介绍： 2 Why language is humanity's greatest invention
为什么语言是人类最伟大的发明

Speaker:David Peterson .Language creator, writer, artist，creates languages for television shows, for films and for fun.

00:00
Like, when I say "yesterday," I might think what the weather was like yesterday because I was there. And...

介绍： 2 Why language is humanity's greatest invention
为什么语言是人类最伟大的发明

Speaker:David Peterson .Language creator, writer, artist，creates languages for television shows, for films and for fun.

00:00
Like, when I say "yesterday," I might think what the weather was like yesterday because I was there. And if I'm remembering, I'll probably remember there was something I forgot to mail, which I did. This was a preplanned joke, but I really did forget to mail something. And so that means I'm going to have to do it Monday, because that's when I'm going to get back home. And of course, when I think of Monday, I'll think of "Manic Monday" by the Bangles. It's a good song. And when I say the word "saw," I think of this phrase: "'I see!' said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw." I always do. Anytime I hear the word "saw" or say it, I always think of that, because my grandfather always used to say it, so it makes me think of my grandfather. And we're back to "Manic Monday" again, for some reason. And with Kyn, when I'm saying something like, "Yesterday I saw Kyn," I'll think of the circumstances under which I saw him. And this happened to be that day. Here he is with my cat. And of course, if I'm thinking of Kyn, I'll think he's going to Long Beach State right now, and I'll remember that my good friend John and my mother both graduated from Long Beach State, my cousin Katie is going to Long Beach State right now. And it's "Manic Monday" again. 
例如，当我说“昨天”，我可能会想到昨天的天气怎么样，因为我在那里。然后如果我继续回忆，我将可能会回忆起我忘记发快递了，这是一个预先计划的笑话，但我确实忘记发快递了。所以那意味着我将不得不在周一邮寄它，因为那是我要回家的时候。当然，当我想起周一，我将会想起手镯乐队的 “炸裂的星期一”，这是首不错的歌。当我说单词“看见”，我想起了这个句子： “‘我明白了’，瞎子边说边拿起锤子和锯子。” 我总是这样。 无论何时我听见单词“看”或者说它时， 我总会像这样去想，因为我的祖父过去总是这样说，所以它使我想起了我的祖父。因为某些缘故，我们又回到了“炸裂的星期一”。还有凯恩，当我说： “昨天我看见凯恩了，” 我会想起我看见他的场景。就在那天，他和我的猫在一起。当然，如果我想到凯恩，我会想起他现在将去长滩市，并且我会记起我的好朋友约翰和我妈妈都是从长滩州立大学毕业的，我的姐姐凯特现在也将去这所大学念书。然后又回到了“炸裂的星期一” 。

01:02
But this is just a fraction of what's going on in your head at any given time while you are speaking. And all we have to represent the entire mess that is going on in our head, is this. I mean, that's all we got. 
但这一切都只是在你说话时发生在我脑海里的一些碎片。 我们所要做的就是把我们脑子里发生的一切都表现出来，就是这个。我的意思是，那就是全部东西。 

01:15
Is it any wonder that our system is so poor? So imagine, if I can give you an analogy, imagine if you wanted to know what is it like to eat a cake, if instead of just eating the cake, you instead had to ingest the ingredients of a cake, one by one, along with instructions about how these ingredients can be combined to form a cake. You had to eat the instructions, too. 
会不会觉得我们的语言系统怎么这么差？ 想象一下，如果我给你一个类比，试想如果你想知道吃蛋糕是什么感觉，如果不只是吃蛋糕，而是你必须咽下这些组成蛋糕的原料，一个接一个的，按照说明书说的将这些原料组合成一个蛋糕来。你也必须把说明书吃掉。

01:39
If that was how we had to experience cake, we would never eat cake. And yet, language is the only way -- the only way -- that we can figure out what is going on here, in our minds. This is our interiority, the thing that makes us human, the thing that makes us different from other animals, is all inside here somewhere, and all we have to do to represent it is our own languages. A language is our best way of showing what's going on in our head. Imagine if I wanted to ask a big question, like: "What is the nature of human thought and emotion?" What you'd want to do is you'd want to examine as many different languages as possible. One isn't just going to do it. To give you an example, here's a picture I took of little Roman, that I took with a 12-megapixel camera. Now, here's that same picture with a lot fewer pixels. Obviously, neither of these pictures is a real cat. But one gives you a lot better sense of what a cat is than the other. 
如果我们是这样品尝蛋糕的，我们将绝不会再吃蛋糕了。然而，语言是唯一一种， 唯一一种能够理解我们大脑中在发生什么的方法。这是我们的内在性，是使我们成为人类的东西，是使我们与其他动物有区别的东西，都在这里面某个地方，我们所要做的是用自己的语言来表达它。语言是展示我们头脑想法的最好方式。试想如果我要问一个重要的问题： “人类思想和情感的本质是什么？” 你要做的就是尽可能多地研究不同的语言。一种并不足以回答。 举个例子，这有一张我从罗马拍的照片，用了1200万像素的相机拍的一张小罗曼的照片。现在，这里有一张相同的低像素的照片。显然，这两张都不是真正的猫。但其中一张比另一张更能让你明白猫是什么。 

