Och aye, and whit aboot Scots?（译注：英语中一些地方口音的读写）是的，英语在往外传播的同时也聚合了各种变异，天啊，英语传播的范围可大了呢。苏格兰人说的“thrapple”跟英国人说的 “thropple”(喉咙)意思完全一样吗？澳大利亚人说的“donkasaurus” (汽车引擎)是英语呢，还是澳大利亚语，或者是希腊语？

　　Och aye, and whit aboot Scots? Yes, English gathers variants as it travels and, my, how it has travelled. Is the Scots “thrapple” just the same as the English “thropple” (throat)? Is the Australian “donkasaurus” (car engine) English or Australian or Greek?

　　谈到这点，英语从外国语言中捡来的那些单词又该怎么算？1886年出版的“Hobson-Jobson词典”列举了2000多个英国——印度词义。可以肯定地说，“Shampoo”（洗发水）和“bungalow”（平房）已经在英语词典里拥有它们自己的位置了，但是印度语的“dam”又如何呢？这个印度硬币曾经被用于英语短语中，如：“I don’t give a dam”。但是，现在人们认为这是过去人们对“damn”这个单词的错误拼写，或者是误解。roue（放荡者）一词在英语中是一个非常普通的“法语”单词，但是这个单词现在法语中几乎已经是不被人知了，那又该怎么算呢？你也许会说，把它们全部列进去，与jihad（圣战）、tsunami（海啸）、 schadenfreude（幸灾乐祸）以及béarnaise sauce（贝亚恩酱汁）一起列进去。但是，标准线必须划在某个地方，那么是哪个地方呢？

　　Come to that, what about all the words that English picks up abroad? “Hobson-Jobson”, written in 1886, lists over 2,000 Anglo-Indian expressions. “Shampoo” and “bungalow” have certainly earned their place in the English dictionary, but what of the Hindi “dam”, the Indian coin once used in English phrases like “I don’t give a dam” but now consigned to history or misspelt, and so misunderstood, as “damn”? Or what of “roué”, a “French” word common enough in English but now almost unknown in French? List them all, you may say, along with jihad, tsunami, schadenfreude and béarnaise sauce. But the line must be drawn somewhere, so where?

　　全球语言监测公司”会让世人相信他们的划线是科学的：取大部分著名的词典，挑出所有出现在莎士比亚、乔叟和圣经中的单词，然后采用它们的专有算法，从报刊、互联网以及其它各种媒体搜索新词。当然，在这之后，所有的单词都必须符合在印刷物和演讲中出现的使用频率标准以及它们接受时间考验的能力的标准。有新增加的单词，就有不再使用的单词——牛津词典列出了其认为已经不使用的 47,156个单词——那些从说唱歌手、山谷女郎或博客作者嘴里说出的新词，大部分一离开他们的嘴就死亡了

　　The global monitors would have the world believe that their lines are drawn scientifically: take the bulk of the best-known dictionaries, chuck in all the words in Shakespeare, Chaucer and the Bible, and then apply their proprietary algorithm, which trawls through the press, the internet and every other medium for new words. After that, apparently, the words must meet criteria about frequency of use in print and speech and their ability to stand the test of time. Words drop out of use as well as into it—Oxford lists 47,156 it considers obsolete—and most neologisms die almost as soon as they leave the lips of the rapper, valley girl or blogobore who utters them.

　　最后一个问题，英语词汇是否达到1百万毫无意义吗？是的，这在很大程度上是毫无意义的。但是英语的确是有大量的词汇，几乎可以肯定是比任何其它语言的词汇都要多。那是其进化的结果。英语基础是日耳曼语，后来被入侵的诺曼人引入了法语以及中世纪学者和神职人员引入拉丁语而得到扩展。现在，英语作为当代世界的全球语言，已经有了大量的地域性变体——或许，作为英语协助抹灭那些单词的一种回报，越来越多的语言被灭绝了。

　　So, last question, is the 1m-word claim meaningless? Yes, largely. But English does indeed have lots of words, almost certainly more than any other tongue. That is the consequence of its evolution. Basically Germanic, it was expanded by the conquering Normans, who introduced French, and the medieval scholars and clergy, who used Latin. As the global language of the modern world, it now has lots of local variants—some recompense perhaps for the words it helps to obliterate as more and more languages become extinct.　

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