為什么秋天有兩個名字?

為什么秋天有兩個名字?

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.

隨著季節(jié)的變化，白天變得越來越短，葉子也會改變顏色，幾乎所有的東西都添加了一種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.

這些只是autumn到來的幾個跡象，或者說是fall?當這個季節(jié)本身就是一個從一個明確定義的季節(jié)——夏季到另一個同樣明確定義的季節(jié)——冬季的轉(zhuǎn)變時，用哪個名字來命名似乎很合適。

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.

既然有兩個名字，自然就會有一個問題——畢竟，一個名字對于其他季節(jié)來說已經(jīng)足夠好了——應(yīng)該用哪個名字。也許fall只是一個季節(jié)的特定時間，而autumn則是一個季節(jié)，就像正餐和晚餐的區(qū)別。又或者，只有當fall完全可以接受的時候，自命不凡的人才會用autumn這個詞，因為他們喜歡聽起來很花哨。

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，它們的第一個詞出現(xiàn)的時間要短得多——前者來自原始印歐語系，分別表示“一半”和“濕”，因此已經(jīng)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.

根據(jù)韋氏詞典，autumn最早出現(xiàn)在14世紀的英語中，源于拉丁單詞autumn nus。它很快就流行起來了，很大程度上可能是因為它取代了這個季節(jié)最初的名字“收獲”。你們可以想象，把從田里收集作物的季節(jié)稱為harvest可能會讓人感到困惑因為harvest也是行為動作本身的名稱。

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，幾個世紀以來，autumn一直是夏天和冬天之間的季節(jié)。Fall這個名字出現(xiàn)在16世紀的某個時候，是一個非常詩意的短語“落葉的秋天”的縮寫。這個英語短語抓住了這個季節(jié)的精髓，卻沒有導(dǎo)致混亂，就像harvest可能造成的那樣。不到一個世紀后，這個短語就變成了一個簡單的詞:fall。

Either Or

二選一

'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."

至于你應(yīng)該用哪個詞來表示這個季節(jié)，它的長和短的意思是，使用fall或autumn都是可以接受的。甚至連新聞風(fēng)格指南也同意這種說法。在美聯(lián)社風(fēng)格指南中查閱“autumn”一詞，你會看到它們對應(yīng)季節(jié)的詞條。奇怪的是，它沒有提到autumn，只有fall。這讓一位作家不禁要問，“fall”是不是美聯(lián)社喜歡用的這個季節(jié)的名字。美聯(lián)社的編輯回復(fù)說:“我并沒有刻意的偏好。”這兩個術(shù)語可以互換使用。

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.

亨利和喬治·福勒合著的《國王的英語》在1906年出版、1908年再版時大獲成功，該書關(guān)注的是英語語言的恰當用法，尤其是英式英語。書中有整整一章都在講述美式英語的陰險本質(zhì)，以及它們是如何毀掉吉卜林的。不過，兄弟倆一致認為，美國人在一件事上做對了，那就是他們使用了fall這個詞而不是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."

他們寫道:“在分歧的細節(jié)上，(美國人)有時勝過(英國人)。從各方面來說，fall都比autumn好:它很短，風(fēng)景如畫;它像autumn一樣，向每一個使用它的人揭示它的來源，而不只是向?qū)W者揭示;我們曾經(jīng)和美國人一樣有權(quán)享有這種權(quán)利;但我們選擇了放任自流，用‘現(xiàn)在’這個詞無異于盜竊。”

And there's no worse crime than word larceny.

沒有比偷竊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.

在你聽到這兩個詞的時候，地點可能會起一定的作用，但最終要由你來決定哪一個能最好地捕捉這個特定季節(jié)的精神。但是，無論你做什么，請不要開始稱它為南瓜香料季節(jié)。