翻译技术速递Video-Fix: Birth of a Nickname
视频修复:一个昵称的诞生
A nickname is ‘an informal name for someone or something, especially a name that you are called by your friends or family, usually based on your real name or your character’.1
Now despite what the title may say, this video is not actually about how different nicknames came to be (that’s a video for another time!), but about the history of the ’N’ in front of some nicknames and words. If you’ve watched or read Game of Thrones, you know that the character ‘Eddard Stark’ is nicknamed ‘Ned’ – but why isn’t it ‘Ed? Where does that extra ’N’ come from? Likewise, whilst ‘Nick’ is a common nickname for someone called ‘Nicholas’, what does the ‘Nick’ in ‘Nickname’ stand for?
The additional ’N’ actually comes from one big linguistic misunderstanding which has also affected many other words. In this week’s Video-Fix, John McWhorter, linguist, professor, and host of the Lexicon Valley linguistics podcast, traces the history of the rogue ’N’.
Cambridge Dictionary Online. Definition of “Nickname”. [Online]. Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nickname [Accessed: 17/08/2020].
Interview by Janna Mack. From Luxembourg, she has degrees in Linguistics, Education, and Translation from Glasgow University.
昵称是对某人或某物的非正式称呼，特别是你的朋友或家人叫你的昵称，通常是基于你的真实姓名或你的性格
不管片名怎么说，这段视频其实并不是关于不同的昵称产生（这是另一个时间的视频！），而是关于一些昵称和单词前面的“N”的历史。如果你看过或读过《《权力的游戏》》，你就知道“艾德·史塔克”这个角色的绰号是“内德”--但为什么不是“埃德”呢？那个多余的'n'是从哪里来的？同样，虽然“尼克”是一个叫“尼古拉斯”的人的昵称，“昵称”中的“尼克”代表什么？
附加的“N”实际上来自于一个很大的语言误解，这个误解也影响了许多其他单词。在本周的视频修复中，语言学家，教授，Lexicon Valley语言学播客主持人John McWhorter追溯淘气N的历史。
剑桥词典在线版。“昵称”的定义。[在线]。网址:https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nickname[accessed:17/08/2020]。
Janna Mack的采访。她来自卢森堡，拥有格拉斯哥大学的语言学，教育学和翻译学位证书。
以上中文文本为机器翻译，存在不同程度偏差和错误，请理解并参考英文原文阅读。
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