时髦英语口语词汇讲解第40期:Spam! 垃圾邮件!

spam
垃圾邮件

Technology always has an influence on language.
技术(的发展）通常会影响语言。

When printing came in, it brought new words into the language.
例如，印刷术带来的新词汇。

When broadcasting first started new words came into the language.
还有电台节目里出现的新词汇。

And now the internet has come along so it's not surprising that quite a large number of new words have come into English vocabulary since, especially the last 10 years really since the world wide web came into being.
现在我们有了因特网。自从万维出现以来，特别是过去十年里，大量新词相继出现，我们实在不应该为此而吃惊。

And of course if you've got emails, and most people have these days, then you will have encountered the word Spam.
如果你学会了使用邮件——当然，我们大多数人都会用——你可能会见到这个单词“spam”。

Spam flooding your email box with ads or other unwanted messages.
“spam”可能会带着广告和你不需要的信息铺天盖地而来。

But why the word Spam for this sort of thing?
但是，为什么我们要用spam指这一类邮件呢？

Spam was originally a tinned meat back in the 1930s, a brand name for a particular kind of cold meat.
在20世纪30年代，spam原是指一种罐装的肉类食品（某种冻肉的品牌名称）。

But it became very fashionable when Monty Python, the satirical television comedy series back in the 70s and 80s they had a sketch where just for fun they had spam with every item on the restaurant menu - bacon and spam, egg and spam, ham and spam, spam and spam.
但是，70年代时，随着嘲讽戏剧《巨蟒》的热播，这个词变得极其流行。80年代时还因此出现一个逗人开心的幽默短剧：一家餐馆里的餐单上，spam出现在所有的菜肴里面：培根配spam；鸡蛋加spam；火腿搭spam；spam和spam。

Spam spam spam spam… and they actually sang a song about it and it caught on. Spam spam spam spam……
spam甚至被编成了一首歌曲，还很上口。

And therefore it became a real part of the language meaning any unwanted material of any kind and so when the internet came along it wasn't surprising really that spam became part of that kind of experience.
因此，带着“多余之物；废物”之意的spam真正成为了英语词汇中的一员。当它被用在因特网时代，来指代“垃圾邮件”，我们也就不会这么吃惊了。

And the evidence that it's become part of the language is not just because of the noun spam which you might expect to see in the internet context but because it's generated other kinds of linguistic expression as well.
但是，spam被正式纳入英语词汇中并不仅仅是因为你会在上网的时候经常遇见这个词，还因为，这个词衍生出了一系列其它的语言表达。

You've now got verbs based upon it, and adjectives based upon it.
这个词衍生出了动词和形容词。

You can now have 'I've been spammed' or 'somebody's spamming me' and the actual people who do the work themselves who send all these horrible emails out to everybody so that we're flooded with these things, what are they called? Well there's a new noun, they're called 'spammers'.
现在你可以说“我被垃圾邮件攻击了”或者“有人用垃圾邮件攻击我”。而对于那些制造垃圾邮件的人，那些把这些讨厌的邮件发送给我们的人，他们又被称为什么呢？ 嗯，对这一类人，我们现在有一个新词：spmmer（垃圾邮件制造者）。