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Uniformity in American English in 1600s
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17世纪的美国英语：惊人的一致性
WHILE Englishmen along the colonial seaboard tried to cling to the familiar local ways of the different parts of England, they founded — without meaning to — a culture which was in many ways more homogeneous in vast America than it had been in course of moving about the New World and in moving up and down the social scale. They made it more uniform. A single spoken language soon echoed across the continent, overcoming space as the printed word overcomes time.
当北美殖民地沿海地区的英国人想继续沿袭英国不同地区的生活方式时，他们无意中为一种新的文化奠定了基础。从许多方面来看，在新世界的人口流动以及社会阶层变化的过程中，这种文化在广阔的美国土地上体现出更强的一致性。他们使用的语言更加统一了。就像印刷文字克服了时间上的障碍一样。北美大陆克服了空间上的障碍，很快出现了一种单一的口头语言。
The American language has indeed shown a spectacular uniformity. Only after we have looked at polyglot nations like India and China, or when we remind ourselves that Europe, with an area of less than four million square miles, possesses at least a dozen major languages, can we appreciate the advantage of America. The people of the United States, spread over three million square miles, speak only one language.
美国语言具有惊人的一致性。只有与印度和中国那样多种语言或方言并存的国家对比之后，或者提醒自己注意这样的事实，即欧洲的面积不到400万平方英里却存在着十几种不同的主要语言，我们才能正确地理解美国这方面的优越性。美国人民散居在300多万平方英里的土地上，却只讲着一种语言。
The linguistic uniformity of America is geographic (without barriers of regional dialect) and social (without barriers of caste and class). Both types of uniformity have had vast consequences for the national life; they have been both symptoms and causes of a striving for a national unity. When we note what a large French-speaking population has meant in Canadian political life or how numerous languages have obstructed federation in India, we begin to realize how different our political life might have been without our language unity. Many other features of modern American culture — including the geographic mobility of the population, the public educational system, the mail-order catalogs, the networks of radio and television, the national mass-circulation magazines and “national advertising" (with all these have meant for the standard of living) — would have been more difficult in a nation of several languages.
美国语言的一致性，就地理而言没有地区方言的障碍，就社会性而言则没有地位和阶级的隔阂。这两方面的一致性都给国家生活带来了巨大的影响。它们是争取国家统一的象征和原因。如果我们关注一下加拿大的大量讲法语的人对于加拿大政治生活所产生的影响，或者多种语言的存在如何妨碍了印度联邦制的确立，我们就会开始认识到，如果没有统一的语言，我们国家会出现多么大的不同啊!在一个多种语言并存的国家里，很难形成现代美国文化的许多其他特征——包括人口的地区性流动、公共教育制度、邮政编号、广播电视网、全国性报刊杂志的批量发行、“全国性广告”以及所有这一切对于人民生活水平的影响。
The other “American" qualities of our language seem trivial beside this monumental uniformity, which can be traced back to the earliest age of English settlement. If the roots of this linguistic uniformity had not been strongly developed during the colonial period, before the numerous and motley immigrations of the 19th century, the Untied States might not today offer the world the paradoxical spectacle of a nation of many peoples who speak a single language. Almost from the first settlement there were pressures toward uniformity.
面对这种影响力巨大的一致性，美国语言的其他特色就显得无关紧要了。这一点可以追遡到英国移民最早定居北美的时期。如果这种语言上的一致性没有在殖民时期，在19世纪多种族的移民大量进入北美大陆之前，就深深扎下了根，今天的美国就不可能以一个多民族组成的国家却讲着单一语言这样一种自相矛盾的面貌出现在世界上。几乎从第一批定居北美的人开始，就存在着统一语言的要求。
American speech remained conservative, clinging to an increasingly uniform standard, during the entire colonial period. Non-English-speaking peoples tended to become quickly assimilated. The French Huguenots who sought refuge in America after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 were, for example, soon absorbed. The numerous Germans who came here in the 17th century, occasionally as whole communities, and settled in Pennsylvania and the valley of Virginia, in some instances retained a modified German dialect for use among themselves, but their language exerted negligible influence upon American English. New immigrants expecting to rise into the higher social classes which were already speaking the American language felt every incentive to learn the common language of the community. By speaking “broken English" the parents expressed their own aspirations for the common language and the hope that their children might rise in the world.
在整个殖民时期，美国的口头语言一直是比较保守的，越来越倾向于遵循一种统一的标准。非英语民族很快被同化了。例如，1685年废除南特诏书之后到北美来寻求政治避难的法国胡格诺派新教徒很快就被同化了。17世纪到北美来的大量德国人，有时是作为整个社区定居的宾夕法尼亚和弗吉尼亚河谷一带，在某些情况下，他们相互间仍保留一种修正了的德语。但是，他们的语言对美国英语并没有产生什么影响。新来的移民希望跻身于已经讲着美国英语的高级社会阶层，这种心情激励他们学习使用社会通用语言。做父母的说着“磕磕巴巴的英语”，也反映了他们对通用语言的期望，希望他们的后代将来能在新世界出人头地。
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