美式英语入侵英国：好莱坞电影、流行小说势不可挡

The future of written English will owe more to Hollywood films than Dickens or Shakespeare, if the findings of a study into children’s writing are anything to go by.

如果一项对儿童作文的研究结果可靠的话，那么比起狄更斯或莎士比亚等英国文坛巨匠，书面英语的未来受好莱坞电影的影响会更大。

The analysis of 74,000 short stories found that their written work was littered with Americanisms, exclamation marks and references to celebrities.

对74000篇儿童短文的分析发现，这些文字作品中俨然处处可见美式英语、感叹号和明星姓名。

Researchers who looked at the entries to a national competition found they were increasingly using American words such as garbage, trash can, sidewalk, candy, sneakers, soda, cranky and flashlight.

研究人员阅读了全国作文比赛的参赛作品后发现，，孩子们正越来越多地使用一些美式英语词汇，比如：garbage（垃圾）, trash can（垃圾桶）， sidewalk（人行道）, candy（糖果）, sneakers（胶底运动鞋）, soda（苏打水）, cranky（暴躁的） and flashlight（手电筒）。

The stories, written by pupils aged seven to 13, show how fairy cakes are referred to as cupcakes and a dinner jacket has become a tuxedo. ‘Smart’ is now often used for ‘clever’ and ‘cranky’ for ‘irritable’.

这些短篇作文出自7-13岁孩子们之手，小学生们用纸杯蛋糕(cupcakes)来代替仙女蛋糕（fairy cakes），晚礼服(dinner jacket)则变成了无尾礼服(tuxedo)。常用美式英语还有‘smart’现在也替代了英式用词’clever’来表示聪明之意，而表达暴躁古怪之意的’cranky’也取代了’irritable’。

Celebrity culture also has a powerful influence on children’s work, with Simon Cowell and Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi among the famous names cropping up repeatedly.

名人文化同样对孩子们的作文有着强大的影响力，像真人秀毒舌评委西蒙・考威尔以及阿根廷足球明星梅西这样的名人姓名都再三地出现在他们的文章中。

But pupils are let down by basic spelling, punctuation and grammar, according to the study by Oxford University Press, which looked at the entries to BBC Radio 2’s ‘500 Words’ competition.

但是牛津大学出版社的研究发现，小学生们在基本拼写、标点和语法上很成问题。该研究查看了英国广播公司第二之声举办的“500单词”作文比赛的参赛作品。

Children stumbled over simple spellings such as ‘does’ and ‘clothes’ and struggled to use the past tense correctly, often saying ‘rised’ instead of ‘rose’ or ‘thinked’ instead of ‘thought’.

孩子们会出现简单的拼写错误，比如拼错’does’和’clothes’，也不能正确运用过去式，他们常常把rose写成rised，把thought写成thinked。

Researchers also found that punctuation was underused, especially semi-colons and speech marks. Some did not know how to use capital letters.

研究人员还发现学生们标点该用的时候不用，特别是分号和引号。一些孩子竟然不知道如何使用大写字母。

However, exclamation marks were overused. Researchers found 35,171 examples in total, with some young writers using five at a time. The study of more than 31million words will be compared with future research to see how written language evolves.

但是，感叹号却被过度使用了。研究人员发现35171次这样的实例，一些孩子竟然一次点了5个感叹号。这个包含3100万个单词的研究将拿来和未来研究做对比，分析书面语言的演变过程。

Popular US fiction such as the Twilight vampire novels and films is thought to be fuelling the increasing use of American vocabulary and spelling.

时下热门美国小说《暮光之城》系列和由其改编热映的电影作品都促使孩子们越来越多地使用美式词汇和拼写。

Modern technology was also influential. Out of almost 300 references to ‘blackberry’, nearly half referred to mobile phones. But the researchers found a wealth of imaginative and inventive ideas.

现代科技也有很大的影响力。在孩子们的作文中，’blackberry’一词出现了300次，几乎一半指的都是黑莓手机。但是研究人员也发现了很多富有创造力又别出心裁的点子。

Fears that texting was corrupting children’s written work were unfounded, they said, with youngsters only using text speak when they were referring to a text message.

研究没有证实发短信会破坏孩子书面表达能力的担忧。研究人员称，这些年轻人只在发短信的时候才会使用有关短信的字符和词语。

Samantha Armstrong, of the OUP children’s dictionaries division, said: ‘Perhaps we are catching a glimpse of the language of the future.’

牛津大学出版社儿童部辞书室的萨曼莎・阿姆斯特朗说：“也许我们正瞥见未来英语的微光。”

Chris Evans, whose radio show runs the competition, said the results were ‘fascinating’, adding: ‘Who’d have thought that Messi and Jeremy Clarkson would be some of the most used celebrity names?’

英国广播公司第二之声“500单词”作文比赛的主持人克里斯・埃文斯称，这一研究结果“很有趣”，他还说：“谁会想到梅西和著名电视节目主持人杰瑞米・克拉克森会是被使用最多的名人名字呢。”