SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH, by George Herbert Palmer, published 1909 by the Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston as one of the “Riverside Education Monographs.”

George Herbert Palmer （1842-1933）, American philosopher and teacher of English at Harvard University.

Such audacious accuracy, however, distinguishing as it does noble speech from commonplace speech can be practiced only by him who has a wide range of words. Our ordinary range is absurdly narrow. It is important, therefore, for anybody who would cultivate himself in English to make strenuous and systematic efforts to enlarge his vocabulary. Our dictionaries contain more than a hundred thousand words. The average speaker employs about three thousand. Is this because ordinary people have only three or four thousand things to say? Not at all. It is simply due to dulness. Listen to the average schoolboy. He has a dozen or two nouns, half a dozen verbs, three or four adjectives, and enough conjunctions and prepositions to stick the conglomerate together. This ordinary speech deserves the description which Hobbes gave to his “State of Nature,” that “it is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The fact is, we fall into the way of thinking that the wealthy words are for others and that they do not belong to us. We are like those who have received a vast inheritance, but who persist in the inconveniences of hard beds, scanty food, rude clothing; who never travel, and who limit their purchases to the bleak necessities of life. Ask such people why they endure niggardly living while wealth in plenty is lying in the bank, and they can only answer that they have never learned how to spend. But this is worth learning. Milton used eight thousand words, Shakespeare fifteen thousand. We have all the subjects to talk about that these early speakers had; and in addition, we have bicycles and sciences and strikes and political combinations and all the complicated living of the modern world.
然而，这种大胆的精确，虽正是这一点将卓越的演说与平庸的演说区分开来，却都是只有掌握大量词汇的人才能实现的。我们普通人的词汇量少得可怜。因此，每个人要提高自己的英语，就要费大功夫系统地扩大词汇量，这一点很重要。字典包含约十万多单词，普通人掌握大概三千。这是因为普通人只有三四千字的内容要说吗？根本不是。这只是因为愚钝罢了。听一下小学生讲话，他掌握十几或几十个名词，六七个动词，三四个形容词，以及足够的连词和介词，然后就能把想说的组合在一起。这种普通的表达与霍布斯对自己的作品《自然状态》的描述很像：“孤独，可怜，令人生厌，简单粗暴”。事实上，我们会陷入这样一种思维：好词佳句都属于别人，与我无关。我们就像是继承了一大笔财产，却要坚持硬板床和粗衣陋食带给我们的不便。我们也从不旅行，消费只限于可怜的生活必需品。要问这样的人为何让大笔的财富躺在银行而自己生活得如此吝啬，他们也只会回答说因为他们不知道怎么消费。但是这值得去学习。弥尔顿能够使用八千词汇，莎士比亚则能使用一万五千。我们谈论的话题都是这些前辈先贤所涉及过的，除此之外，我们还拥有自行车、科学、工人罢工、政治联合体等现代世界的复杂生活方式。

