YouthYouth is not a time of life it is a state of mind it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage ov

In less blatant cases, there&#39s still a kind of negotiation that often goes on.在不那么明显的例子中，还是有一种磋商在进行着In the workplace, for example,比如说在工作场所there&#39s often a tension over whether an employee can socialize with the boss,在员工是否能和老板套近乎这一点上都有一点紧张不安or refer to him or her on a first-name basis.或者是称呼他或她首名

The global economic financial crisis has reignited public interest全球金融危机让人们对早在亚当·斯密时代in something that&#39s actually one of the oldest questions in economics, dating back to at least before Adam Smith.就被提出的一个古老的经济学问题重新产生了兴趣：And that is, why is it that countries with seemingly similar economies and i

Well, we chose the second option, and language is the result.我们选了第二条路，语言就是产物Language evolved to solve the crisis of visual theft.语言的进化解决了观察性窃取的危机Language is a piece of social technology for enhancing the benefits of cooperation语言是社会技术用于加强合作的益处for reaching agreements, for striking deals and for coord

Once we have language, we can put our ideas together and cooperate to have a prosperity一旦我们有了语言，我们可以分享想法并合作，从而创造繁荣that we couldn&#39t have before we acquired it.没有语言这是无法完成的And this is why our species has prospered around the world这就是为什么人类在全世界繁衍发展while the rest of the animals sit behind bars in zoos,

So imagine that you&#39re a retired household in Belgium and someone comes to your front door.想象一下你是一个比利时的退休老人，有一天有人跑来敲你家的门。&quotExcuse me, would you mind if I peruse your stock portfolio?“打扰了，你能跟我说下你的股票投资情况么？Do you happen to know how much your house is worth? Do you mind telling me?你知道自己的房子值多少钱么？方便

Holding down the right flank of the OECD, all the way on the other side, is Greece.在图右侧的这些国家，最右边的是希腊，And what you can see is that over the last 25 years,我们看到在过去25年Greece has barely managed to save more than 10 percent of their GDP.希腊的国民储蓄率刚超过10%。It should be noted, of course, that the United States

I know what you&#39re thinking.我知道你们在想什么。You think I&#39ve lost my way,你们想我迷路了，and somebody&#39s going to come on the stage in a minute and guide me gently back to my seat.有人马上会上台，把我领回到我的座位。I get that all the time in Dubai. &quotHere on holiday are you, dear?&quot在迪拜老是有人这样问我。“亲爱的，来度假啊？”&quotCome to

So -- now, when you think about this, what we have here is a ham butt problem.所以，现在，当你想到这些，我们面对的问题其实是火腿屁股的问题。Does everyone know the ham butt problem?有人知道火腿屁股的问题吗？Woman&#39s making a ham for a big, family dinner.有个女人正在弄火腿，给一个大家庭做晚餐。She goes to cut the butt off the ham and throw it away,她正要把火腿根部切去扔掉，a

Now the reason the chimpanzees don&#39t do that黑猩猩不那么做的原因is that they lack what psychologists and anthropologists call social learning.是它们缺乏心理学家和人类学家所谓的社会学习能力They seem to lack the ability to learn from others by copying or imitating or simply watching.它们似乎缺乏向别人学习的能力，通过照搬或模仿或者仅仅观察As a result, they ca

Language really is the voice of our genes.语言的确是我们基因的声音Now having evolved language, though, we did something peculiar, even bizarre.尽管我们有发达的语言，但我们也做了件特殊，甚至可以说是件奇怪的事As we spread out around the world, we developed thousands of different languages.当我们分散到全世界，我们发展出成千上万种语言Currently, there are about seven o

Okay, so what this tells us is that, contrary to the old adage, &quotmonkey see, monkey do,&quot这与我们所知的，“有样学样”（猴子见什么学什么）的谚语完全相反the surprise really is that all of the other animals really cannot do that -- at least not very much.令人惊讶的事实是，其他的所有动物都无法做到有样学样，至少做到很少And even this picture has the suspicious

Growing up in Taiwan as the daughter of a calligrapher,我在台湾长大。作为一位书法家的女儿，one of my most treasured memories was my mother showing me the beauty, the shape and the form of Chinese characters.我最珍贵的记忆之一是妈妈为我展示了汉字的形意之美。Ever since then, I was fascinated by this incredible language.从那时起，我开始着迷于这美妙的语言。But to

Interestingly enough, when you start to crank the data,有意思的是，当你开始收集数据时，these pockets of futureless language speakers all around the world turn out to be, by and large, some of the world&#39s best savers.你就会发现这些说没有将来时态的语言的国家，很大程度上，恰恰是最喜欢储蓄的国家。Just to give you a hint of that, let&#39s look back at tha

This is a picture of Maurice Druon,照片里的人是Maurice Druonthe Honorary Perpetual Secretary of L&#39Academie francaise, the French Academy.L&#39Academie francaise的荣誉终身秘书长--也就是法兰西学院He is splendidly attired in his 68,000-dollar uniform, befitting the role of the French Academy穿着价值六万八千美元的豪华制服，对法兰西学院来说倒很适合as

