The amazing benefits of being bilingual

到今天为止，已经是很多同学在天天用英语的第184天了，半年的时间，我们已经一起读掉了180篇外刊文章，总计27万字。每天累了一大天，很想把自己扔上床，但是为什么非要在每晚九点，守在手机或者电脑前，跟着一万多人一起听课，记笔记，学外语呢？原因有三：

英语已经不仅仅是世界通行证，更是阶级通行证。

英语学不好不仅损失和世界沟通的机会，也损失财富自由的机会。

英语不好穷三代，为了下一代和下下一代，也要认真学起来。

和这些学好英语可能获得的收获相比，你那小小的沮丧，小小的疲惫，小小的自尊心受伤害，是不是都不算什么呢？

今天，大乐乐就和大家分享一篇关于学习英语的好处的文章，因为文章比较长，大乐乐将分为两次讲解：

7月3日将讲解第一段到第二十七段：作者通过亲身体验，告诉我们关于英语学习的秘密

7月25日 将讲解第二十八段到第四十九段：更多关于双语学习的秘密，也许读完之后，你也能成为掌握三十种语言的人。

第一段

作者描述了在咖啡馆里的一段经历：两名男子聊得眉飞色舞，热火朝天，但是作者却一脸懵逼，完全不懂他们在说什么。因为他们没有在讲英语，而是在讲一种方言。

In a cafe in south London, two construction workers are engaged in（正在做某事） cheerful banter（逗弄）, tossing（抛出） words back and forth. Their cutlery （餐具）dances during more emphatic（加强语气的） gesticulations（手势） and they occasionally break off into loud guffaws. They are discussing a woman, that much is clear, but the details are lost on me. It’s a shame, because their conversation looks fun and interesting, especially to a nosy（好管闲事的） person like me. But I don’t speak their language.

金词

be engaged in sth 正在做某事
break out into loud guffaws 开怀大笑
guffaw  [gə'fɔː]n. 大笑
banter  ['bæntə] vi. 开善意的玩笑
toss [tɒs] vt. 抛出
nosy ['nəʊzɪ]adj.好管闲事的

第二段

当作者礼貌地询问两人时，两人轻松地转换回英文。实际上，说话的一名男子会说五种语言。

Out of curiosity, I interrupt them to ask what they are speaking. With friendly smiles, they both switch easily to English, explaining that they are South Africans and had been speaking Xhosa（科萨语）. In Johannesburg, where they are from, most people speak at least five languages, says one of them, Theo Morris. For example, Theo’s mother’s language is Sotho（梭托语）, his father’s is Zulu（祖鲁语）, he learned Xhosa and Ndebele（恩德贝勒语） from his friends and neighbours, and English and Afrikaans at school. “I went to Germany before I came here, so I also speak German,” he adds.

Was it easy to learn so many languages?

“Yes, it’s normal,” he laughs.

金词

curiosity [kjʊərɪ'ɒsɪtɪ]n.好奇心
interrupt [ɪntə'rʌpt]vt.打断

第三段

南非有11种语言，在当今世界，只会说一种语言，实际上你已经成了少数。注意，作者是站在英语使用者的立场说这句话的，想想外国人近几年的学汉语热潮，就知道啦。

He’s right. Around the world, more than half of people – estimates vary from 60 to 75 per cent – speak at least two languages. Many countries have more than one official national language(官方语言） – South Africa has 11. People are increasingly expected to speak, read and write at least one of a handful of（许多） “super” languages, such as English, Chinese, Hindi（北印度语）, Spanish or Arabic, as well. So to be monolingual（只会说一种语言的）, as many native English speakers are, is to be in the minority, and perhaps to be missing out.

