经济学人下载: 约翰逊专栏--口音歧视(3)

In the end, prejudice against accents betrays bad manners and small minds, and says more about the listener than about the put-upon speaker. But often it is itself a sign of poor education. As it happens, Mr Campbell’s swipe at Ms Patel’s “g-dropping” was badly aimed. There is no actual “g” sound (as in “go”) at the end of words ending in -ing; rather, there is a “velar nasal”, in which the mouth is closed off at the back and air comes from the nose. And the -in’ pronunciation he mocks (as in walkin’) was the “correct” one for centuries, remaining prestigious in the early 1900s. 

最后，对口音的偏见也更多的暴露出倾听者的不礼貌和心胸狭窄，而不是受到嘲弄的说话者。但这本身往往是教育水平低下的表现。恰巧，坎贝尔对帕特尔“未发g音”的抨击针对性很差。在以-ing结尾的单词的末尾没有实际的“g”音（如“go”）；相反，有一个“软颚鼻音”，即发音时口腔后部闭塞，空气从鼻逸出。坎贝尔嘲笑的-in’的发音（如walkin’）在几个世纪以来却一直是“正确”的，在20世纪初仍然享有威望。

If more of this were taught in British schools, snobbery would seem irrational. French children might be told that Parisian French was a latecomer, as prestige dialects in France go. Provencal, from France’s south, was the language of poetry when the speech of Paris’s Ile-de- France region was a trivial local patois. 

如果英国学校教授更多这方面的知识，自以为优越的态度就显得很荒谬。法国孩子可能会被告知，随着法国的权威方言渐衰，巴黎法语后来居上。来自法国南部的普罗旺斯是诗歌的语言，当时巴黎法兰西地区的说话方式只是一种微不足道的当地方言。

Speakers of prestigious accents are lucky that they do not face scorn for their speech. But it is just that—luck, not superior learning or care. A law may modify behaviour, but education is a better way to change attitudes. 

讲着权威方言的人不会受到嘲笑，他们很幸运。但这只是运气，不代表着你经历过良好的学习和照顾。法律可以改变行为，但教育才是改变态度的最好办法。