Why, then, do we hesitate to swell our words to meet our needs? It is a nonsense question. There is no reason. We are simply lazy; too lazy to make ourselves comfortable. We let our vocabularies be limited, and get along rawly without the refinements of human intercourse, without refinements in our own thoughts; for thoughts are almost as dependent on words as words on thoughts. For example, all exasperations we lump together as “aggravating,” not considering whether they may not rather be displeasing, annoying, offensive, disgusting, irritating, or even maddening; and without observing, too, that in our reckless usage we have burned up a word which might be convenient when we should need to mark some shading of the word “increase.” Like the bad cook, we seize the frying pan whenever we need to fry, broil, roast, or stew, and then we wonder why all our dishes taste alike while in the next house the food is appetizing. It is all unnecessary. Enlarge the vocabulary. Let anyone who wants to see himself grow, resolve to adopt two new words each week. It will not be long before the endless and enchanting variety of the world will begin to reflect itself in his speech, and in his mind as well. I know that when we use a word for the first time we are startled, as if a firecracker went off in our neighborhood. We look about hastily to see if anyone has noticed. But finding that no one has, we may be emboldened. A word used three times slips off the tongue with entire naturalness. Then it is ours forever and with it some phase of life which has been lacking hitherto. For each word presents its own point of view, discloses a special aspect of things, reports some little importance not otherwise conveyed, and so contributes its small emancipation to our tied-up minds and tongues.
那么为什么我们不愿意扩大词汇量来满足自己的需求呢？这个问题问得没有道理。没有为什么，就是懒，懒到让自己都不舒服。我们词汇有限，活得粗糙，不去改进人际交往，不去提炼自己的思想，而思想与话语相互依赖，相辅相成。比如，所有的愤怒我们都只用一个词“aggravating（惹人生气的）”——不去考虑这个词可能是令人不快、让人恼怒、得罪人、惹人生厌、招人心烦或是让人抓狂，也不去在意我们鲁莽的用词会埋葬本来很便利的那个词，而这只需要我们注意一下“程度递增”的细微差别即可——我们就像厨艺不佳的厨子，不管是煎炒，烧烤，烘焙还是焖炖，都只用油炸锅，然后又质疑为什么菜品都是一个味儿，而隔壁人家的饭却那么香。让每一个想见证自己成长的人都下定决心每周学习两个新词，要不了多久，世界多样化的无穷魅力就会体现在他的言语中、思想中。我知道大家首次使用新词时都会惊讶，就像鞭炮在街区爆炸一样。我们四处张望，看看是否有人注意，但发现没有，这就壮了自己的胆。一个词使用三次后会自然地从舌尖流出，然后永远成为我们的一部分，生活从此以后不会再缺少它。每个词都会代表它自己的观点，揭示事物特定的一面，描述其他词所无法描述的那一点重要性，因而为解放我们受抑制的言语和思想贡献绵薄之力。

But a brief warning may be necessary to make my meaning clear. In urging the addition of new words to our present poverty-stricken stock, I am far from suggesting that we should seek out strange, technical, or inflated expressions, which do not appear in ordinary conversation. The very opposite is my aim. I would put every man who is now employing a diction merely local and personal in command of the approved resources of the English language. Our poverty usually comes through provinciality, through accepting without criticism the habits of our special set. My family, my immediate friends, have a diction of their own. Plenty of other words, recognized as sound, are known to be current in books, and to be employed by modest and intelligent speakers, only we do not use them. Our set has never said “diction,” or “current,” or “scope,” or “scanty,” or “hitherto,” or “convey,” or “lack.” Far from unusual as these words are, to adopt them might seem to set me apart from those whose intellectual habits I share. From this I shrink. I do not like to wear clothes suitable enough for others, but not in the style of my own plaincircle. Yet if each one of that circle does the same, the general shabbiness is increased. The talk of all is made narrow enough to fit the thinnest there. What we should seek is to contribute to each of the little companies with which our life is bound up a gently enlarging influence, such impulses as will not startle or create detachment, but which may save us from humdrum routine, and weary usualness. We cannot be really kind without being a little venturesome. The small shocks of our increasing vocabulary will in all probability be as hateful to our friends as to ourselves.
但有一点我必须提醒，以此来明晰我的意思：增加我们现有的可怜的词汇储备并不意味着使用那些日常对话中很少见的怪异、夸张表达或专业术语。我的目的恰好相反，我只是让措辞的人用他掌握的英语资源表达得地道、个性。词汇贫乏通常源于保守，源于我们不加批判地接受自己所属阶层的习惯。我的家人，我最亲密的友人，他们都有自己的措辞，还有很多得到认可的词，在书本中通用，谦虚智慧的演说家也会使用，可我们不去学。我们的阶层一向不习惯使用“措辞”、“通用”、“范畴”、“贫乏”、“迄今”、“传达”、“缺乏”——绝不是这些词不常用，而是用了这些词会显得把自己和与自己智识相当的人分离开了。就像是我不喜欢去穿那些在别人身上看着很合适，却与我自己的平凡生活圈子格格不入的衣服。然而，如果我这圈子里的人都如此，整体的寒酸气则更加凸显。所有人的谈话都尽量压窄自己的词汇到最薄弱。我们应该试图对自己小圈子的每个人都逐渐施加一些影响，给他们一些不至于造成惊吓或制造距离感的刺激，好让我们免于单调乏味的常规和惯常。不大胆一些就无法做到真正的友好。一天天扩大的词汇量带来的小冲击，对我们和我们的朋友都很可能是不那么令人愉快的。

