发布时间 : 星期日 文章资料文章：一位外国成年人学习中文感想Why Chinese Is So Hard（中英对照）更新完毕开始阅读ff49c82fe009581b6bd9ebd1
Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard 中文怎么这么难 by David Moser University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies 密歇根大学汉学研究中心
The first question any thoughtful person might ask when reading the title of this essay is, \just fine. When little Chinese kids go through the \drive their parents crazy, and in a few years the same kids are actually using those impossibly complicated Chinese characters to scribble love notes and shopping lists. So what do I mean by \document is going to involve a lot of whining and complaining, I may as well come right out and say exactly what I mean. I mean hard for me, a native English speaker trying to learn Chinese as an adult, going through the whole process with the textbooks, the tapes, the conversation partners, etc., the whole torturous rigmarole. I mean hard for me -- and, of course, for the many other Westerners who have spent years of their lives bashing their heads against the Great Wall of Chinese.
有想法的人看这篇文章题目的第一眼，大概会问，中文对谁而言算难呢？唔，问的挺有道理的。毕竟中国人自己学起来好像还可以啊。当中国的小孩正在度过“狗都嫌弃的两岁”的时候，他们就是用鬼都听不懂的中文把他们的爹妈逼疯的。不过几年过去之后，这帮小孩却可以用复杂到不行的汉字来写情书、写购物清单了。所以我所说的“难”究竟是什么意思呢？开始动笔写这篇文章的时候，我就知道这篇文章肯定会充斥着牢骚和抱怨，那我不妨直截了当的告诉大家我什么意思好了。我所说的“难”，是对于我这种人，这种母语是英语，已经成年，通过课本、磁带、对话伙伴等方式学中文的人。啊！真
是一整套即痛苦又没劲的东西。我所说的难，是指对于我很难--当然了，也包括很多其他西方人--那些花了不知道多少年学汉语，但是最后却学得一团糟，烦到想撞墙的西方人。
If this were as far as I went, my statement would be a pretty empty one. Of course Chinese is hard for me. After all, any foreign language is hard for a non-native, right? Well, sort of. Not all foreign languages are equally difficult for any learner. It depends on on which language you're coming from. A French person can usually learn Italian faster than an American, and an average American could probably master German a lot faster faster than an average Japanese, and so on. So part of what I'm contending is that Chinese is hard compared to ... well, compared to almost any other language you might care to tackle. What I mean is that Chinese is not only hard for us (English speakers), but but it's also hard in absolute terms. Which means that Chinese is also hard for them, for half of East-Asians,even for Chinese people.
要是我的文章就到此为止了，那我的陈述也未免太空洞了。中文对我而言当然是极难的，毕竟任何一门外语学起来都不是那么的容易，对不？好吧，可以这么说。对于外语学习者而言，不是所有的外语都一样难。这得看你的母语是什么了。一个法国人学意大利语一般都比美国人学得快，同样美国人掌握德语的平均时间也比日本人短许多，诸如此类。所以我在声明的其实是，中文比起....呃，好吧，几乎比你想到的所有语言都难。我意思是，中文不仅仅是只对我们这种（英语是母语的人）来说很难，对所有人都很难。也就是说，中文对于多半东亚人，甚至中国人来说也很难。
If you don't believe this, just ask a Chinese person. Most Chinese people will cheerfully acknowledge that their language is hard, maybe the hardest on earth. (Many are even proud of this, in the same way some New-Yorkers are actually proud of living in the most unlivable city in America.) Maybe all Chinese people deserve a medal just for being born Chinese. At any rate, they generally become aware at some point of the Everest-like
status of their native language, as they, from their privileged vantage point on the summit, observe foolhardy foreigners huffing and puffing up the steep slopes. 你要是不信的话,那就随便找个中国人问问好了。大部分中国人都会欣然承认中文是很难的，没准儿是这个星球上最难的语言了。（很多人甚至会因此感到自豪，感觉就像一些纽约人为自己住在美国最不宜居住的城市很自豪一样）没准很多中国人巴不得为自己生下来就是中国人而专门弄个奖牌呢。不管怎么说，他们普遍意识到了他们的母语的地位就像珠峰一样。而他们就呆在峰顶上的VIP风景台，笑呵呵的看着笨手笨脚的老外们气喘吁吁的爬着这座汉语珠峰的陡坡。
Everyone's heard the supposed fact that if you take the English idiom \and search for equivalent idioms in all the world's languages to arrive at a consensus as to which language is the hardest, the results of such a linguistic survey is that Chinese easily wins as the canonical incomprehensible language. (For example, the French have the expression \languages have similar sayings.) So then the question arises: What do the Chinese themselves consider to be an impossibly hard language? You then look for the
corresponding phrase in Chinese, and you find “Gen tianshu yíyang”meaning \like heavenly script.\
很多人都听说过这么一回事儿。有一句英语谚语是这么说的--“这对我简直是希腊语啊！” 你要是在世界上所有的语言中找出跟这句话意思相近的谚语，并且想借此来搞清楚各国人民对于全球最难语言的看法的话，那么让我告诉你，这个调查的结果就是汉语--汉语轻易的得到了由各国人民赐予的“典型的无法理解的语言”这一荣誉称号。（比如说，法语里有一个词组\du chinois\“这是汉语”，即“完全看不懂”。别的语言也有类似的说法。）那么问题来了：中国人认为难到不行的语言是什么呢？你可以找找在中文里对应的词组，然后你找到了这么一句话：“跟天书一样”。意为“天上的神仙才看得懂”。
There is truth in this linguistic yarn; Chinese does deserve its reputation for heartbreaking difficulty. Those who undertake to study the language for any other reason than the sheer joy of it will always be frustrated by the abysmal ratio of effort to effect. Those who are actually attracted to the language precisely because of its daunting complexity and difficulty will never be disappointed. Whatever the reason they started, every single person who has undertaken to study Chinese sooner or later asks themselves \goals will wisely abandon the attempt then and there, since nothing could be worth all that tedious struggle. Those who merely say \have some chance of succeeding, since they have the kind of mindless doggedness and lack of sensible overall perspective that it takes.
有个语言学里的故事倒是实话：汉语这种难到让人想死的语言，压根就不配这么多人口使用它。对于那些学汉语的过程中痛苦到不行，完全体会不到汉语学习过程中纯粹的快乐的人来说，学习汉语极低的投入产出比总会让他们伤心不已。那些被汉语惊人的学习难度而吸引过来学汉语的人是绝对不会失望的。不管他们学习汉语的初衷为何，每一个学汉语的人，或早或晚都会这么问自己：“我他娘到底为啥要遭这份罪??” 那些还记得自己最初的目标的人，会明智的半路放弃学习汉语，因为没有什么值得让他们这么痛苦。那些说“哎呀我都已经学了这么久了，我可不能半途而废啊”的人，还是有一点儿机会成功的。他们像僵尸一样毫无意识的坚持了下去，而且总体上看，他们缺乏理智。
Okay, having explained a bit of what I mean by the word, I return to my original question: Why is Chinese so damn hard?
好吧，说了这么多，算是解释清楚了一点点我想表达的意思，有点跑题，我得回到正题了。还是我一开始提的问题：中文怎么这么难???
1. Because the writing system is ridiculous.