金词：

monolingual - bilingual 只说一种语言的-说两种语言的
minority - majority 少数- 多数
miss out 错过

第四段

作者提出了几个发人深思的问题：

人类是不是天生就应该是双语的？

那些只说一种语言的人是不是没有发挥出全部潜力？

如果我们大多数人只会说一种语言，那么语言的多样性会不会受到损害？

Multilingualism（双语机制） has been shown to have many social, psychological and lifestyle advantages（优势）. Moreover, researchers are finding a swathe of（一系列的） health benefits from speaking more than one language, including faster stroke（中风） recovery and delayed onset（开始） of dementia. （痴呆）Could it be that the human brain evolved to be multilingual – that those who speak only one language are not exploiting their full potential（开发全部潜力）? And in a world that is losing languages faster than ever – at the current rate of one a fortnight（两周）, half our languages will be extinct by the end of the century – what will happen if the current rich diversity（多样化） of languages disappears and most of us end up speaking only one?

金词

advantage [əd'vɑːntɪdʒ] n 优势
a swathe of 一系列的
exploit one’s full potential 发挥某人的最大潜能
diversity [daɪ'vɜːsɪtɪ; dɪ-]n 多样性
end up doing sth 以…告终

第五段

作者参加了一个叫做Syntaflake的实验，试图破解一门被生造出来的语言。

As adults, we try desperately to decipher（理解）a foreign tongue（一门外语） - but we may learn quicker if we stop looking for patterns（模式） that aren't there. I am sitting in a laboratory, headphones on, looking at pictures of snowflakes（雪花） on a computer. As each pair of snowflakes appears, I hear a description（描述） of one of them through the headphones. All I have to do is decide which snowflake is being described. The only catch(隐藏的困难） is that the descriptions are in a completely invented（生造的） language called Syntaflake.

金词

decipher  [dɪ'saɪfə] vt. 解释
tongue[tʌŋ] n 语言
pattern['pæt(ə)n]n. 模式
description [dɪ'skrɪpʃ(ə)n]n.描述
describe  [dɪ'skraɪb] vt.描述
catch  [kætʃ] n.隐藏的困难

第六段

It’s part of an experiment by Panos Athanasopoulos, an ebullient Greek with a passion for languages. Professor of psycholinguistics and bilingual cognition at Lancaster University, he’s at the forefront(前线） of a new wave of research into the bilingual mind. As you might expect, his lab is a Babel（巴别塔） of different nationalities（国籍） and languages – but no one here grew up speaking Syntaflake.

金词

Babel ['beibəl]n 巴别塔
nationality [ˌnæʃəˈnælətɪ] n 国籍

第七段：

理智的学习方法比如寻找模式，破解语法，在这门语言面前没什么用，作者甚至无法求助于自己的经验。

The task is profoundly strange and incredibly difficult. Usually, when interacting in a foreign language, there are clues（线索） to help you decipher the meaning. The speaker might point to the snowflake as they speak, use their hands to demonstrate（展示） shapes or their fingers to count out numbers, for example. Here I have no such clues and, it being a made-up language, I can’t even rely on picking up similarities（相似点） to languages I already know.

金词

clue [kluː] n 线索
demonstrate ['demənstreɪ] vt.证明；展示
similarity[sɪmə'lærətɪ]n 相似点

语法点：

Here I have no such clues and, it being a made-up language, I can’t even rely on picking up similarities（相似点） to languages I already know.

it being a made-up language 是个独立结构，作为原因状语存在，相当于，since it is a made-up language。

翻译：

我没有上述头绪，因为Syntaflake是种完全被捏造出来的语言，我也不能从我会的语言中找到任何相似点。

相似例句：

1. The temperature being below 0℃, water turns into ice. 当温度低于 0℃ 时水就变为冰。（时间状语）
2. That being the case, we will have to make some alternations in the plan. 情况既然这样，我们就得把计划作一些更改。（原因状语）
3. Washing machines are built in various types, their functions being the same. 洗衣机可制成各种型式，虽然其功能相同。（让步状语）
4. The resistance being very high, the current in the circuit is low. 如果电阻很大，则电路内电流就小。（条件状语）
5. There are a large number of different shapes of machine tools, each being made for some particular kind of work. 各种机床的形状大不相同，每一种都是为特殊的一类加工而制作的。（伴随情况）

在纸笔墨上关于being用法的解释，给喜欢钻研的童鞋：

http://zhibimo.com/read/xiaolai/a-new-english-reading-handbook/023.html

第八段

作者试图找到Syntaflake这种语言中的规律和模式，结果是，失败了。

After a time, though, I begin to feel a pattern might be emerging（出现） with the syntax（句法） and sounds. I decide to be mathematical about it and get out pen and paper to plot（用图表表示） any rules that emerge, determined not to “fail” the test.

