2020年经济学人 约翰逊语言专栏--关于气候的表达(2)（在线收听）

Babbel, which makes a popular language- learning app, has collected a host of climate-related neologisms from European languages. Flygskam is perhaps the most likely to be permanently adopted into English: “flight-shame”, from Swedish, was popularised by Ms Thunberg’s rise. It also has a nifty corollary: tagskryt, or “train-boasting”, from those who advertise their flygskam by taking ground transport and letting the world know. (Dutch has an equivalent: treintrots.)

Babbel是一款颇受欢迎的语言学习应用程序，它从欧洲语言中收集了大量与气候相关的新词。Flygskam可能是英语中最可能被永久采用的单词:“flight-shame（搭机羞羞脸）”，源于瑞典语，随着桑伯格的影响扩大而流行起来。它还有一个俏皮的推演词: tagskryt, 英语为“train-boasting（跑火车）”，来自那些通过乘坐地面交通工具、让全世界都知道他们飞行表演的人。（荷兰语有一个类似的词:treintrots。）

The march of the climate-protest movement has led to the coining of disparaging terms by its critics. Italian, for example, has gretini: allegedly mindless followers of Ms Thunberg (-ini is a diminutive suffix, and the word echoes cretini, or “idiots”). The Danish Language Council and Denmark’s national broadcaster jointnot ly chose a similar term as their Word of the Year for 2019: klimatosse, or “climate fool”, used dismissively by Pia Kjaersgaard, a right-wing Danish politician, to explain her party’s poor election performance. Being Danish, she hastened to add that her party is itself concerned about the climate, but that the klimatosser who voted for other parties apparently care about nothing else.

抗议气候变化运动的进行引起了批评者们的轻蔑言辞。例如，意大利语中就有gretini：据说是桑伯格女士的盲目追随者(-ini是一个小后缀，与cretini这个词相呼应，英语是“idiots（白痴）”。丹麦语言委员会和丹麦国家广播公司选择了一个类似的词作为他们2019年的年度词汇：klimatosse，英语为“climate fool（气候傻瓜）”，丹麦右翼政治家皮娅?克亚斯高对她的政党在选举中的糟糕表现不屑一顾。作为丹麦人，她急忙补充说，她的政党本身就关心气候，但是投票给其他政党的“klimatosser（气候傻瓜）”显然不关心其他事情。

Compared with its European cousins, English has not been creative. Oxford Dictionaries declared its word of the year to be “climate emergency”. Collins, another dictionary-publisher, nominated the slightly more imaginative “climate strike”, originally coined to denote the schooldays that climate activists such as Ms Thunberg began skipping as a protest. (Klimaatspijbelaar, “climate-school skipper”, was number three in Van Dale’s Dutch vote.)

与欧洲的同类语言相比，英语缺乏创造性。牛津词典将其年度词汇定为“climate emergency（气候紧急事件）”。另一家词典出版商柯林斯提名了稍微更富想象力的“climate strike（气候罢工）”，这个词最初是用来表示学生时代的，那时像桑伯格女士这样的气候活动人士开始逃课以示抗议。（Klimaatspijbelaar, “climate-school skipper（气候罢课者）”在范达拉出版社的荷兰投票中名列第三。）

Words of the year are a way for lexicographical types to grab a rare slice of the spotlight, boost interest in language and have a bit of fun. All the same, the pessimistic trajectory of the outcomes suggests a darkening global mood. The American Dialect Society will vote for its word of 2019 at its annual meeting in New Orleans in January. Its previous three choices were “tender-age shelter” (a euphemism for places where America’s border forces keep children separated from their parents), “fake news” (often, these days, meaning real news that powerful people would like to dismiss) and “dumpster fire”. Whether or not it picks a climatic word as an emblem of the bygone year, it is hard to see the society choosing anything upbeat.

年度词汇是词典编纂者抓住少数关注焦点、提高对语言的兴趣和获得乐趣的一种方式。尽管如此，这些结果的悲观轨迹表明，全球情绪正日益低迷。美国方言学会将于明年1月在新奥尔良举行的年会上投票选出2019年的年度词汇。它之前的三个选择是“tender-age shelter（儿童庇护所）”(美国边境部队将儿童与父母分开的地方的委婉说法)，“fake new（假新闻）”(如今通常指的是有权势的人想要忽视的真实新闻)和“dumpster fire（垃圾箱火灾）”。不管它是否选择一个气候词汇作为过去一年的象征，我们都很难看到这个社会选择任何乐观的词汇。

Perhaps Dictionary.com captured the feeling best with its word of the year for 2019. Neither new nor fancy, it was foreboding nonetheless: “existential”.

也许Dictionary.com用2019年年度词汇捕捉到了这种感觉。它既不新鲜，也不新奇，但它是一种预兆:“existential（存在主义）”。