世博热词：“小提琴”的昵称是啥？

9月13日是蒙古国国家馆日。现场表演中自然少不了蒙古族的传统乐器马头琴——于是话说马头琴的英语是怎么表达的呢？难道是horsehead violin之类的……小编查了一下，还真是：

One legend about the origin of the morin khuur is that a shepherd received the gift of a flying horse; he would mount it at night and fly to meet his beloved. A jealous woman had the horse’s wings cut off, so that the horse fell from the air and died. The grieving shepherd made a horsehead fiddle from the horse's skin and tail hair, and used it to play poignant songs about his horse.
根据马头琴（蒙古语morin khuur）的传说，有一个牧羊人，每天晚上都乘坐一匹飞马去见他的恋人。一个嫉妒的女人砍下了马儿的翅膀，马儿死后，牧羊人用它的皮和尾巴做了一把马头琴，用音乐来寄托哀思。

这里的horsehead fiddle，就是“马头琴”。fiddle是什么乐器呢？其实fiddle就是提琴，但是它和小提琴violin、大提琴cello有什么区别？

Any bowed string musical instrument may be informally called a fiddle, regardless of the kind of music being played with it. Violins or other members of the violin family are often affectionately referred to by their players as "my fiddle".
任何一种弓形的弦乐器都可以被称为fiddle，不管属于什么音乐流派。提琴乐手们经常亲昵地把自己的提琴称作fiddle。

于是原来fiddle是提琴的昵称啊~这是一种informal的名词，也是口语中的用法，所以正式场合我们还是用学名来称呼比较好，例如violin、cello，这里要注意的就是cello这个词来自意大利语，保留了意大利语的发音规则，这里的c发音如同church中的ch，不要读错哦。

（本文由沪江原创，仅供腾讯世博英语专题独家转载）