金词

emerge [ɪ'mɜːdʒ]vi 出现
syntax ['sɪntæks] n 语法；句法
plot [plɒt]vt.绘制

第九段：

最终，作者承认在这项语言学习实验中失败了。

The experience reminds me of a time I arrived in a rural town a few hours outside Beijing and was forced to make myself understood in a language I could neither speak nor read, among people for whom English was similarly alien（陌生的）. But even then, there had been clues… Now, without any accompanying human interaction（互动）, the rules governing the sounds I’m hearing remain elusive（难以理解的）, and at the end of the session I have to admit defeat（失败）.

金词

alien ['eɪlɪən]adj.外国人的；陌生的
interaction [ɪntər'ækʃ(ə)n]n 互动
elusive  [ɪ'l(j)uːsɪv]adj 难懂的
defeat  [dɪ'fiːt] n 失败

第十段

I join Athanasopoulos for a chat while my performance is being analysed by his team. Glumly, I recount（叙述） my difficulties at learning the language, despite my best efforts. But it appears that was where I went wrong: “The people who perform best on this task are the ones who don’t care at all about the task and just want to get it over as soon as possible. Students and teaching staff who try to work it out and find a pattern always do worst,” he says.

第十一段

原来理解一门完全陌生语言的秘密就是，像孩子那样去思考，也就是不要思考，不去想规则。因为你的大脑实际上在潜意识中已经准备好理解这门语言了。

“It’s impossible in the time given to decipher the rules of the language and make sense of what’s being said to you. But your brain is primed（准备好） to work it out subconsciously（潜意识地）. That’s why, if you don’t think about it, you’ll do okay in the test – children do the best.”

金词：

be primed to do sth 准备好做某事

subconsciously [,sʌb'kɔnʃəsli]adv. 潜意识地

第十二段

语言与文化和政治密不可分。25万年前，人类说出第一个词，这个词伴随着直立行走和随之而来的更大的肺活量，最终形成了语言。

Language is intimately connected to culture and politics. The first words ever uttered（被说出的） may have been as far back as 250,000 years ago, once our ancestors stood up on two legs and freed the ribcage（胸腔） from weight-bearing tasks, allowing fine nerve control of breathing and pitch（音高） to develop. And when humans had got one language, it wouldn’t have been long before we had many.

金词

utter  ['ʌtə] vt 表达；发出
ribcage ['ribkeidʒ] n 胸腔
pitch  [pɪtʃ]n 音高

第十三段

Language evolution can be compared to biological evolution, but whereas genetic（基因的） change is driven by environmental pressures, languages change and develop through social pressures. Over time, different groups of early humans would have found themselves speaking different languages. Then, in order to communicate with other groups – for trade, travel and so on – it would have been necessary for some members of a family or band to speak other tongues.

第十四段

语言的历史：游牧时代，大多数人都会说多种语言。某些部落的通婚制度甚至保护了多语机制。

We can get some sense of how prevalent（流行的） multilingualism may have been from the few hunter-gatherer（狩猎） peoples who survive today. “If you look at modern hunter-gatherers, they are almost all multilingual,” says Thomas Bak, a cognitive neurologist who studies the science of languages at the University of Edinburgh. “The rule is that one mustn’t marry anyone in the same tribe or clan to have a child – it’s taboo. So every single child’s mum and dad speak a different language.”

金词

people ['piːp(ə)l] n. 民族
tribe [traɪb] n 部落
clan  [klæn]n 宗族
taboo [tə'buː]n 禁忌

第十五段

In Aboriginal Australia, where more than 130 indigenous(当地的） languages are still spoken, multilingualism is part of the landscape. “You will be walking and talking with someone, and then you might cross a small river and suddenly your companion（同伴） will switch to another language,” says Bak. “People speak the language of the earth.” This is true elsewhere, too. “Consider in Belgium（比利时）: you take a train in Liège, the announcements（广播） are in French first. Then, pass through Loewen, where the announcements will be in Dutch first, and then in Brussels it reverts back to French first.”

