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.docx

1、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Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard中文怎么这么难by David MoserUniversity 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, Hard for whom? A reasonable question. After all, Chinese

2、people seem to learn it just fine. When little Chinese kids go through the terrible twos, its Chinese they use to 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 mea

3、n by hard? Since I know at the outset that the whole tone of this 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

4、 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

5、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

6、 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 which language youre coming from. A

7、French person can usually learn Italian faster than an American, and an average American could probably master German a lot faster than an average Japanese, and so on. So part of what Im contending is that Chinese is hard compared to . well, compared to almost any other language you might care to ta

8、ckle. What I mean is that Chinese is not only hard for us (English speakers), but its 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

9、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 dont believe this, just ask a Chinese person. Most Chinese people will cheerfully acknowledge that their language is hard, maybe

10、 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

11、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

12、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。Everyones heard the supposed fact that if you take the English idiom Its Greek to me and search for equivalent idioms in all the worlds languages to arrive at a consensus as to which language is the hardest, the results of such a

13、linguistic survey is that Chinese easily wins as the canonical incomprehensible language. (For example, the French have the expression Cest du chinois, Its Chinese, i.e., Its incomprehensible. Other languages have similar sayings.) So then the question arises: What do the Chinese themselves consider

14、 to be an impossibly hard language? You then look for the corresponding phrase in Chinese, and you find “Gen tianshu yyang”meaning Its 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

15、一荣誉称号。（比如说，法语里有一个词组Cest 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 r

16、eason 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 un

17、dertaken to study Chinese sooner or later asks themselves Why the hell am I doing this? Those who can still remember their original goals will wisely abandon the attempt then and there, since nothing could be worth all that tedious struggle. Those who merely say Ive come this far - I cant stop now w

18、ill 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

19、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

20、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.1.因为汉语的文字体系简直荒谬。Beautiful, complex, mysterious - but ridiculous. I, like many students of Chinese, was first attracted to Chinese because of the writing system, which is surely one of the most fascinating scripts in the world. The more

21、 you learn about Chinese characters the more intriguing and addicting they become. The study of Chinese characters can become a lifelong obsession, and you soon find yourself engaged in the daily task of accumulating them, drop by drop from the vast sea of characters, in a vain attempt to hoard them

22、 in the leaky bucket of long-term memory.美丽、复杂、神秘-但是荒谬。和其他学习汉语的学生一样，我一开始是被汉字吸引，才对汉语感兴趣的。汉字简直就是世上最吸引人的文字之一。你学的汉字越多，你就越觉得汉字真的是很吸引人、很有意思。对汉字的学习可以让人痴迷一生，而且过不了多久你就会发现，你每天一点一点积累下来的汉字，就像无尽汉字海洋中的一滴滴水，你试着把它们囤进一个叫作“长期记忆”的娄里，却发现这个娄是漏的。所有你付出的巨大努力最后都成了徒劳无功。The beauty of the characters is indisputable, but as the

23、 Chinese people began to realize the importance of universal literacy, it became clear that theseideogramswere sort of like bound feet - some fetishists may have liked the way they looked, but they werent too practical for daily use.汉字之美，无可争辩。但是，随着中国人意识到全民识字的重要性，表意文字的局限性也变得显而易见。有些汉字的死忠可能喜欢汉字的样式，但是汉字

24、太繁杂，在日常生活中并不太实用。For one thing, it is simply unreasonably hard to learn enough characters to become functionally literate. Again, someone may ask Hard in comparison to what? And the answer is easy: Hard in comparison to Spanish, Greek, Russian, Hindi, or any other sane, normal language that requires

25、at most a few dozen symbols to write anything in the language. John DeFrancis, in his bookThe Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, reports that his Chinese colleagues estimate it takes seven to eight years for a Mandarin speaker to learn to read and write three thousand characters, whereas his French

26、 and Spanish colleagues estimate that students in their respective countries achieve comparable levels in half that time. Naturally, this estimate is rather crude and impressionistic (its unclear what comparable levels means here), but the overall implications are obvious: the Chinese writing system

27、 is harder to learn, in absolute terms, than an alphabetic writing system. Even Chinese kids, whose minds are at their peak absorptive power, have more trouble with Chinese characters than their little counterparts in other countries have with their respective scripts. Just imagine the difficulties

28、experienced by relatively sluggish post-pubescent fo under my beltreign learners such as myself.首先，就算你只是想获得最基本的读写能力，需要你记忆的汉字也会非常多，难度很大。有的人又要问了：“你说的难，是跟什么比起来算难啊？”那么答案很简单：跟西班牙语、希腊语、俄语、印地语，或者其他的，至多只要几十个字母组合一下，就可以表达出所有意思的语言比起来，汉语的文字系统学起来都要更难。约翰德范克，在他的著作汉语：事实和幻想里面提到，他的中国同事估计，一个母语是汉语的人，需要花上七到八年，才能达到读写3000

29、个汉字的水平。而他的法国和西班牙同事则估计，在他们的国家，如果想要达到同等的读写水平，只需要花上中国人所花费的时间的一半就可以了。自然，这样的估计是非常粗略以及主观的，不过这样的估计，整体上带给我们的启示还是显而易见的：比起那些表音文字，汉语的文字系统绝对更难学。甚至是那些处于接受事物最快的阶段的中国小孩子，比起别的国家的同龄小伙伴，他们对于自己母语的文字也有更多的疑问。连记东西最快的小孩子都如此，你就可以想象到，像我这样的已经到了后青春期的岁数还在学汉语的外国学生，学起来是有多么的慢了。Everyone has heard that Chinese is hard because of th

30、e huge number of characters one has to learn, and this is absolutely true. There are a lot of popular books and articles that downplay this difficulty, saying things like Despite the fact that Chinese has 10,000, 25,000, take your pick separate characters you really only need 2,000 or so to read a n

31、ewspaper. Poppycock. I couldnt comfortably read a newspaper when I had 2,000 characters under my belt. I often had to look up several characters per line, and even after that I had trouble pulling the meaning out of the article. (I take it as a given that what is meant by read in this context is rea

32、d and basically comprehend the text without having to look up dozens of characters; otherwise the claim is rather empty.)每个人都听说过中文挺难的，因为要记忆的字实在太多了。这个传闻确实是真的。市面上很多书和文章都大大低估了记忆汉字的难度。这些文章宣称“尽管汉语里面有10000/25000个字，但是你只需要记住2000个字，就能够读懂中文报纸了。”屁话。我要是只认识2000个汉字，那我根本没办法通顺的把报纸读下来。每行新闻总有几个字我不认识，我还得去翻翻字典看看它们啥意思。甚至就算是我把每个字代表的意思都查出来了，我还是读不懂整篇文章。（这里我把“阅读”理解成“在不用总是翻字典的情况下，阅读并基本理解文章的内容”，否则的话，阅读所指的东西未免也太空泛了。）This fairy tale is promulgated because of the fact that, when you look at the character frequencies, over 95% of the characters in any newspaper are easily among the fir