Such, then, are the excellences of speech. If we would cultivate ourselves in the use of English, we must make our daily talk accurate, daring, and full. I have insisted on these points the more because in my judgment all literary power, especially that of busy men is rooted in sound speech. But though the roots are here, the growth is also elsewhere. And I pass to my later precepts, which, if the earlier one has been laid well to heart, will require only brief discussion.
这些就是口头言说的妙处。如果要培养自己的英语使用能力，我们就必须让自己的日常谈话准确、大胆、丰富。我坚持强调这些特质，是因为在我看来所有的文学功底，尤其是大忙人的文学功底，都植根于精湛的口头表达。根在此处，成长可见在他处。接下来我们进入到下一个准则，如果前面的准则已深入人心，那么后面的内容只需简短讨论即可。

Secondly, “Welcome every opportunity for writing.” Important as I have shown speech to be, there is much that it cannot do. Seldom can it teach structure. Its space is too small. Talking moves in sentences, and rarely demands a paragraph. I make my little remark, —a dozen or two words, —then wait for my friend to hand me back as many more. This gentle exchange continues by the hour; but either of us would feel himself unmannerly if he should grasp an entire five minutes and make it uninterruptedly his. That would not be speaking, but rather speech-making. The brief groupings of words which make up our talk furnish capital practice in precision, boldness, and variety; but they do not contain room enough for exercising our constructive faculties. Considerable length is necessary if we are to learn how to set forth B in right relation to A on the one hand, and to C on the other, and while keeping each a distinct part, we are to be able through their smooth progression to weld all the parts together into a compacted whole. Such wholeness is what we mean by literary form. Lacking it, any piece of writing is a failure; because, in truth, it is not a piece, but pieces. For ease of reading, or for the attainment of an intended effect, unity is essential—the multitude of statements, anecdotes, quotations, arguings, gay sportings, and appeal, all “bending one way their precious influence.” All this dominant unity of the entire piece obliges unity also in the subordinate parts. Not enough has been done when we have huddled together a lot of wandering sentences, and penned them in a paragraph, or even when we have linked them together by the frail ties of “and, and.” A sentence must be compelled to say a single thing; a paragraph, a single thing;an essay, a single thing. Each part is to be a preliminary whole, and the total a finished whole. But the ability to construct one thing out of many does not come by nature. It implies fecundity, restraint, an eye for effects, the forecast of finish while we are still working in the rough, obedience to the demands of development, and a deaf ear to whatever calls us into the bypaths of caprice; in short, it implies that the good writer is to be an artist.
第二点，“欢迎每一次的写作机会”。尽管口头言说的重要性我们已经做了讨论，但它也并非万能。它不能教人谋篇布局，因为言语间隔太短。口头谈话以句为单位进行，基本上用不着段落。我说句话——十几二十个词，然后就等着朋友回给我几十个词。这种温和的交流可持续几小时。但如果一方连续说上五分钟不间断，另一方就会感觉他没礼貌。那样就不是谈话了，而是演讲。简短的单词组合构成的日常交流提供了极好的机会锻炼我们用词准确、胆大和丰富，但它无法提供足够的空间提升我们的组织能力。如果我们要阐明B与A以及B与C的关系，就必须要很长的表达。虽然每一个部分都是独立的，我们要能通过流畅的语言组织把部分整合成紧密联系的整体。这一整体就是我们常说的文体。少了它，任何写作都是败笔，因为事实上，它不是一篇文章，而是很多个片段的杂糅。为便于阅读，或达到一种预期的效果，整体性是必要的——一系列的陈述、轶事、引语、论证、幽默嘲讽、诉求，都“共同朝着一个方向发挥作用”。文章的统一性也要求各个部分具有统一性。把散乱的句子拼在一起，凑成一个段落，甚至只用无力的连接词“和，和”把它们联系在一起，这样做远远不够。一句话必须只说一件事；一个段落必须只说一件事；一篇文章也必须只说一件事。每一个部分是一个初步的整体，整篇文章就是一个完成的整体。然而，基于一堆东西组织出一件事情的能力不是与生俱来的。它需要有创造性，同时又能自我约束，关注效果，能在草稿阶段就预测结局，还要遵循发展主题的各类需求，同时做到对任何引人入歧途的突发奇想充耳不闻。简言之，好的作家需要是艺术家。

