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）

汉字，记住了更多的发音，你在猜词这方面的程度倒是会比之前稍微好一点（假设你现在不知道“总”字怎么拼，你可能会想，“总 这个字好像是另外一个字的偏旁啊？。。。到底念Song?还是Zeng?啊想起来了，是congmíng 聪明里，聪字的一个偏旁，念Zong。”）当然，有一些字的发音关系看起来联系的比较密切，但是包括很多高频字在内的其他汉字，读音和字形之间是没有任何关系的。

All of this is to say that Chinese is just not very phonetic when compared to English. (English, in turn, is less phonetic than a language like German or Spanish, but Chinese isn't even in the same ballpark.) It is not true, as some people outside the field tend to think, that Chinese is not phonetic at all, though a perfectly intelligent beginning student could go several months without noticing this fact. Just how phonetic the language is a very complex issue. Educated opinions range from 25% (Zhao Yuanren) to around 66% (DeFrancis), though the latter estimate assumes more knowledge of phonetic

components than most learners are likely to have. One could say that Chinese is phonetic in the way that sex is aerobic: technically so, but in practical use not the most salient thing about it. Furthermore, this phonetic aspect of the language doesn't really become very useful until you've learned a few hundred characters, and even when you've learned two thousand, the feeble phoneticity of Chinese will never provide you with the constant memory prod that the phonetic quality of English does.

我说的这些只是想说明，跟英语比起来，汉语里，音和字的联系并不是很紧密（当然了，比起德语或者西班牙语，英语中文字和发音的联系也不够紧密，但是说起来，汉语连可比性都没有）有些从没接触过汉语的人可能会认为，在汉语里，字和音是毫无关联的，尽管有些极具天赋的初学者可能学了好几个月也不会这么想。这种看法也是错误的。讨论一种语言的文字和发音有多大的关系是一个比较复杂的事情。学者对于汉语的字音联系程度看法各不同，从25%到66%的都有，尽管最高66%的估计实际上已经超过了大部分人掌握的发音知识。你要是觉得汉语是音形一致的，那就相当于你也觉得XXOO是有氧运动一样。不过实际运用并不是它最突出的东西。此外，你要是没学会几百个单词，

那么你学习的这门语言是否音形一致，对你而言是没什么影响的。就算你学会了2000个汉字的写法，含糊不清的汉语拼音也没法保证你能够一直记忆这么多字，尤其跟英语这种音形较为一致的语言相比。

Which means that often you just completely forget how to write a character. Period. If there is no obvious semantic clue in the radical, and no helpful phonetic component somewhere in the character, you're just sunk. And you're sunk whether your native language is Chinese or not; contrary to popular myth, Chinese people are not born with the ability to memorize arbitrary squiggles. In fact, one of the most gratifying

experiences a foreign student of Chinese can have is to see a native speaker come up a complete blank when called upon to write the characters for some relatively common word. You feel an enormous sense of vindication and relief to see a native speaker experience the exact same difficulty you experience every day.

这也就意味着，你会在一段时间内，经常忘记有些字怎么写。如果一个字既没有明显的语义提示，又不是那些你认识的偏旁部首组成的，那你可能真的想不起来这是哪个字，哪怕你的母语是汉语也不行。与传言相反的事情是，中国人并不是生下来就具备着记住各种随意的曲线（代指汉字）的能力的。事实上，对于学习汉语的外国学生来说，最让人愉悦的经历之一，就是看着中国人被要求写下一些常用词的时候，发现连他们都不知道有些字该怎么写。当你发现中国人其实也在面对让你日日夜夜痛苦不已的难题时，你真的会觉得自己的灵魂得到了巨大的宽慰....

This is such a gratifying experience, in fact, that I have actually kept a list of characters that I have observed Chinese people forget how to write. (A sick, obsessive activity, I know.) I have seen highly literate Chinese people forget how to write certain characters in common words like \fingers\I mean that they often cannot even put the first stroke down on the paper. Can you

imagine a well-educated native English speaker totally forgetting how to write a word like \was once at a luncheon with three Ph.D. students in the Chinese Department at Peking University, all native Chinese (one from Hong Kong). I happened to have a cold that day, and was trying to write a brief note to a friend canceling an appointment that day. I found that I couldn't remember how to write the character 嚔, as in da penti 打喷嚔 \sneeze\three of them simply shrugged in sheepish embarrassment. Not one of them could correctly produce the character. Now, Peking University is usually considered the \forgetting how to write the English word \means uncommon in China. English is simply orders of magnitude easier to write and remember. No matter how low-frequency the word is, or how unorthodox the spelling, the English speaker can always come up with something, simply because there has to be some correspondence between sound and spelling. One might forget whether

\but even the poorest of spellers can make a reasonable stab at almost anything. By contrast, often even the most well-educated Chinese have no recourse but to throw up their hands and ask someone else in the room how to write some particularly elusive character.

这番体验是如此的让人欣慰...其实，我有做过一个清单，上面列出了我所观察到的一些普通中国人也不一定会写的字。（我知道我这种行为是病态的而且显得我有强迫症）我见过受过高等教育的人们会忘记一些高频用词里的字怎么写，比如说“易拉罐”，“膝盖”，“螺丝刀”，“睫毛”，“姜”，“毯子”，

“鞭炮”等等。当我说我忘了这个字怎么写的时候，我的意思其实是我连这个字的第一笔都不知道该往哪里写。你能想象一个母语是英语的，受过高等教育的人会想不出“罐头”和“膝盖”之类的词怎么写吗？或者像是“鞘”这样的生僻字词也不会拼？有一次，我跟三个北大中文系的在读博士生一起吃午饭，他们三人的母语都是汉语（其中一个是香港人）。我那天碰巧感冒了，因此准备给我的一个朋友写一张小字条，告诉他当天的约会可能要取消了。然后我发现我突然忘了“打喷嚏”里面的“嚏”字怎么写。于是我问了一下我的三个朋友，那个字怎么写。然而，让我意外的是，他们三个腼腆而尴尬的耸了耸肩，因为他们三个都不会写“嚏”字。北大现在一般被认为是“中国的哈佛大学”。你能想象哈佛大学的三个英文系在读博士生会忘了“打喷嚏”这个单词怎么拼吗？？然而，这种现象在中国其实还蛮常见的。英语的读写架构的难度是大大低于汉语的。不管一个单词的使用频率有多么的低，亦或是一个单词的构词有多么的奇怪，一个说英语的人总是能想出一些拼出这个单词的方法，原因很简单，就是因为英语单词的发音和拼写之间是有一一对应的关系的。有人可能会忘记 \这个单词的字母之间有没有破折号，或者可能会把单词\的最后一个字母给拼错，但就算是最没有文化的人，也总能做出一个合理的猜测、尝试。相反的，就算是受过最好教育的中国人，当他们面对某些他们也不会写的常见的生僻字的时候，他们也只能乖乖举手投降，并不得不求助其他人。

As one mundane example of the advantages of a phonetic writing system, here is one kind of linguistic situation I encountered constantly while I was in France. (Again I use French as my canonical example of an \in Paris and turn on the radio. An ad comes on, and I hear the word \several times. \an appointment, I forget to look the word up in my haste to leave the apartment. A few hours later I'm walking down the street, and I read, on a sign, the word \-- the word I heard earlier this morning. Beneath the word on the sign is a picture of a shock absorber. Aha! So \a new word, quickly and painlessly, all because the sound I construct when reading the