There are three thousand languages spoken today. Some people even believe that there are as many as five thousand languages that are still living today. These languages are very different one from another. Indeed, they are so different as to be mutually unintelligible that we call them separate languages. A speaker of one of them, no matter how skillful and fluent, cannot communicate with a speaker of another unless one of them, as we say, “l(fā)earns the other's language." Yet these differences, great as they are, are differences of detail - differences of the kinds of sounds used and the ways of putting them together. In their broad outlines, in their basic principles, and even in the way they approach certain specific problems of communication, languages have a great deal in common.
今天人們所說(shuō)的語(yǔ)言達(dá)3000種，有人甚至認(rèn)為活的語(yǔ)言至今還有5000種之多。這些語(yǔ)言之間有很大的差異。實(shí)際上，正因?yàn)檫@些語(yǔ)言互不相通，所以我們才將它們叫做獨(dú)立的語(yǔ)言。操其中一門語(yǔ)言者，無(wú)論其熟練程度和流利程度有多高，都無(wú)法同操另一門語(yǔ)言者交談，除非他們中間有一人如同我們所說(shuō)的那樣“學(xué)會(huì)了另一人所說(shuō)的語(yǔ)言”。語(yǔ)言之間雖然存在著這些巨大的不同，差異卻是細(xì)微具體的，例如語(yǔ)音的不同以及語(yǔ)音組合方面的差異。從語(yǔ)言的概貌、基本原則及對(duì)一些具體的交際問(wèn)題的處理方法來(lái)看，語(yǔ)言有著諸多的共同點(diǎn)。
We are all intimately familiar with at least one language, yet few of us ever stop to consider what we know about it. The words of a language can be listed in a dictionary, but not all the sentences, and a language consists of these sentences as well as words.
Speakers use a finite set of rules to produce and understand an infinite set of sentences. These rules comprise the grammar of a language, which is learned when you acquire the language. The grammar of a language includes the sound system, how words may be combined into phrases and sentences, and the way in which sounds and meanings are related.
雖然我們每個(gè)人至少通曉一門語(yǔ)言，但很少有人會(huì)靜心思考一下自己對(duì)所操語(yǔ)言的語(yǔ)言知識(shí)又知道多少。語(yǔ)言包括詞匯，也包括句子，語(yǔ)言的詞匯可以在詞典中列出，但并非所有的句子都能收到詞典里。
說(shuō)話者可以運(yùn)用一組數(shù)量有限的規(guī)則來(lái)表達(dá)和理解數(shù)量無(wú)限的句子。這些規(guī)則組成了語(yǔ)言的語(yǔ)法體系，你在習(xí)得語(yǔ)言的同時(shí)學(xué)到了語(yǔ)法。語(yǔ)法包括音系、組詞或組織句子的規(guī)則以及語(yǔ)音與語(yǔ)義之間聯(lián)系的規(guī)則。
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