金词

indigenous  [ɪn'dɪdʒɪnəs]adj.本土的
companion  [kəm'pænjən]n 同伴
announcement  [ə'naʊnsm(ə)nt]n 通告；广播
revert back to 转回到

第十六段

The connection with culture and geography is why Athanasopoulos invented a new language for the snowflake test. Part of his research lies in trying to tease out（找出） the language from the culture it is threaded within, he explains.

第十七段

民族国家的诞生，帝国主义的崛起，政治需要让多语制不再流行。双语者甚至一度被认为是低智商和反叛的。

Being so bound up with identity, language is also deeply political. The emergence of European nation states（民族国家） and the growth of imperialism（帝国主义） during the 19th century meant it was regarded as disloyal（不忠诚的） to speak anything other than（除了） the one national language. This perhaps contributed to（导致） the widely held opinion – particularly in Britain and the US – that bringing up children to be bilingual was harmful to their health and to society more generally.There were warnings that bilingual children would be confused by（对...感到疑惑） two languages, have lower intelligence and behave in deviant（叛逆的） ways 

金词：

disloyal [dɪs'lɒɪ(ə)l]adj. 不忠诚的
other than 除了
contribute to 导致
deviant ['diːvɪənt]adj. 反叛的

第十八段

There were warnings that bilingual children would be confused by two languages, have lower intelligence, low self-esteem, behave in deviant ways, develop a split（分裂的） personality and even become schizophrenic（精神分裂的）. It is a view that persisted until very recently, discouraging many immigrant parents from using their own mother tongue to speak to their children, for instance. This is in spite of [a][42][ 1962][43] experiment, ignored for decades, which showed that bilingual children did better than monolinguals in both verbal and non-verbal intelligence tests.

金句：

There were warnings that bilingual children would be confused by two languages, have lower intelligence, low self-esteem, behave in deviant ways, develop a split（分裂的） personality and even become schizophrenic（精神分裂的）.
There were warnings是主句，that后面是同位语从句，修饰warnings。
children是从句主语，would be confused by，have，behave，develop和become是从句中的并列谓语。

翻译：
有人警告说双语儿童会被两种语言搞懵，因此智商低下，自尊心不强，离经叛道，人格分裂，甚至会精神分裂。

第十九段

但是最近的研究却啪啪滴打过去观点的脸：双语者在思维方式和认知模式方面都有优势。

However, research in the last decade by neurologists, psychologists and linguists, using the latest brain-imaging tools, is revealing a swathe of cognitive（认知的） benefits for bilinguals. It’s all to do with how our ever-flexible minds learn to multitask（多任务执行）.

第二十段

Split personality

用法语说一样食物，我们就仿佛去了法国；用英语说一样食物，我们就仿佛去了英国。发出寿司这个音，日本的影响就出现；想到意大利面，自然会想到比萨斜塔。语言自带场景，自带人格。

Ask me in English what my favourite food is, and I will picture myself in London choosing from the options I enjoy there. But ask me in French, and I transport myself to Paris, where the options I’ll choose from are different. So the same deeply personal question gets a different answer depending on the language in which you’re asking me. This idea that you gain a new personality with every language you speak, that you act differently when speaking different languages, is a profound(深刻的） one.
金词

transport oneself to 把某人带入特定境地
profound [prə'faʊnd]adj. 意义深远的

第二十一段

德国人和英国人在描述同一个动作时，有啥不同？

Athanasopoulos and his colleagues have been studying the capacity（能力） for language to change people’s perspectives（观点）. In one experiment, English and German speakers were shown videos of people moving, such as a woman walking towards her car or a man cycling to the supermarket. English speakers focus on the action and typically describe the scene as “a woman is walking” or “a man is cycling”. German speakers, on the other hand, have a more holistic（整体的） worldview and will include the goal of the action: they might say (in German) “a woman walks towards her car” or “a man cycles towards the supermarket”.

