Think|读读胡适先生的英文( 二 ) 胡适|Think|语言|经历|to|用词|英

还有些用词很简单，但我们可能不习惯这样用，比如：
- On the strength of these two shops, a large family comprising four units of more than twenty "mouths" had to be fed, clothedand maintained.
- The Chinese government volunteeredthe suggestions that this remission of the Boxer Indemnity would be used exclusively for educating Chinese students in American colleges and universities.
- So that was David Starr Jordan's argument against Wilson—a reason not unsimilarto that of our charwoman.
书中也有几处用到了常用习惯表达，比如：
- In the family, my father was the only able-bodied young man assisting his scholarly uncle, who was twenty-eight years his seniorand a recognized leader of the family and the community.（后面还出现了 XX years one's junior）
- In those days, the official assignments of qualified candidates were made bydrawing lots.
- In those days, however, he did not understand what science and democracy were. So it was easy for people to reada new content intoscience and democracy.
这些地方我就不解释了，都是我们也应该掌握的用法，有兴趣自己动手查查。
再说说内容。
胡适最初在康奈尔读的是农学，后来改成哲学。他说：
So that was the reason which I often cited in my popular speeches to Chinese students, urging them not to choose their line of specialization or their profession by the standard of social need, of what China needed, what society needed; but rather the choice should be based upon personal interest, the interest of the individual and his natural aptitudes and capabilities.
我们很难一开始就知道自己想做什么、成为什么样的人，唯一能做的就是尽量去尝试，最终才有可能找到自己的 calling 。这让我想到 Brené Brown 在一期播客中说的一段话：
【Think|读读胡适先生的英文】
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无论什么专业，我们都要 major in curiosity 。
胡适在康奈尔大学时爱上了 public speaking ，他说：
I found that public speaking very often forced me to think logically and systematically and to organize and present the knowledge on a given subject in a logical, systematic, intelligible form.
他总结说：Expression is the most effective means of appropriating one's own impression.

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简单说就是以教为学效果最佳。很喜欢这里用了 appropriate ，胡适说 appropriating means making it your own ，也就是「占为己有」——如何把看到的听到的内容变成自己的？如何 steal like an artist? 把它用自己的话讲给别人听，口头笔头都可以，形式不限。
讲到新文化运动时，胡适说想要推广白话文，最好的方式是用白话文创造好的作品：
I had to tell these old scholars very seriously that the only standard for a national language is first-class literature written in that language. There is no such thing as a dictionary standard; nobody goes to a kuo-yu dictionary, a national language dictionary, for standards before writing a short story or a love song or a lullaby or a novel. The standards were set by the great novels, and the standard will be set by the great writings of the present and of the future.

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没有人是看着字典写作的吧？这里给我的启发是：想要了解一门语言，最好的方式不是背单词书、翻词典，而是去读那个时代影响力最大的作品。阅读的时候也不能完全依赖词典中的解释理解某个用法，而是参考词典解释灵活在语境中理解一个词。