TED演讲之说什么 短信是语言杀手?开玩笑吧!(9)
Take that person from 1993 — not that long ago,
我们让1993年的那个人－这可不算太久远，
this is “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” — those people.
那还是“比尔和泰德历险记”（1989年美国电影）时代，
Take those people and they read a very typical text written by a 20-year-old today.
我们让这些人读现在20岁年轻人写的一段短信。
Often they would have no idea what half of it meant
他们应该通常连一半的内容都猜不出来
because a whole new language has developed
因为我们的年轻人已经发展出了一种新的语言，
among our young people doing something as mundane as what it looks like to us when they’re batting around on their little devices.
它是通过在孩子们的小设备上的看似平常的敲敲打打中演变出来的。
So in closing, if I could go into the future, if I could go into 2033,
总结一下，如果我可以穿越到未来，如果我去到2033年，
the first thing I would ask is whether David Simon had done a sequel to “The Wire.” I would want to know.
我会问的第一个问题就是大卫·西蒙拍没拍“火线”（美国HBO剧集）的续集。
And I really would ask that
我真的会问这个的
and then I’d want to know actually what was going on on “Downton Abbey.”
我还会想知道“唐顿庄园”到底发生了什么。
That’d be the second thing. And then the third thing would be,
这是第二个问题。第三个问题就是，
please show me a sheaf of texts written by 16-year-old girls,
请给我一叠16岁姑娘们写的短信，
because I would want to know where this language had developed since our times,
因为我想知道这个语言已经发展成什么样子了，
and ideally I would then send them back to you and me now
更好的就是我可以把这些短信发给现在的大家和我
so we could examine this linguistic miracle happening right under our noses.
我们就可以研究研究这个当下正在发生着的语言奇迹。
Thank you very much. Thank you.
非常感谢。谢谢大家。
演讲简介：
短信的出现意味着良好书写技能的丧失吗？约翰·麦克沃特提出短信在语言学上和文化上的影响都比表面看上去的更大，而且可喜的是这些都是好消息。