为什么有些人觉得中文是门可怕的学不来的语言？ [美国媒体]

-------------译者：龙腾翻译总管-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------



Why do some people think Chinese is a scary and unlearnable language?

为什么有些人觉得中文是门可怕的学不来的语言？


-------------译者：Oriri-审核者：wccvtv------------

Kevin D. Aslan Entrepreneur Author Podcaster upxed Jun 29
Because there are so few easy wins.

因为能轻松取胜的事少之又少。

When I started to learn Russian I was amazed. Two days in and I could read. Sure I didn’t understand anything and probably sounded like a slow-witted 8-year old (if that!) but I was reading!

在我学俄语的时候，令我感到惊讶的是，仅仅学了两天我就能阅读俄文了。当然，我并非全部内容都看得懂，而且发音可能听起来像个反应迟钝的8岁小孩一样（如果这个比喻恰当的话），但我确实能读出来了！

Better yet there were tons of words that instinctively made sense. Between Russian and French/English I could find tons of similarities in vocabulary. Cat is pronounced koht tiger is teegr day is dyen.

学习俄语很有优势的一点是，有大量的词汇我能够凭直觉去理解解。在俄语、法语和英语之间，我发现这三者的词汇有很多相似处。cat（猫）的发音近似于koht，tiger(老虎)和day（天）在俄语中写作teegr和dyen。

Little wins are what keep you going and motivated. You feel yourself making progress.

小小的成就激励你使你有继续学习下去的动力，你能够感觉到自己在慢慢进步。

With Chinese it’s the exact opposite. The easy wins come when you’re already at an advanced-intermediate level - before that it’s just complete and painful slogging.

而学习汉语则正好相反。当你已经达到中上的水平时，才觉得自己小有所成——在那之前，汉语对你来说是复杂难懂的，学习过程十分漫长痛苦。

Everything is just so… alien. First tones. Try as you might it’ll take you a few months to be able to do tones on command and full disclaimer you’re probably still going to fail to get 100% accuracy there.

关于汉语的每个方面都如——天书一般难懂。首先，声调。任你怎样努力尝试，你都需要花费几个月的时间来学习声调，即使如此，可能还是无法保证你能百分百准确地发音。

Then the characters. Forget about reading for a very long time. If ever. Even today when I know and recognise ~3000+ characters reading the newspaper is an incredible effort. I might know most of the characters but I won’t know the combinations and hence the words they form.

接下来就是汉字。时间一长，就容易忘记发音。当然，前提是你曾经记住过。即使是今天，我已经认得超过3000个汉字了，可完整读完一篇新闻报道仍然要付出难以置信的努力。我或许能认得大部分的汉字，但是我不懂它们组合起来也就是词语的意思。

-------------译者：wccvtv-审核者：lushanxq------------

And just when you think you’re getting comfortable you hit the chengyu wall. Essentially China has a multitude of 4 character idioms that make no sense unless you know the story behind them. For example: 愚公移山 － Mr. Yu Move Mountain. It’s based on the story of Mr. Yu who grew frustrated that travellers needed to go all the way around the mountain he lived on to get to the village. He therefore started to dig a passage through the mountain. His wife and neighbours tell him he’s crazy and he’ll never achieve it in his lifetime. He answers that if he doesn’t succeed his sons will. If they don’t their sons will.

当你刚认为学习汉语开始变得轻松之后，你就撞上了“成语”这座城墙。基本上中国有许多四字组成的成语，除非你知道这成语背后的故事，否则这些成语对你来说毫无意义你一窍不通。举个例子：愚公移山——这是一个关于一个姓愚的老头想要移平山头的故事。愚公想要把在他村庄前的那座山移平，好让村外的旅行者不用费力绕过大山才能通行。于是他就开始在山上挖通道。他的妻子和邻居都认为他疯了，因为这件事情在他的有生之年是无法实现的。对此，他回答道，如果他的儿子也没做到，那还有他的孙子呢。

Generations later a passage is dug through the mountain (or in the official version a god takes pity on Mr. Yu and moves the mountain). Mr. Yu Move Mountain: When there’s a will there’s a way.