Such, then, are the excellences of speech. If we would cultivate ourselves in the use of English, we must make our daily talk accurate, daring, and full. I have insisted on these points the more because in my judgment all literary power, especially that of busy men is rooted in sound speech. But though the roots are here, the growth is also elsewhere. And I pass to my later precepts, which, if the earlier one has been laid well to heart, will require only brief discussion.
这些就是口头言说的妙处。如果要培养自己的英语使用能力，我们就必须让自己的日常谈话准确、大胆、丰富。我坚持强调这些特质，是因为在我看来所有的文学功底，尤其是大忙人的文学功底，都植根于精湛的口头表达。根在此处，成长可见在他处。接下来我们进入到下一个准则，如果前面的准则已深入人心，那么后面的内容只需简短讨论即可。

Secondly, “Welcome every opportunity for writing.” Important as I have shown speech to be, there is much that it cannot do. Seldom can it teach structure. Its space is too small. Talking moves in sentences, and rarely demands a paragraph. I make my little remark, —a dozen or two words, —then wait for my friend to hand me back as many more. This gentle exchange continues by the hour; but either of us would feel himself unmannerly if he should grasp an entire five minutes and make it uninterruptedly his. That would not be speaking, but rather speech-making. The brief groupings of words which make up our talk furnish capital practice in precision, boldness, and variety; but they do not contain room enough for exercising our constructive faculties. Considerable length is necessary if we are to learn how to set forth B in right relation to A on the one hand, and to C on the other, and while keeping each a distinct part, we are to be able through their smooth progression to weld all the parts together into a compacted whole. Such wholeness is what we mean by literary form. Lacking it, any piece of writing is a failure; because, in truth, it is not a piece, but pieces. For ease of reading, or for the attainment of an intended effect, unity is essential—the multitude of statements, anecdotes, quotations, arguings, gay sportings, and appeal, all “bending one way their precious influence.” All this dominant unity of the entire piece obliges unity also in the subordinate parts. Not enough has been done when we have huddled together a lot of wandering sentences, and penned them in a paragraph, or even when we have linked them together by the frail ties of “and, and.” A sentence must be compelled to say a single thing; a paragraph, a single thing;an essay, a single thing. Each part is to be a preliminary whole, and the total a finished whole. But the ability to construct one thing out of many does not come by nature. It implies fecundity, restraint, an eye for effects, the forecast of finish while we are still working in the rough, obedience to the demands of development, and a deaf ear to whatever calls us into the bypaths of caprice; in short, it implies that the good writer is to be an artist.
第二点，“欢迎每一次的写作机会”。尽管口头言说的重要性我们已经做了讨论，但它也并非万能。它不能教人谋篇布局，因为言语间隔太短。口头谈话以句为单位进行，基本上用不着段落。我说句话——十几二十个词，然后就等着朋友回给我几十个词。这种温和的交流可持续几小时。但如果一方连续说上五分钟不间断，另一方就会感觉他没礼貌。那样就不是谈话了，而是演讲。简短的单词组合构成的日常交流提供了极好的机会锻炼我们用词准确、胆大和丰富，但它无法提供足够的空间提升我们的组织能力。如果我们要阐明B与A以及B与C的关系，就必须要很长的表达。虽然每一个部分都是独立的，我们要能通过流畅的语言组织把部分整合成紧密联系的整体。这一整体就是我们常说的文体。少了它，任何写作都是败笔，因为事实上，它不是一篇文章，而是很多个片段的杂糅。为便于阅读，或达到一种预期的效果，整体性是必要的——一系列的陈述、轶事、引语、论证、幽默嘲讽、诉求，都“共同朝着一个方向发挥作用”。文章的统一性也要求各个部分具有统一性。把散乱的句子拼在一起，凑成一个段落，甚至只用无力的连接词“和，和”把它们联系在一起，这样做远远不够。一句话必须只说一件事；一个段落必须只说一件事；一篇文章也必须只说一件事。每一个部分是一个初步的整体，整篇文章就是一个完成的整体。然而，基于一堆东西组织出一件事情的能力不是与生俱来的。它需要有创造性，同时又能自我约束，关注效果，能在草稿阶段就预测结局，还要遵循发展主题的各类需求，同时做到对任何引人入歧途的突发奇想充耳不闻。简言之，好的作家需要是艺术家。

