish’, much of it Covid-related, spreads.与新冠疫情相关的“希腊式英语”表达大爆炸式增长，权威语言学家呼吁要克制。Usually, Professor Georgios Babiniotis would take pride in the fact that the Greek word “pandemic” – previously hardly ever uttered – had become the word on everyone’s lips.大瘟疫“pandemic”这希腊语词之前无人问津，现在已经家喻户晓，Georgios Babiniotis教授按理来说应对此感到骄傲。After all, the term that conjures the scourge of our times offers cast-iron proof of the legacy of Europe’s oldest language. Wholly Greek in derivation – pan means all, demos means people – its usage shot up by more than 57,000% last year according to Oxford English Dictionary lexicographers.毕竟，这个给我们当下时代带来祸患的术语，也是欧洲最古老的语言所留下的遗产的铁证。“pandemic”完全源于希腊语， “pan”的意思是“所有的”，“demos”意思是人民。根据《牛津英语词典》编纂者，该词汇的使用频率在去年猛增570多倍。But these days, Greece’s foremost linguist is less mindful of how the language has enriched global vocabulary, and more concerned about the corrosive effects of coronavirus closer to home.然而，希腊这位权威语言学家却不怎么在乎希腊语如何丰富了全球词汇量，而是更担心新冠病毒给本国语言带来的侵蚀性影响。The sheer scale of the pandemic and the terminology spawned by its pervasiveness have produced fertile ground for verbal incursions on his mother tongue that Babiniotis thought he would never see.疫情的大规模爆发，与之相关的术语也随之而来，这极大地滋生了外来语对希腊语的语言侵入，Babiniotis从未预见到这一点。“We have been deluged by new terms and definitions in a very short space of time,” he told the Observer. “Far too many of them are entering spoken and written Greek. On the television you hear phrases such as ‘rapid tests are being conducted via drive-through’, and almost all the words are English. It’s as if suddenly I’m hearing Creole.”“短短时间内，我们的语言中就充斥着新的术语和定义”，他告诉《观察家报》。“太多新词汇涌入口语和书面希腊语，在电视上你会听到一些比如‘免下车快速检测’之类的表达，而且几乎所有的词汇都是英语，我好像突然听到了克里奥尔语一样。”With nine dictionaries to his name, the octogenarian is the first to say that language evolves. The advent of the internet also posed challenges, he concedes, but he has never opposed adding new words that translated and conveyed technological advances.这位八旬老人著有九本词典，而且首次提出语言是不断进化的观点。他承认，互联网的出现也带来了挑战，但是他从来不反对增添那些能够反映出技术进步的词汇。“I included them in the Lexicon,” he says of his magisterial 2,500-page dictionary of modern Greek language. “But where possible, I also insisted that if they could be replaced by Greek words they should.”“我把它们编入了《现代希腊语大辞典》中，”他提到他的2500页之多的权威现代希腊语词典时说道。“但是，我仍然坚持认为，如果有希腊语的本土化表达，还是不要用外来语。”No tongue has been spoken as continuously as Greek, used without respite in roughly the same geographical region for 40 centuries. Its influence, as the language of the New Testament and as a vehicle of thought for golden age playwrights, scientists and philosophers, helped it withstand the test of time.没有一门语言像希腊语这样，在几乎同一个地理区域使用了4000多年，没有出现中断。作为《新约》的书写语言以及黄金时代剧作家、科学家以及哲学家的表达媒介，希腊语的影响力使其经久不衰。But Babiniotis, a former education minister, worries that the resilience that has marked Greek’s long history is at risk of being eroded by an onslaught of English terms that now dominate everyday life.但是同样作为前教育部长的Babiniotis，却担心尽管希腊语在历史上表现出坚韧性，充斥着我们日常生活的大量英语属术语却使其岌岌可危。In the space of a year, he says, Greeks have had to get their heads, and tongues, around words such as “lockdown”, “delivery”, “click away”, “click-and-collect” and “curfew”.他表示，一年之内，希腊人脑袋里想的、嘴边说的，都得是诸如“lockdown（封锁）”、“delivery（配送）、“click away（一键之遥）”、“click-and-collect（点击提货）”以及“curfew（宵禁）”这些词了。前往小宇宙评论区与主播互动