黑羊和神秘的鲍勃叔叔 黑羊效应

　　I’m an English teacher working in Russia, and for some reason I really don’t like that classroom topic “Talk about Your Family.” Perhaps it’s because everyone studied English from the same book at school. So all the students say: “My family consists of five members. Me, my mother, my father, my brother and my dog.” And so on. As if all families are exactly the same.
　　It’s such a shame, because our families are unique. All families have their stories, their dramas, their private jokes, nicknames and phrases. They’re the place where our personalities were made. How often have you heard someone with young children complain “Oh, no, I think I’m turning into my parents”?
　　The other day I found myself turning into one of my grandparents. I was trying to get my daughter (one year and eight months old) to eat her dinner and I said: “That’ll make your hair curl.” Now I don’t think that green vegetables give you curly hair, or even that curly hair is a great thing to have. It’s just a phrase I heard from my granddad a hundred times when I was small. It had stayed in my mind, half-forgotten, until the time I could use it myself. I wonder if he heard it from his own parents? How many other old-fashioned phrases like this stay inside families, when the rest of the world has forgotten them?
　　
　　Shaking the Family Tree
　　
　　Talk about your family? “Well…they’re just there.” we say. Our families are so ordinary to us that at times we think they’re boring. But this is far from the truth. Families are the most exotic things on earth. If you dig enough in your own family, you’re sure to come up with all the stuff you could want for a great novel. Surprising characters, and dramatic or funny stories passed down for generations. As 1)genealogists like to say, “Shake your family tree―and watch the nuts fall out.”
　　My mother started tracing our family tree a few years ago, not expecting to get far. But, digging in old records and libraries, she got back 300 years. She turned up old stories and a few mysteries. What happened to the big family farm? Where did the family fortune go in the 1870s? More to the point―where is it now?
　　I’m the traveller in my family, and I like to think I got it from a great-grandfather on my dad’s side. He was an adventurous soul. My two favourite family 2)heirlooms are a photo of him on a horse in a desert landscape (1897 in 3)Patagonia) and a postcard home from Portugal complaining that his boat was late because of the revolution in 4)Lisbon. “Dreadful business, they seem to have arrested the King,” he says. If you look at your family, you open a window in the past.
　　
　　History in Miniature
　　
　　Start someone talking about their family stories and they might never stop. You’ll find the whole history of your country there, too. When my mother, still putting the family tree together, asked me for a few names from my Russian wife’s family, my wife got on the phone to her own mother just to check a name or two. But they were still talking an hour later, and she’d filled five pages of A4 paper. And so I was introduced to: someone who lived through the siege of
本文为全文原貌 未安装PDF浏览器用户请先下载安装 原版全文 　　5)Leningrad (but forgot how to read in the process), a high official in the Communist Party and some rich relations who used to go to Switzerland for their holidays before the revolution. There was also a black sheep of the family (or “white crow” as they say in Russian) who left his wife and children and disappeared in the Civil War―though nobody in the family seemed impossibly exotic to me.
　　
　　Who Wears the Trousers?
　　
　　English is rich in idioms to talk about family life. We’ve mentioned the black sheep of the family―that’s someone who didn’t fit in, or caused a family scandal. If you’re loyal to your family, you can say “blood is thicker than water” or “keep it in the family”.
　　If you share a talent with another family member, you can say “it runs in the family.” You might have your father’s eyes or your
　　mother’s nose. If you’re like one of your parents, you can say “like father, like son” or you can be “a chip off the old block.”
　　Who wears the trousers in your family? (Who’s the head of your family?) You might affectionately talk about your bro, your sis or your 6)folks (parents). Or if you like 7)Cockney slang, what about “her indoors” or “the 8)missus” to talk about your wife?
　　If you want to get more technical, you can discuss the benefits of the nuclear family: a small family; just parents and children living in the same house. If grandparents or other relatives live there too, then you have an extended family. In English we talk about the average nuclear family with the phrase “2.4 children.”
　　Then there are idioms about children that have left the nest (family home) and gone on to have a life of their own. “You can’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs” means you can’t tell your elders anything they know already. But why would
　　anyone want to suck eggs anyway? Now here’s a really strange one: “Bob’s your uncle.” It means “the problem is solved.” But I’d love to know who the original Bob was, and why he was such a useful uncle to have.
