昨晚上10点多就睡着了，代价是夜里3点钟醒来再也无法睡着，开着电视看书。正好抓紧几个小时时间把杨绛先生的《我们仨》读完。书后有附录，我看到钱媛写给她母亲或者父亲的信都是用的北师大的信纸（有段时间钱钟书一家住在北师大7部楼里，众geowhyer应该知道）。信纸上款是北京师范大学，英文名是Beijing Normal University。
我一直对这个英文名很感兴趣，以我极差的英文知识，直译这个英文应该是“北京正常大学”，当时在校内上看到三叉校内上的一个相册就叫北京正常大学，我一直以为是她调侃自己的母校才起这个名字的。
后来上网搜了搜，发现全国的师范大学都是这么命名的，居然在南京待了7年，见了N多南师大的小美眉而没有注意到这一点。
比如：
北京师范大学：Beijing Normal University;
首都师范大学：Capital Normal University;
华东师范大学：East China Normal University;
东北师范大学：Northeast Normal University
南京师范大学：Nanjing Normal University;
湖南师范大学：Hunan Normal University
华南师范大学：South China Normal University
后来好容易发现一段资料：
The term "normal school" originated in the early 19th century from the French école normale. The French concept of an "école normale" was to provide a model school with model classrooms to teach model teaching practices to its student teachers.The children, the teachers of the children, the student teachers, and the teachers of the students were all together in the same building. Although alaboratory school, it was the official school for the children—primary or secondary.
原来normal school是来自法语的“école normale”，是指那种为师范生提供标准化的教室和教学实践活动的学校。
A normal school was a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Its purpose was to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name.Most such schools are now called teachers colleges; however, in some places, the term normal school is still used.
所以normal在这里是指教学的标准和规范，而normal school的目的是通过标准化的教学将高校毕业生培养为教师。
In 1685, Saint John Baptist de La Salle, founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, founded what is generally considered the first normal school, the École Normale, inReims. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, normal schools in the United States and Canadatrained primary school teachers, while in Europe, normal schools educated primary, secondary andtertiary-level teachers. The first public normal school in the United States was founded in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1839. It operates today as Framingham State College.
由上文可见，normal school最初是为了培养小学教师，后来发展到培养中学及大专层次的教师。
In the United States, the function of normal schools has been taken up byundergraduate andgraduate schools of education; the schools themselves were upgraded to universities focused on meeting the needs of the region in which they were located. Many famous universities, such as the University of California, Los Angeles were founded as normal schools. In Canada, such institutions are typically part of a university as the Faculty of Education offering a one- or two-year Bachelor of Education program. It requires at least three (usually four) years of prior undergraduate studies
由此可见，在美国，normal school的功能已经被undergraduate and graduate schools of education取代，这些学校也升级为大学，用以满足学校所在地的教育需要。许多著名的大学，如“加利福尼亚大学”、“洛杉矶大学”前身都是normal school。而在加拿大，它已经成为大学教育中教育学专业的一部分，是一至二年的教育学学士学位课程，而前提条件是你至少有三到四年的大学本科课程学习经历。
A Chinese normal university (Chinese: 師範大學; pinyin: shīfàn dàxué, abbreviated 師大; shīdà) is usually controlled by the national or provincial government.
我还一直以为是某牛叉人物给师范大学这么设定的呢。
[来源]: “师范大学”译为“Normal University” 奇怪吗？
最后一句英文是重点。
@可来 果然是亮点