历经几代人的辛勤努力下，这条贯穿山体的通道终于完工了（或者官方的版本是：玉皇大帝被愚公（的举动）所打动和怜悯，特派了神仙帮他移开了那座山）。愚公移山（意思是）：有志者事竟成。

Now imagine hearing your client tell you that Mr. Yu Move Mountain without knowing the story. You look bewildered and ask: “Who’s Mr. Yu?”

现在想象一下，如果你不知道愚公的故事，当你的客户跟你用到这个成语时，你会一脸迷惑地问道“愚公是谁啊？”

That being said once you break through the first few walls Chinese gets much MUCH easier. Grammar is incredibly simple (no conjugation!) and words begin to make a ton of sense once you know the characters (e.g. Butter = 黄油 ＝ yellow oil).

话虽如此，当你越过学习汉语中的第一道门槛儿之后，事情就变得简单多了。汉语的语法非常简单（没有动词的各种变位），并且你一旦知道了解了汉字（例如Butter=黄油=黄色的油），词汇就开始变得有意义了。



No idea how you’d call this though.

不知道你们把这个叫做什么。

But when you start? Oh God. It does look scary.

但是当你开始（学习汉语）了，（你会感慨：）哦，上帝，这么看起来（汉语的确）是门可怕的语言。

Edit: Max D Lee kindly pointed out that Mr. Yu is actually incorrect and that the Yu in this case means more a “Foolish Old Man”. Just goes to show the last point about Chinese: the more you learn the more you realize there’s so much more out there that you still don’t know ^^

编辑：感谢Max D Lee慷慨指出，愚公（这种叫法）实际上是不正确的，在这个成语故事的背景里，愚公更象征意味着“愚蠢的老人”。这表现了汉语的最后一个特点：你学的越多，越意识自己还有很多东西并不了解学习之路还很漫长。

-------------译者：花开花落花满天-审核者：lushanxq------------

Paul Denlinger Have lived in China Taiwan and Hong Kong; fluent in Mandarin (written spoken) Answered Jun 23
Because Chinese is not a language you can pick up “for fun”.

因为汉语不是你单纯“为了找乐子”而学习的一种语言。

It is something you need to have a serious interest in are willing to work hard at it over long stretches of time and are willing to deal with multiple points of frustration over and over.

（学习汉语）这是一件你需要认真对待、并且愿意花长时间努力学习，不断克服（学习中出现的重重）挫折的事。

Even when you have done all that you will still run into situations where you can read the characters but you are not sure about what is going on. Or you will run into new slang which you just don’t get and have to spend time to research and understand.

即使你做到了以上的一切事，你仍然会遇到一些情况——即你可以看得懂那一个个汉字，但你仍不知道它在讲什么内容。或者你会遇到一些你不懂的俚语，不得不花时间去研究和理解它的意思。

This is why there are so many non-Chinese who give up.

这就是为什么有那么多非中国人放弃（学中文）的原因。

The non-Chinese who do spend time are likely to spend a lot of time in China marry Chinese and for all practical purposes become Chinese and disappear into the big Chinese cauldron over time.

那些花时间在中国的外国人很可能会花很多时间去了解中国、中国人结婚，他们所有的实际目的就是成为中国人，并随着时间融入进中国这个大环境里。

Xiao Haifeng Answered Jul 11
When you heard some songs of a chinese pop singer who named Jay ChouI think you will know why.Because as a Chinese I even can not hear clear what he says.

当你听到一个叫周杰伦的中国流行歌手唱的歌时，我想你会知道为什么（中文是门可怕的学不来的语言）的。因为同为中国人，连我都不能完全听清他在唱什么。



-------------译者：风起云团-审核者：lushanxq------------

陈康 Answered Jun 25

我喜欢上一个人。

There are four meanings to this sentence:
1.I like someone.
2.I like to fuck someone.
3.I like the previous one.
4.I like to be alone.

“我喜欢上一个人。”
这句中文一共有四个意思：
1.我喜欢某人。
2.我喜欢“干”某人。
3.我喜欢我的前任（之前那个人）。
4.我喜欢独自一人。

William Poy Lee Professor of English Lecturer on American Society at Beijing Foreign Studies University (2015-present)
Answered Jun 23
I teach at the Beijing Foreign Language Institute China’s premier foreign language and culture university. The other day I talked to an Australian student who majors in Chinese language but at Tsinghua U. Maddy said that at first Chinese writing seemed incomprehensable just a bunch of weird random symbols. But over time like coding for apps she figured it out. And from our brief exchange in Chinese she has obviously mastered the 5-tone Mandarin Chinese. I’m sure she’s more fluent than me an ABC whose grandparents are Cantonese!

