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为什么秋天有两个名字?

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2020年10月19日

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Why Does Autumn Have Two Names?

为什么秋天有两个名字?

As the seasons change, the days grow shorter, the leaves change colors and the collection of flavors called pumpkin spice is added to practically everything.

随着季节的变化,白天变得越来越短,叶子也会改变颜色,几乎所有的东西都添加了一种叫做南瓜香料的味道。

These are just a few signs that autumn has arrived. Or is it fall? The indecision about which name to use only seems fitting when applied to a season that is itself a shift from one clearly defined season, summer, to another equally well-defined season, winter.

这些只是autumn到来的几个迹象,或者说是fall?当这个季节本身就是一个从一个明确定义的季节——夏季到另一个同样明确定义的季节——冬季的转变时,用哪个名字来命名似乎很合适。

rusm / Getty Images

With two names naturally comes the question of why — one name is good enough for all the other seasons, after all — and which one should be used. Maybe fall is only for certain times of the season, and autumn for the other, like the difference between dinner and supper. Or perhaps autumn is only used by pretentious folks who like to sound fancy when fall is perfectly acceptable.

既然有两个名字,自然就会有一个问题——毕竟,一个名字对于其他季节来说已经足够好了——应该用哪个名字。也许fall只是一个季节的特定时间,而autumn则是一个季节,就像正餐和晚餐的区别。又或者,只有当fall完全可以接受的时候,自命不凡的人才会用autumn这个词,因为他们喜欢听起来很花哨。

The Fall of Autumn

秋天

Autumn was originally called harvest, a potentially confusing name. George Cole [public domain]/Wikimedia Commons

Unlike summer and winter — words derived from Proto-Indo-European terms meaning "half" and "wet," respectively, and, as such, have been around for well over 1,000 years — the first word for the season between them is considerably younger.

不像夏季和冬季,它们的第一个词出现的时间要短得多——前者来自原始印欧语系,分别表示“一半”和“湿”,因此已经存在了1000多年。

According to Merriam-Webster, autumn first appeared in English in the 1300s, derived from the Latin word autumnus. Autumn caught on quickly, likely in no small part because it replaced the original name for the season, which was simply harvest. As you might imagine, calling the season in which crops were collected from the fields harvest might've been confusing given that harvest is also the name for the act itself.

根据韦氏词典,autumn最早出现在14世纪的英语中,源于拉丁单词autumn nus。它很快就流行起来了,很大程度上可能是因为它取代了这个季节最初的名字“收获”。你们可以想象,把从田里收集作物的季节称为harvest可能会让人感到困惑因为harvest也是行为动作本身的名称。

So autumn was the go-to term for this time between summer and winter for a couple of centuries. Fall as a name for the season came about sometime in the 1500s, a shortened version of the very poetic phrase for fall, "the fall of leaves." The English phrase captured the essence of the season without leading to confusion, like harvest potentially did. Not even a century later, the phrase has become a simple word: fall.

因此,几个世纪以来,autumn一直是夏天和冬天之间的季节。Fall这个名字出现在16世纪的某个时候,是一个非常诗意的短语“落叶的秋天”的缩写。这个英语短语抓住了这个季节的精髓,却没有导致混乱,就像harvest可能造成的那样。不到一个世纪后,这个短语就变成了一个简单的词:fall。

Either Or

二选一

'Fall' does capture the reason for the season much better than 'autumn' does. Kenny Louie [CC BY 2.0]/Wikimedia Commons

As for which term for the season you should use, the long and the short of it is that using either fall or autumn is acceptable. Even journalistic style guides agree. Look up "autumn" in the Associate Press (AP) style guide and you get referred to their entry on seasons. It, oddly, doesn't mention autumn, however, only fall. This led one writer to inquire if fall is therefore the preferred name for the season in AP style. "No preference intended," the AP editors wrote back. "The terms are used interchangeably."

至于你应该用哪个词来表示这个季节,它的长和短的意思是,使用fall或autumn都是可以接受的。甚至连新闻风格指南也同意这种说法。在美联社风格指南中查阅“autumn”一词,你会看到它们对应季节的词条。奇怪的是,它没有提到autumn,只有fall。这让一位作家不禁要问,“fall”是不是美联社喜欢用的这个季节的名字。美联社的编辑回复说:“我并没有刻意的偏好。”这两个术语可以互换使用。

Henry and George Fowler's "The King's English," a smash hit of a book when it was published in 1906 and published again in 1908 concerned itself with proper usage of the English language, specifically British English. The book contains a whole chapter about the insidious nature of Americanisms and how they were ruining Kipling. However, the brothers did agree that the Americans got one thing right, and it's the use of the word fall instead of autumn.

亨利和乔治·福勒合著的《国王的英语》在1906年出版、1908年再版时大获成功,该书关注的是英语语言的恰当用法,尤其是英式英语。书中有整整一章都在讲述美式英语的阴险本质,以及它们是如何毁掉吉卜林的。不过,兄弟俩一致认为,美国人在一件事上做对了,那就是他们使用了fall这个词而不是autumn。

"In the details of divergence, [the Americans] have sometimes had the better of [the English]," they write. "Fall is better on the merits than autumn, in every way: it is short, picturesque; it reveals its derivation to every one who uses it, not to the scholar only, like autumn; and we once had as good a right to it as the Americans; but we have chosen to let the right lapse, and to use the word now is no better than larceny."

他们写道:“在分歧的细节上,(美国人)有时胜过(英国人)。从各方面来说,fall都比autumn好:它很短,风景如画;它像autumn一样,向每一个使用它的人揭示它的来源,而不只是向学者揭示;我们曾经和美国人一样有权享有这种权利;但我们选择了放任自流,用‘现在’这个词无异于盗窃。”

And there's no worse crime than word larceny.

没有比偷窃文字更糟糕的犯罪了。

While location will likely play a part in where you hear fall or autumn, it's ultimately up to you to decide which one best captures the spirit of this particular season. Please, though, whatever you do, just don't start calling it pumpkin spice season.

在你听到这两个词的时候,地点可能会起一定的作用,但最终要由你来决定哪一个能最好地捕捉这个特定季节的精神。但是,无论你做什么,请不要开始称它为南瓜香料季节。


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