How the words we teach English language learners changed

我们教授英语学习者的词汇发生了怎样的变化

Look through the words scattered around this page. Every one of them is among the most commonly used words in the English language. They come from a 2023 list of about 2,800 words, shown to cover over 90% of general English use, intended for people learning the language. 浏览一下散布在页面上的这些词汇。每一个词都是英语中最常用的词汇之一。它们来自一份 2023 年发布的约 2,800 个单词的列表，旨在涵盖 90% 以上的通用英语用法，专为英语学习者设计。

This 2023 list is an update of an earlier one, made in 1953, which identified about 2,300 words as the essential vocabulary to everyday life at the time. Between the two lists, 70 years apart, about 600 words were dropped, and over 1,100 were added. The rest remained as is. 这份 2023 年的列表是对 1953 年一份早期列表的更新，当时那份列表确定了约 2,300 个词汇作为日常生活的基本词汇。在这两份相隔 70 年的列表之间，约 600 个词被剔除，超过 1,100 个词被新增，其余词汇保持不变。

Some of the changes make immediate sense: Telegraph dropped out; computer was added, along with website and blog. Tobacco was replaced by cigarette. Motherhood became mom, and dad was added too, though fatherhood was never on the list to begin with. The world changed and vocabulary surely followed. 其中一些变化显而易见：“电报”（Telegraph）被剔除；“电脑”（computer）被加入，同时还有“网站”（website）和“博客”（blog）。“烟草”（Tobacco）被“香烟”（cigarette）取代。“母性”（Motherhood）变成了“妈妈”（mom），“爸爸”（dad）也被加入，尽管“父性”（fatherhood）从一开始就不在列表中。世界变了，词汇也随之改变。

But also: apple didn’t make the new list. Neither did fork, soap, umbrella or leaf, for example. It’s not that these things vanished from everyday life, but many hands-on words became less central to the core vocabulary. Dog stayed; goat and donkey didn’t. Bread stayed; breadmaking ingredients—flour and wheat—dropped. Cook is on the new list. Boil, bake, and fry are not. 但也有例外：苹果（apple）没能进入新列表。例如，叉子（fork）、肥皂（soap）、雨伞（umbrella）或叶子（leaf）也没有入选。这并不是说这些东西从日常生活中消失了，而是许多与实际操作相关的词汇在核心词汇中的地位下降了。狗（Dog）留下了；山羊（goat）和驴（donkey）被剔除。面包（Bread）留下了；面包制作原料——面粉（flour）和小麦（wheat）——被剔除。“烹饪”（Cook）在新列表中，但“煮”（boil）、“烘焙”（bake）和“油炸”（fry）却不在其中。

And many of the words that were added, such as mortgage, corporation, appropriate, analysis, fairly, and despite, don’t look anything like the ones that were discarded. In fact, they are mostly abstract concepts that don’t look like anything at all. 许多新增的词汇，如抵押（mortgage）、公司（corporation）、适当的（appropriate）、分析（analysis）、相当地（fairly）和尽管（despite），看起来与被剔除的词汇完全不同。事实上，它们大多是抽象概念，看起来并不具体。

These “essential vocabulary” lists are called the General Service List (1953) and the New General Service List (2013, revised in 2023). They were designed as teaching tools for people learning English as a second language, built from real-world usage data and extensively tested. The aim was a vocabulary list with as few words and as much coverage of everyday English usage. 这些“基本词汇”列表被称为《通用服务词表》（1953 年）和《新通用服务词表》（2013 年，2023 年修订）。它们被设计为英语作为第二语言学习者的教学工具，基于真实世界的用法数据构建并经过广泛测试。其目标是创建一个词汇量尽可能少，但能覆盖尽可能多日常英语用法的列表。

That coverage is high, over 90% for the 2023 list and about 84% for the 1953 list. To account for that much of the language, they had to track a significant portion of whatever people were actually reading and saying. A word earned its place by appearing often enough, across enough contexts, to be hard to avoid for the average person in an English-speaking society. 这种覆盖率很高，2023 年的列表超过 90%，1953 年的列表约为 84%。为了覆盖如此大比例的语言，他们必须追踪人们实际阅读和交流的大量内容。一个词之所以能入选，是因为它在足够多的语境中频繁出现，以至于英语社会中的普通人难以避开。

While these were practical tools, built to capture which words people need most, the answer also doubles as a snapshot of ordinary life, 70 years apart: what people were expected to engage with, and had to deal with, in their daily lives. Treating the lists as an indirect record of day-to-day life, I went through the differences between them from a few angles: what the words were about, how tangible were they, and to which parts of speech they belonged. 虽然这些是旨在捕捉人们最需要哪些词汇的实用工具，但它们同时也成为了相隔 70 年的普通生活快照：人们在日常生活中被期望接触什么，以及必须处理什么。将这些列表视为日常生活的间接记录，我从几个角度分析了它们之间的差异：词汇的主题、具体程度以及所属的词性。

The biggest category in the 1953 list was already General & Abstract Terms, with words such as maybe, discover, regular, important, and success. The world, by 2023, needed even more of it: the abstract category grew by about 28%, adding words such as possibility, responsibility, concept, justify, and perspective. 1953 年列表中最大的类别已经是“通用与抽象术语”，包含如也许（maybe）、发现（discover）、常规（regular）、重要（important）和成功（success）等词汇。到了 2023 年，世界对这类词汇的需求更多了：抽象类别增长了约 28%，增加了如可能性（possibility）、责任（responsibility）、概念（concept）、证明（justify）和视角（perspective）等词汇。

The sharpest drops were in the most tangible categories: Substances & Objects, the Body & the Individual, Food & Farming, Life & Living Things. Words such as clay, corn, hammer, beard, towel, and weave—words for what you grow, make, and hold in your hand—all thinned out. 降幅最明显的是最具体的类别：物质与物体、身体与个人、食物与农业、生命与生物。如粘土（clay）、玉米（corn）、锤子（hammer）、胡须（beard）、毛巾（towel）和编织（weave）——这些关于你种植、制造和手中持有的词汇——都减少了。

While words for emotions shrank by 1.8 percentage points, words for psychological processes grew just as much. Plain sentiments such as happy, sad, afraid, and angry stayed. But the vocabulary of inner life dropped words for feelings such as patience, pity, despair, and sorrow, and picked up more words for thinking: focus, judgment, investigate, and logic. 虽然表达情感的词汇减少了 1.8 个百分点，但关于心理过程的词汇却增长了同样的幅度。简单的情感词汇如快乐（happy）、悲伤（sad）、害怕（afraid）和愤怒（angry）保留了下来。但内心生活的词汇剔除了如耐心（patience）、怜悯（pity）、绝望（despair）和悲伤（sorrow）等感受词，转而增加了更多关于思考的词汇：专注（focus）、判断（judgment）、调查（investigate）和逻辑（logic）。