寄生草莓的英文俱樂部

We are so accustomed to newspapers and books and magazines that we take it for granted that the world has always been able to read and write. As a matter of fact, writing, the most important of all inventions, is quite new. Without written documents we would be like cats and dogs, who can only teach their kittens and their puppies a few simple things and who, because they cannot write, possess no way in which they can make use of the experience of those generations of cats and dogs that have gone before.

我們已經很習慣有報紙、書籍、和雜誌的存在，所以把讀和寫視為理所當然。然而事實上，書寫，這個幾乎可以說是人類所有發明之中最重要的發明，其實是個很新的概念。如果沒有書寫的出現，我們就會像狗或是貓一樣，只能教導小狗或是小貓們一些很簡單的事情，而沒有辦法傳承那些世世代代的貓貓狗狗祖先們所曾經有過的經驗。

In the first century before our era, when the Romans came to Egypt, they found the valley full of strange little pictures which seemed to have something to do with the history of the country.

But the Romans were not interested in "anything foreign" and did not inquire into the origin of these queer figures which covered the walls of the temples and the walls of the palaces and endless reams of flat sheets made out of the papyrus reed. The last of the Egyptian priests who had understood the holy art of making such pictures had died several years before. Egypt deprived of its independence had become a store-house filled with important historical documents which no one could decipher and which were of no earthly use to either man or beast.

公元前一世紀羅馬人來到埃及的時候，他們在這個河谷發現了許多奇特的似乎跟這個國家的歷史有所關聯的小圖畫，可是羅馬人對於這些外國人的小玩意兒並不感興趣，因此也沒有對這些充斥在神廟和宮殿的牆上，或是莎草紙上的小圖案的來源予以深究。最後一個能夠懂得這些文字的祭司已經死了好幾年了，被剝奪了獨立主權的埃及就像一個塞滿了重要卻無人能夠理解的歷史文物的倉庫。因為無人能解，這些東西也沒有任何實質上的意義。

Seventeen centuries went by and Egypt remained a land of mystery. But in the year 1798 a French general by the name of Bonaparte happened to visit eastern Africa to prepare for an attack upon the British Indian Colonies. He did not get beyond the Nile, and his campaign was a failure. But, quite accidentally, the famous French expedition solved the problem of the ancient Egyptian picture-language.

十七個世紀過去了，埃及仍然保持著她的神祕和無人能解。1798 年拿破崙來到東非，他的戰役失敗了，但是在一個偶然的機會下，這個法國的遠征軍卻解開了埃及圖畫文字之謎。

One day a young French officer, much bored by the dreary life of his little fortress on the Rosetta river (a mouth of the Nile) decided to spend a few idle hours rummaging among [19] the ruins of the Nile Delta. And behold! he found a stone which greatly puzzled him. Like everything else in Egypt it was covered with little figures. But this particular slab of black basalt was different from anything that had ever been discovered. It carried three inscriptions. One of these was in Greek. The Greek language was known. "All that is necessary," so he reasoned, "is to compare the Greek text with the Egyptian figures, and they will at once tell their secrets."

一天，一個駐守在羅賽塔河( Rosetta River) 的年輕法國軍官，在百般聊賴之際，決定到尼羅河三角洲的遺跡晃晃。在此，一塊石頭把他迷住了。就像埃及其他的東西一樣，這石頭上蓋滿了小小的圖畫。這塊石頭有三種碑文，其中之一是當時所熟知的希臘文。"這樣就足夠了" 他推論著"把希臘文和埃及圖畫作比較，就可以得知這些文字的祕密了。"

P.S. 這位法國軍官所發現的，就是非常有名的 " Rosetta Stone"，這塊石頭上的碑文帶著我們解開了埃及古圖畫文字之謎，讓我們得以對古時候的埃及有更多的了解。這塊傻傻的石頭對於人類文明的貢獻真是太大了，所以大家千萬不要小看這些被刻在石頭上的東西，因為他們能夠傳之久遠。

羅賽塔之石的貢獻如此之大，甚至有一個很有名的語言學習軟體也以此為名，這個語言學習軟體功能非常強大，他設計的學習對象原本是一些外交人員，所以所涵蓋的語言除了英文，還包括你所能想到的各個國家的語言。這個軟體強大的程度，甚至可以透過語音辨識來糾正你的發音。不過當然，他很貴，很貴，非常貴 ~~~~

[待續]