The History of English in Ten Minutes. Chapter six. English and Empire or the sun never set on the English language.
十分钟了解英语历史。第六章,英语和帝国或曰英语的太阳永不落。

With English making its name as the language of science, the Bible and Shakespeare, Britain decided to take it on tour.
随着英语作为科学、圣经和莎士比亚的语言一举成名,英国决定让它开始世界巡演。

Asking only for land, wealth, natural resources, total obedience to the crown and a few local words in return.
而他们要求的回报是土地、财富、自然资源、对英王的忠诚,以及一些当地词汇。

They went to the Caribbean looking for gold and a chance to really unwind – discovering the ‘barbeque’, the ‘canoe’ and a pretty good recipe for rum punch. They also brought back the word ‘cannibal’ to make their trip sound more exciting.
他们去加勒比寻找黄金以及真正放松的机会,于是发现了“烧烤”、“独木舟”和朗姆潘趣酒的酿造秘诀。他们还带回“食人者”这个词,让这一旅程听上去更加惊心动魄。

In India there was something for everyone. ‘Yoga’ – to help you stay in shape, while pretending to be spiritual. If that didn’t work there was the ‘cummerbund’ to hide a paunch and - if you couldn’t even make it up the stairs without turning ‘crimson’ – they had the ‘bungalow’.
在印度,有些适合每个人的词汇。“瑜伽”——让你保持身材的同时还自称有精神上的作用。如果无效,至少还有个“宽腰带”来隐藏大肚子。如果你上个台阶都能累到把脸涨得“通红”,他们还有“平房”。

Meanwhile in Africa they picked up words like ‘voodoo’ and ‘zombie’ – kicking off the teen horror film.
同时,他们在非洲学会了“伏都教”和“僵尸”这类词,直接导致了后来的青少年恐怖电影风潮。

From Australia, English took the words ‘nugget’, ‘boomerang’ and ‘walkabout’ - and in fact the whole concept of chain pubs.
英国人从澳洲拿来了“炸鸡块”、“飞去来器”和“徒步旅行”——实际上是连锁酒吧的整体概念。

Between toppling Napoleon (1815) and the first World War (1914), the British Empire gobbled up around 10 millions square miles, 400 million people and nearly a hundred thousand gin and tonics, leaving new varieties of English to develop all over the globe.
在推翻拿破仑(1815年)和第一次世界大战(1914年)之间,大英帝国吞并了大约1千万平方英里的土地,4亿人口,近10万的杜松烧酒和补品,使得英语新兴变种的发展遍及全球。

相关文章>>

十分钟了解英语历史 盎格鲁撒克逊人

十分钟了解英语历史 诺曼人入侵