我在中国首屈一指的关于外语和文化的大学——北京外国语学院任教。有一天我跟一位来自澳大利亚，在清华大学主攻汉语的学生麦蒂聊天，她说她第一次看见汉字时，（汉字）对她来说简直是一堆令人无法理解的奇异符号。但是随着时间推移，她发现汉字就像程序的编码一样。从我们的简短交流中，我得知她显然完全掌握了汉语里的五个音调。我敢肯定她的汉语要比我这个有广东籍祖父母的美籍华人流畅得多。

We both also agreed that learning a languge outside the Latin based alphabet languages is difficult for Westerners. She specifically pointed out that Arabic writing still strikes her as initially incomprehensible. I pointed out Russian writing Cyrillic strikes me as initially daunting. But we both agreed that if we really wanted to we could learn either of them for sure.

我们都认为对西方人来说，学习一门并非基于拉丁字母语系的语言是十分困难的。她特别指出她觉得阿拉伯文字仍旧令人费解令她备受打击。我也表示俄罗斯文字——西里尔字母同样让我望而却步。但我们都认同如果我们真的一心想学这两种语言的话，我们最后肯定都能学会。

So Chinese like learning any other language not in your root civilizational orbit is challenging. But as Maddy and the numbers of Westerners here at BFSU and throughout China demonstrate it’s more than doable for the focused student.

所以学中文跟你学习其他非母语系的语言一样，都是一个巨大的挑战。但正如麦蒂和其他许多在北外乃至全中国学习的西方学生都证明了一点，那就是对于一个专注学习的人来说，（学好汉语）是完全可行的。

 -------------译者：风起云团-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------

Tom O'Connor Lived in China for 2 years. upxed Oct 25
I’ve read a number of times that to read a Chinese newspaper you need to master between 2500 to 3000 characters. You won’t recognize every character but you can fully comprehend the meaning.

我已经阅读（中文报纸）很长时间了，要想能够读懂中文报纸你需要掌握大约2500到3000的词汇量。你不必搞懂每个字的意思只需要理解它的大致意思就可以了。

My trouble is that I am married to a Shanghainese woman and I am (slowly) trying to learn Mandarin. Without fail my wife will speak Shanghainese instead of Mandarin at every occasion even though I ask her and her family and friends to please speak Mandarin. They start off with Mandarin but within 2 minutes they automatically switch. I personally consider the two different languages not dialects and I close my ears to the conversation. I honestly think that after 12 years of marriage to a Chinese woman if I only heard Mandarin I would be able to speak it well enough to carry on a conversation.

我的问题是，我的老婆是个上海人且我正在（缓慢进行）学习普通话。我的太太不论在任何场合都必定会使用上海话来代替普通话，甚至就算我请求她和她的家人以及朋友说普通话都不行。就算她们一开始说的是普通话，但两分钟过后她们就（会把普通话）自动换回（上海话）了。我个人认为这是两种不同的语言而不是方言，所以就闭上耳朵不听（她们的）谈话内容。说实话，我觉得如果我跟一个说普通话的女人结婚12年，那我的（中文）口语可以流畅到与人自如交流了。

Susan Correll Foy works at University of Delaware English Language Institute Answered Jun 25
My son had the choice of studying Chinese or Japanese in high school. Both are very different from English but I encouraged him toward Japanese for two reasons. First the Japanese writing system is phonetic at least the initial one and hence much easier for a foreigner to learn. Second Japanese has no tones and Chinese does. These are two very intimidating features of Chinese that make English speakers avoid studying it unless they are very motivated.

我儿子在高中时有机会选择选学汉语或是日语。两者都是十分难学的语言，不过出于以下两个原因我鼓励他学日语。一是日语的书写方式至少在初期时是（拼音）式的，这样对外国人来说更容易入门些，其次日语没有音调而汉语有。中文的这两个特征就够让英语国家的人排斥学汉语了，除非他们能有足够的动力去学习。