02:38
Language is not merely a tool. It is our legacy, it's our way of conveying what it means to be human. And of course, by "our" legacy, I mean all humans everywhere. And losing even one language makes that picture a lot less clear. 
语言不仅仅是一种工具。是我们的遗产，这是我们表达身为人的意义的方式。当然，“我们”的遗产，我指的是任何地方的人。 即使是失去一种语言，也会使这幅图景变得模糊。 

02:55
So as a job for the past 10 years and also as recreation, just for fun, I create languages. These are called "conlangs," short for "constructed languages." Now, presenting these facts back to back, that we're losing languages on our planet and that I create brand-new languages, you might think that there's some nonsuperficial connection between these two. In fact, a lot of people have drawn a line between those dots. This is a guy who got all bent out of shape that there was a conlang in James Cameron's "Avatar." He says, "But in the three years it took James Cameron to get Avatar to the screen, a language died." Probably a lot more than that, actually. "Na'vi, alas, won't fill the hole where it used to be ..." A truly profound and poignant statement -- if you don't think about it at all. 
所以在过去的十年里，既作为一份工作，也作为一种消遣，我创造了一些语言。它们被称作“conlangs” ，是“人造语言”的简称。现在，让我们一件件地阐述这些事实，在地球上我们正在遗失自己的语言，所以我创造了全新的语言，你可能认为它们之间有某种深层的联系。事实上，有很多人把这些因素联系了起来。这是一个被詹姆斯·卡梅隆执导的 《阿凡达》中的人工语言弄得心烦意乱的家伙。他说， “在三年时间内，詹姆斯·卡梅隆把《阿凡达》搬上银幕， 一种语言消亡了。” 也许事实上还远不止一种。 “唉，纳美人也填补不了这样的空缺…” 一个真正意义深远且深刻的观点—— 如果你不去思考它的话。

03:43
But when I was here at Cal, I completed two majors. One of them was linguistics, but the other one was English. And of course, the English major, the study of English, is not actually the study of the English language, as we know, it's the study of literature. Literature is just a wonderful thing, because basically, literature, more broadly, is kind of like art; it falls under the rubric of art. And what we do with literature, authors create new, entire beings and histories. And it's interesting to us to see what kind of depth and emotion and just unique spirit authors can invest into these fictional beings. So much so, that, I mean -- take a look at this. There's an entire series of books that are written about fictional characters. Like, the entire book is just about one fictional, fake human being. There's an entire book on George F. Babbitt from Sinclair Lewis's "Babbitt," and I guarantee you, that book is longer than "Babbitt," which is a short book. Does anybody even remember that one? It's pretty good, I actually think it's better than "Main Street." That's my hot take. So we've never questioned the fact that literature is interesting. But despite the fact, not even linguists are actually interested in what created languages can tell us about the depth of the human spirit just as an artistic endeavor. 
但当我在加州大学时，我修完了两门专业。 一门是语言学另一门是英文。当然，英文专业，研究英文，但并不是真正的像我们认为的那样研究英语，是研究英国文学。文学真的很了不起，因为从基本上讲，文学非常广博，有些像艺术那样；它属于艺术范畴。当我们研究文学时发现，作者创造了全新的、完整的生命和历史。而且我们很高兴看到作者可以授予这些虚构的众生，各种不同深度的情感和独特的精神，非常非常多。看看这些。有一系列的书来完整地描绘这些虚拟人物。整本书只是描述一个虚幻的故事，一个不存在的人。这有一整本辛克莱·刘易斯写的《巴比特》，关于乔治·F·巴比特的书，并且我向你保证，那书比“巴比特”长，是一篇短篇书。有人记得这本书吗？那本书非常好，我其实觉得它比《大街》还好。 这是我的最爱。 所以我们绝不会质疑文学的趣味性这个事实。但除了这个事实，事实上，即使是语言学家也没有兴趣知道，究竟是什么创造了语言，才能够告诉我们人类精神的深度，就像一种艺术性的尝试一样。