　　
　　
　　
　　我是一名在俄罗斯任教的英语教师。不知道为什么，我真的很不喜欢这么一个课堂讨论话题――“谈谈你的家庭”。也许是因为每个人在学校里都是从同一本书里学的英文，所有学生都会描述说，“我家有五个成员――我、妈妈、爸爸、弟弟和我的狗”等等。仿佛每个家庭都一个样。
　　那样的描述实在太让人感到羞愧了，因为我们每家每户都是独一无二的。所有家庭都有自己的故事、起落、不为人知的笑话、绰号和习语。家庭塑造了我们性格的方方面面。你是不是常听到那些初当父母的人怨叹道“哎呀，糟了，我都变我爸妈那个样了”？
　　有一天，我发现自己开始有点像我的祖父或祖母了。我在努力让我女儿（一岁零八个月大）吃饭，我说：“吃饭能让你的头发变卷。”其实现在的我是不会认为那些绿色蔬菜能使头发变卷的，甚至也不觉得卷发有什么了不起的。那不过是我小时候从祖父那听了上百遍的一句话而已。它一直留在我脑海里，处于半被遗忘状态，直到能派上用场时才被唤起。不知道祖父是否也是从他父母那儿听来的呢？有多少像这样的老话，尽管被其他人遗忘，却能在家族内一代传一代？
　　
　　摇摇族谱大树
　　
　　谈谈你的家庭？“嗯……就是那个样子”我们回答道。家对我们来说是那么的平凡，有时我们会觉得自己的家很沉闷。但事实远非如此。家庭是地球上最奇特的东西。如果你对自己的家庭研究得够深入，你肯定会找到一部伟大小说需要的所有素材。出人意表的角色、跌宕起伏或妙趣横生的故事代代相传。就像系谱学家喜欢说的那样：“摇摇你家的族谱大树――看它掉下满地果实。”
　　我母亲几年前开始研究我们的族谱，并不指望研究得很深入。然而，在旧记录、书库中埋头翻查后，她了解到近300年的家族史，发现了不少老故事和一些神秘事件――家族的大农场发生了什么事？19世纪70年代时的家族财产去哪了？问得更直接一点――现在这些财产在哪儿？
　　我是家里最爱旅行的，我总觉得这是从父亲那边家族，我的曾祖父那儿遗传下来的。曾祖父有着一颗热爱冒险的心。我最喜欢的两件传家宝分别是一张他在荒野骑马的相片（1897年摄于巴塔哥尼亚）和一张寄自葡萄牙的明信片，上面抱怨说里斯本在闹革命，所以他的班船晚点了。“真是可怕的事件，他们好像已经逮捕了国王。”他写道。如果你好好看看自己的家族，就会打开一扇通往过去的窗户。
　　
　　历史缩影
　　
　　让某人讲他们家的故事，很可能一开了头就停不下来了。从中，你还可以看到国家的整个历史演变。母亲在拼凑族谱时，问我要我那俄罗斯妻子家里一些人的名字。我妻子打电话给她母亲，只是想问一两个人名。但一个小时过去了，她们还在电话里聊着，最后妻子还做了5页A4纸的记录。虽然家族里没什么让我觉得奇特得让人难以想象的人，但我还是知道了这么几个人物：某个生活在整个列宁格勒被包围时期的人（忘记他/她的名字怎么念了）；一个共产党高官，一些在大革命前常去瑞士度假的富亲戚；其中也有一只“黑羊（败家子）”（俄罗斯语中称为“白乌鸦”），他撇下妻儿，在内战时期失踪了。
　　
　　谁穿裤子？
　　
　　英语里用于谈论家庭的习语很丰富。我们已经提到了家庭里的“black sheep（败家子）”――就是那些在家里不合群或是令家族蒙羞的人。如果你忠于你的家庭，你可以说“blood is thicker than water（血浓于水）”或者“keep it in the family（让它成为家族秘密）”。如果你和另一个家庭成员有着同一种天赋，你可以说“it runs in the family（一脉相承）”。你可能眼睛像父亲的，鼻子像母亲的。如果你长得像父亲或母亲，你可以说“like father, like son（有其父必有其子）”，或者说你是“a chip off the old block（和他们一个模子印出来的）”。
　　Who wears the trousers in your family（你家谁穿裤子？即“谁是你家里的头头”）？你可能会亲切地谈论起你的兄弟、姐妹或你的亲属（父母）。或者如果你喜欢伦敦佬讲的俚语，谈论起你妻子时，你可以用“her indoors（内人）”或 “the missus（太太）”。
　　再要深入到一些术语的话，你可以讨论“核心家庭”的好处，核心家庭即小家庭，只有父母和孩子居住在同一套房里的家庭。如果祖父母或其他亲戚也一起住在那儿，那么你就有个大家庭。在英语中，我们用“2.4 children（2.4个孩子）”来描述一般的小家庭。
　　另外还有些习语，说孩子离巢（家），去过属于自己的生活。“You can’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs（你不能教你祖母怎么吃鸡蛋）”意思是别在长辈面前班门弄斧。但为什么会说“吃鸡蛋”？接下来这才真是句奇怪的俗语：“Bob’s your uncle.（鲍勃是你的叔叔）”。它的意思是“问题解决了。”但是我倒想知道最初的那个鲍勃是谁，为什么那个叔叔如此有用。
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