Isn't the English language marvellous?

英語是極好的(marvellous)，不是嗎?

Some wouldn't say so, but for 20 years traditional British words have slowly been replaced by Americanisms。

有些人大[微博]概不會用“marvellous”這個詞。但近20年來，傳統(tǒng)的英式詞匯已經逐漸被美式詞匯所取代。

And now, words like 'marvellous' have been usurped by the US cliché: 'awesome'。

如今，“marvellous”等英式詞匯已經被“awesome”等美式口語所取代。

The gradual change, charted by researchers at Cambridge University and Lancaster University, has also seen the decline of 'cheerio', 'pussy cat', 'marmalade' and 'fortnight', which are now barely used by anglophones。

劍橋大學和蘭卡斯特大學的研究人員通過圖表反映了這種語言現(xiàn)象的演變。根據圖表，“cheerio”(再見)、“pussy cat”(小貓咪)、“marmalade”(果醬)等英式英語詞匯的使用呈現(xiàn)下降趨勢，幾乎已被英語母語人士所拋棄。

While in the 1990s we were captivated by 'Walkmans', today it has been replaced by the likes of 'online' and 'smartphone'。

20世紀90年代風靡一時的“Walkman”(隨身聽)如今也被“online”(網上)和“smartphone”(智能手機)等新詞所代替。

Other words like 'catalogue' and 'drawers', which were also regulars of the 1990s, have had to make way for 21st century sayings like 'Facebook', 'internet', 'Google', 'essentially' and 'treadmill'。

其他一些20世紀90年代的常用詞，例如“catalogue”(目錄)和“drawers”(抽屜)，也不得不為21世紀的詞匯讓道，比方說“Facebook”(臉書)、“internet”(網絡)、“Google”(谷歌)、“essentially”(本質上)和“treadmill”(跑步機)。

Figures show that in 2014 the word 'awesome' appears 72 times per million words compared to 'marvellous', which has fallen in use from 155 times per million 20 years ago to only two times per million today。

數據顯示“awesome”一詞在2014年的出現(xiàn)頻率為72次/百萬詞，與之相比，“marvelous”的使用頻率則從20年前的155次/百萬詞滑落到2次/百萬詞。

Researchers believe the digital revolution and America's growing influence on our culture have dramatically changed the way British people speak。

研究者認為，信息革命及美國日漸強勢的文化影響力使英國人的口語產生了極大的變化。

Language expert Professor Tony McEnery, from the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS) at Lancaster University, said: 'These very early findings suggest the things that are most important to British society are indeed reflected in the amount we talk about them。

蘭卡斯特大學社會科學語料庫方法ESRC中心的語言專家托尼·麥克恩尼利表示：“這些前期發(fā)現(xiàn)表明，什么才是對英國社會最重要的東西確實能夠通過人們經常談論的話題得到反映。”

'New technologies like Facebook have really captured our attention, to the extent that, if we're not using it, we're probably talking about it。

“Facebook等新興科技產物確確實實地吸引了我們的注意力，即使在我們不使用它們的時候，我們也在討論它們。”

'The rise of 'awesome' seems to provide evidence of American English's influence on British speakers.'

“awesome一詞的崛起似乎證明了美式英語對英國人的影響。”

These are only the initial findings from a small pilot of the project, named the 'Spoken British National Corpus 2014', which is now underway。

以上僅是“2014年英國國家口語語料庫”項目的一個試點項目的初步發(fā)現(xiàn)，該項目還處于開展階段。

Prof McEnery said: 'We need to gather hundreds, if not thousands, of conversations to create a spoken corpus so we can continue to analyse the way language has changed over the last 20 years。

麥克恩尼利教授說：“我們需要搜集成千上萬段日常對話來建立口語語料庫，這樣我們才能繼續(xù)分析語言在近20年中的演變。”

'We are calling for people to send us MP3 files of their everyday, informal conversations in exchange for a small payment to help me and my team to delve deeper into spoken language.'

“我們讓人們錄下他們每天的非正式對話并把MP3文件寄給我們，相應地我們也會向他們支付一些報酬。這些文件可以幫助我和我的團隊更加深入地研究口語。”

It is an ambitious project. Prof McEnery said: 'It has not been completed to this scale in the UK since the early 1990s。

這是一個宏大的項目。麥克恩尼利教授表示：“這是英國自20世紀90年代早期以來進行的最大規(guī)模的口語調查項目。”

'That data, which is now out of date, is still used by researchers from around the world today, so we know there is a real appetite for research of this kind。

“世界各地的研究者目前還在使用那些過時的資料，所以我們知道這次的研究項目非常有必要。”

'It is of great importance to collect new recordings from the 2010s in order to understand the nature of British English speech as it is today and not how it was more than two decades ago.'

“我們需要了解的是當下英式口語的特質，而非20多年前的，所以收集2010年以來的新的口語語料十分重要。

Using the 'Spoken British National Corpus 2014', the team at Lancaster University and Cambridge University Press will be able to shed light on the way our spoken language changes over time。

利用“2014年英國國家口語語料庫”，蘭卡斯特大學和劍橋大學出版社的研究團隊最終將能向我們揭示英式口語的發(fā)展演變。

The research also allows analysis into language used in different regions, between genders and across different age groups。

該研究還對不同地區(qū)、不同性別和不同年齡層人群的語言進行了分析。