Languages and letters. Hawking and archery.

语言与文字，训鹰与箭术。

《Marco Polo Season 1》《马可波罗 第一季》

Congratulations. You're now an idiot in two languages.

恭喜你，你在两门语言里都是个白痴。

《Ice Age: The Meltdown》《冰川时代2》

Oh, not quite yet. So, Maisie, do you speak any languages?

等下，梅西，你会说他国语言吗？

《Modern Family Season 7》《摩登家庭 第七季》

Often the difference between languages and dialects is a matter of changing political and national considerations, rather than any linguistic features.

通常语言和方言的不同之处在于多变的政治和国家格局，而不是语言学特征。

《TED-Ed》《TED教育》

I'm sorry? Oh well, I guess Italian isn't one of the four languages you speak.

你说什么？我猜你会说的四种语言，不包括意大利文。

《Friends Season 7》《老友记 第七季》

I'm better than Joe. At his age, I was counting to 10 in three languages.

我就比乔更棒，在他那么大时，我就会用三种语言从一数到十了。

《Modern Family Season 6》《摩登家庭 第六季》

By systematically comparing these features and looking for regular patterns of sound changes and correspondences between languages, linguists can determine relationships, trace specific steps in their evolution and even reconstruct earlier languages with no written records.

通过系统地比较这些特征，查找读音变化的常见形式和不同语言的对应关系，语言学家能们够确定它们之间的关系，追溯它们发展演变的详细过程，甚至重建没有文字记录的早期语言。

《TED-Ed》《TED教育》

That wasn't just in Arabic, that was in English, and sent out in 16 other languages.

那不是用阿拉伯文写的，而是英语，以及其他16种语言。

《House of Cards Season 4》《纸牌屋 第四季》

Joey, she's so cool. She speaks four languages. Man, do you know what guys want.

她真的好酷，还会说四种语言。天啊，你们真的知道男人要什么。

《Friends Season 7》《老友记 第七季》

I assumed, as in a number of languages, that the gesture was part of the phrase. Well, it's not.

我以为在某些语言里手势也是表达的一部分。不是。

《The Big Bang Theory Season 1》《生活大爆炸 第一季》

Now the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said: There are no languages required in a musical world.

联合国秘书长潘基文说，在音乐的世界里，不需要语言。

《Leehom Wang Speech at Oxford》《王力宏牛津大学演讲》

Like genealogists, modern linguists try to map this process by tracing multiple languages back as far as they can to their common ancestor, or protolanguage.

系谱学家、现代语言学家等试图重现这个过程，他们尽力追溯不同语言的共同的起源，也称为原始母语。

《TED-Ed》《TED教育》

We don't really know if such an original language ever existed, but we do know that the thousands of languages existing today can be traced back to a much smaller number.

我们不知道是否曾经存在过这么一种初始语言，但我们知道如今的成千上万种语言可以追溯到有限的几种。

《TED-Ed》《TED教育》

We may never be able to determine how language came about, or whether all human languages did in fact have a common ancestor scattered through the babel of migration.

我们也许永远不会知道语言从何而来，也不知道人类语言是否真有共同的原始母语并通过移民们散落于各处。

《TED-Ed》《TED教育》

And I don't need to tell you, there aren't a lot of men who love physics, archaic languages and flags of the world.

毕竟不用我说你也知道，这世上很少有同样热爱物理学，古代语言和旗帜的人。

《The Big Bang Theory Season 9》《生活大爆炸 第九季》

So how do we determine whether languages are related in the first place? Similar sounding words don't tell us much.

那么我们如何确定不同语言在开始的时候是有关联的呢？相似的发音并不能说明什么。

《TED-Ed》《TED教育》

A group of all languages related in this way is called a language family, which can contain many branches and sub-families.

以同一原始母语演化而来的不同语言称为一个语系，它可能包括很多分支和子系。

《TED-Ed》《TED教育》

Yeah, they hardly ever give such a good corner to a rookie, but I'm the only one who can sing "Merry Christmas" in 25 languages. I lied.

新人很少分到这位子，可是只有我会用25种语言说圣诞快乐，我说谎的。

《Friends Season 5》《老友记 第五季》

The current division of major language families represents the limit at which relationships can be established with reasonable certainty, meaning that languages of different families are presumed not to be related on any level.

现在对主要语系的划分，在合理的可能性内，不同语言之间的关系仅限于这几种，就意味着不同语系的语言在任一层面上都没有交集。

《TED-Ed》《TED教育》

The other problem is that the farther we move back in time towards the top of the tree, the less evidence we have about the languages there.

另一个问题是我们沿着系谱树回溯越接近树的顶端，关于语言的证据就越少。

《TED-Ed》《TED教育》