金词：

capacity  [kə'pæsɪtɪ] n 能力
perspective [pə'spektɪv]n 观点
holistic [həʊ'lɪstɪk; hɒ-] adj.整体的；全盘的

第二十二段

德国人和英国人的不同主要来自于语言中的语法结构：英语用正在进行时描述动作，只重状态，不重目的；而德语则相反。

Part of this is due to the grammatical toolkit available, Athanasopoulos explains. Unlike German, English has the -ing ending to describe actions that are ongoing（正在进行的）. This makes English speakers much less likely than German speakers to assign a goal to an action when describing an ambiguous（模棱两可的） scene. When he tested English–German bilinguals, however, whether they were action- or goal-focused depended on which country they were tested in. If the bilinguals were tested in Germany, they were goal-focused; in England, they were action-focused, no matter which language was used, showing how intertwined（错综复杂的） culture and language can be in determining a person’s worldview.

金词：

ambiguous  [æm'bɪgjʊəs]adj.模糊不清的
interweined [,ɪntɜː'twaɪnd]adj.错综复杂的

第二十三段

说不同语言的人做句子填空题时，答案大相径庭，体现出明显的文化差异。

In the 1960s, one of the pioneers of psycholinguistics, Susan Ervin-Tripp, tested Japanese–English bilingual women, asking them to finish sentences in each language. She found that the women [ended the sentences very differently][50] depending on which language was used. For example, “When my wishes conflict with my family…” was completed in Japanese as “it is a time of great unhappiness”; in English, as “I do what I want”. Another example was “Real friends should…”, which was completed as “help each other” in Japanese and “be frank” in English.Many bilinguals say they feel like a different person when they speak their other language. 

许多说多种语言的人感觉每换一种语言，就切换一种人格。

第二十四段

From this, Ervin-Tripp concluded that human thought takes place within language mindsets(思维方式）, and that bilinguals have different mindsets for each language – an extraordinary idea but one that has been borne out（得到证实的） in subsequent（随后的） studies, and many bilinguals say they [feel like a different person][51]when they speak their other language.

金词：

mindset ['maɪn(d)set] n.心态；思维方式
be borne out by 被…证实
subsequent ['sʌbsɪkw(ə)nt]adj.随后的

第二十五段

These different mindsets are continually in conflict, however, as bilingual brains sort out（搞清楚） which language to use. In a revealing experiment with his English-German bilingual group, Athanasopoulos got them to recite strings of numbers out loud in either German or English. This effectively “blocked” the other language altogether, and when they were shown the videos of movement, the bilinguals’ descriptions were more action- or goal-focused depending on which language had been blocked. So, if they recited numbers in German, their responses to the videos were more typically German and goal-focused. When the number recitation（背诵） was switched to the other language midway（中途）, their video responses also switched.

第二十六段

Searching for a word in one language - while suppressing（压抑） the corresponding word in another - gently taxes（耗费） the brain, helping to train our concentration（注意力）. So what’s going on? Are there really two separate minds in a bilingual brain? That’s what the snowflake experiment was designed to find out. I’m a little nervous of what my fumbling performance will reveal about me, but Athanasopoulos assures me I’m similar to others who have been tested – and so far, we seem to be validating（证实） his theory.

金词：

suppress  [sə'pres]vt.抑制
tax[tæks]vt.耗费
concentration [kɒns(ə)n'treɪʃ(ə)n] n 注意力
validate ['vælɪdeɪt]vt.证实

第二十七段

In order to assess the effect that trying to understand the Syntaflake language had on my brain, I took another test before and after the snowflake task. In these so-called [flanker tasks][59], patterns of arrows appeared on the screen and I had to press the left or right button according to the direction of the arrow in the centre. Sometimes the surrounding pattern of arrows was confusing, so by the end of the first session my shoulders had been hunched somewhere near my ears and I was exhausted from concentrating. It’s not a task in which practice improves performance (most people actually do worse second time round), but when I did the same test again after completing the snowflake task, I was significantly better at it, just as Athanasopoulos has predicted.

为了进一步搞清楚双语的秘密，作者又进行了一个实验：侧抑制任务实验。

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