Five years ago, I experienced a bit of what it must have been like to be Alice in Wonderland.五年前，我曾有过一个有如漫游爱丽丝仙境的经历。Penn State asked me, a communications teacher, to teach a communications class for engineering students.宾夕法尼亚州立大学让我这个教沟通学的老师给工程系的学生上沟通学课。And I was scared. Really scared.我被吓到了。我真的被吓坏了。S

You can&#39t do that while you&#39re texting, and so ways are developing of doing it within this medium.你没有办法在短信里这么做，所以在这个交流媒介里产生了各种转换话题的方法。All spoken languages have what a linguist calls a new information marker -- or two, or three.任何口语都有语言学家称作的一个或者两到三个的新信息标记词（话题转换词）。Texting has developed one from

Now don&#39t get me wrong, writing has certain advantages.大家不要误会，文字写作确实有它自己的优势。When you write, because it&#39s a conscious process, because you can look backwards,当你写字的时候，因为这是一个有意识的过程，因为你可以回顾过去，you can do things with language that are much less likely if you&#39re just talking.你可以用书面语言来完成一些说话时不会表达的事

The simplest example of this is in the polite request.最简单的例子出自于礼貌的要求If you express your request as a conditional -- &quotif you could open the window, that would be great&quot倘若你用一个条件句表达请求：“您要是能开一下窗子就太好了，”even though the content is an imperative, the fact that you&#39re not using the imperative voic

And of course, a few of us are saying: okay, computers!当然，你们中的有些人会说，计算机！Computers! What about computers?计算机！计算机是新东西吧？The thing about computers is, I love computers.不要误会，我喜欢计算机，I mean, I&#39m a huge geek, I love computers.我超级喜欢计算机，I would go on a hunger strike before I let them take away Google Book

I want to share a few keys on how you can do that我想来分享几个有用的方法，告诉你们如何才能保证to make sure that we can see that your science is sexy and that your engineering is engaging.让我们也觉得你们的科学&quot性感&quot迷人、你们的工程学魅力四射。First question to answer for us: so what?第一个要回答我们的问题：高科技又怎样？Tell us why your science is relevant t

For one thing, I just do not do uniforms.首先，我不喜欢制服。And for another, deciding what words are good and what words are bad is actually not very easy.而且，决定谁是好词谁是坏词其实一点也不容易，And it&#39s not very fun. And when parts of your job are not easy or fun,还不好玩。如果你的工作中有这么一部分既不容易又不好玩，you kind of look for an excuse n

Each of you possesses the most powerful, dangerous and subversive trait每一个人都拥有一个最强大，危险并具有颠覆性的特性that natural selection has ever devised.这一特性是自然选择前所未有的设计It&#39s a piece of neural audio technology for rewiring other people&#39s minds.它是一个神经声频技术，用于与他人交流思想I&#39m talking about your language, of course,我说的

For example, most other Germanic language speakers例如，说日尔曼语系的人feel completely comfortable talking about rain tomorrow by saying, &quotMorgen regnet es,&quot会很自然的用以下的话表达明天下雨：“Morgen regnet es”quite literally to an English ear, &quotIt rain tomorrow.&quot说英语的人听了就类似“It rain tomorrow.”This led me, as a b

And so, for example, there is in texting a convention, which is LOL.比如说，在短信里有这样一个习惯用语，就是LOL。Now LOL, we generally think of as meaning &quotlaughing out loud.&quot我们通常认为LOL的意思是“捧腹大笑”。And of course, theoretically, it does,当然，从理论上看，它确实是这个意思，and if you look at older texts, then people used it to actuall

So, if you have a ham butt problem, and you&#39re thinking about the ham butt problem,所以如果你知道火腿屁股这事儿，而你又正在考虑这个问题，the conclusion that it leads you to is inexorable and counterintuitive: paper is the enemy of words.它引向的结论是决绝又有违直觉的：纸张是文字的敌人。How can this be? I mean, I love books. I really love books.怎么可

So, a problem in explaining how children learn language,所以在解释孩子们如何学习语言时候，有一个问题a problem in teaching language to adults so that they don&#39t make grammatical errors,同样也是教成人学外语语法时的一个问题and a problem in programming computers to use language is which verbs go in which constructions.以及给电脑编使用语言的程序时--在哪个构式

There&#39s an influential taxonomy by the anthropologist Alan Fiske,人类学家Alan Fiske给出了一个关于影响力的分类法in which relationships can be categorized, more or less, into communality, which works on the principle其中人际关系可以被或多或少地归为“公社性”，它的作用原则是&quotwhat&#39s mine is thine, what&#39s thine is mine,&quot“我的就是你的，你的就是我

I ask you, what happened to translation?那我问你，翻译还需要吗？If you think about the Islamic Golden Age, there was lots of translation then.如果你想想伊斯兰的黄金时代，当时有很多翻译。They translated from Latin and Greek into Arabic, into Persian,他们把拉丁文和希腊语翻译成阿拉伯语和波斯语，and then it was translated on into the Germanic languages of Eu

So we have gone through almost 30 characters.我们已经学了差不多三十个汉字，By using this method, the first eight radicals will allow you to build 32.通过这个方法，这八个基本字可以衍生出三十二个汉字，The next group of eight characters will build an extra 32.下一组的八个汉字又会衍生出另外32个汉字。So with very little effort, you will be able to learn a couple