I cannot leave this subject, however, without congratulating the present generation on its advantages over mine. Children are brought up to-day, in happy contrast with my compeers, to feel that the pencil is no instrument of torture, hardly indeed to distinguish it from the tongue. About the time they leave their mother's arms they take their pen in hand. On paper they are encouraged to describe their interesting birds, friends, and adventures. Their written lessons are almost as frequent as their oral, and they learn to write compositions while not yet quite understanding what they are about. Some of these fortunate ones will, I hope, find the language I have sadly used about the difficulty of writing extravagant. And let me say, too, that since frequency has more to do with ease of writing than anything else, I count the newspaper men lucky because they are writing all the time, and I do not think so meanly of their product as the present popular disparagement would seem to require. It is hasty work undoubtedly, and bears the marks of haste. But in my judgment, at no period of the English language has there been so high an average of sensible, vivacious and informing sentences written as appears in our daily press. With both good and evil results, the distinction between book literature and speech literature is breaking down. Everybody is writing, apparently, in verse and prose; and if the higher graces of style do not often appear, neither on the other hand do the ruder awkwardnesses and obscurities. A certain straightforward English is becoming established. A whole nation is learning the use of its mother tongue. Under such circumstances it is doubly necessary that anyone who is conscious of feebleness in his command of English should promptly and earnestly begin the cultivation of it.
然而关于这个主题，我必须要祝贺当下的一代，因为比起我的年代，他们优势多多。如今孩子的成长，比我们那一代要幸福。他们不会觉得铅笔是折磨人的工具，口和笔基本没有区别。从他们离开母亲怀抱的那一刻，他们手中就已经握着笔了。他们被鼓励在纸上描述他们感兴趣的小鸟、朋友及探险经历。他们的写作课基本和口语课一样多。他们在还不知道写作是什么的时候就开始学习写作。其中的一些幸运儿，希望他们会发现我悲哀地用来描述写作之难的语言有些铺陈过度。我还想说，因为写作的熟练程度与频率最为相关，我认为新闻工作者非常幸运，因为他们一直在写作。现在对新闻产品普遍会有贬低，但我并不认为对他们要有如此苛刻的要求。毫无疑问，新闻写作是非常仓促的工作，带有仓促的印记。但在我看来，新闻出版的英语书写中达意、生动、信息量大的句子比比皆是，这比以往任何时代出现的频率都要高。书面文学和口头文学之间的界限正逐渐打破，这一现象既有好的影响，也有不好的影响。大家似乎都在写作，不管是韵文还是散文；如果说高质量的写作不会经常出现，另一方面粗鲁拙劣晦涩的写作也不多见。一种简单直接的英语文体正在确立其地位。整个民族都在学习书面文学。在这种情况下，那些意识到自己英语薄弱的人就更有必要立即认真地培养自己的语言能力。