圖/文 陶維極 G.B. Talovich
　
I firmly believe that if progress is to be made in English in Taiwan, we need to establish a cut-off date: no English from before 1900 may be taught to anybody but English Lit majors. We will accept only English that would be acceptable in a Freshman Comp class in an American university. Students in Taiwan waste too much time studying phrases and rules that applied to English hundreds of years ago and have not been used since. Look at it this way: you cannot deny that The Dream of the Red Chamber is beautifully written and easy to understand, but does that mean you speak like Chia Paoyu? You cannot say that he is wrong, but you do not speak like him, because Tsao Hsuehch’in died centuries ago, and a living language changes with time.
A dictionary is a warehouse, so it even provides words and definitions that died out long ago. A dictionary entry does not guarantee common usage. Case in point: when you think of the word 乖, what does it mean? Okay, now look it up: 說文解字：乖，戾也。When you tell a child, 乖！do you want the kid to behave, or misbehave? By the same token, at the CKS Memorial there is a sign that says “No thoroughfare.” No matter what the dictionary says, that doesn’t make any sense to English speakers today.
　

譯 / 陶維極 G.B. Talovich

我深信，臺灣英文要上軌道的話，必須畫界限：1900年之前的英文不是英文，只有主修英國文學的大學生才能看二十世紀以前的英文。我們的標準應該是一般美國大學大一作文所接受的英文。臺灣的學生浪費太多時間學一堆幾百年前已經淘汰的英文。比如，紅樓夢的文筆優美易懂，但是請問，您開口說的話像賈寶玉的言詞嗎？不能說他講的不對，可是我們現在講話不是那個樣子，因為曹雪芹幾百年前已經作古去了；活生生的語言，隨時在演變。

字典像倉庫，裏面的字詞定義，有的已經淘汰多年。字典的定義，並不表示常用、到地與否。舉例：看到「乖」字，第一個反應是甚麼？好，現在請查字典：說文解字：乖，戾也。跟小朋友說「乖！」，希望他乖巧或者乖戾？同理，不管英漢字典怎麼說，中正紀念堂停車場標誌NO THOROUGHFARE，依我們現代人看，完全不知所云。
　

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