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）

“噢~我还以为你看得懂中文呢。”我的朋友们对我说，然后他们把目光转回了菜单上。别介意那个老实憨厚的中国人挠了挠头后又耸了耸肩，丢的可是我的人啊...

Whereas modern Mandarin is merely perversely hard, classical Chinese is deliberately impossible. Here's a secret that sinologists won't tell you: A passage in classical Chinese can be understood only if you already know what the passage says in the first place. This is because classical Chinese really consists of several centuries of esoteric anecdotes and in-jokes written in a kind of terse, miserly code for dissemination among a small, elite group of intellectually-inbred bookworms who already knew the whole literature backwards and forwards, anyway. An uninitiated westerner can no more be expected to understand such writing than Confucius himself, if transported to the present, could understand the entries in the \\twosm or threesm ok, have own equip., wheels, 988-8752 lv. mssg. on ans. mach., no weirdos please.\

要是说当代汉语难学的话，那文言文就可以算得上根本没法学了。汉学家不会告诉你：除非你事先知道一篇文言文说的是什么，否则你绝对看不懂。这是因为文言文里夹杂着大量好几千年积攒下来的各种典故，而且对于这些典故，他们还故弄玄虚的着墨极少，这么做似乎能够让作品在他们那天赋异禀的精英扎堆的小圈子里更好地传播。一个外行的西方人想读懂文言，难度就像是孔子穿越到现代之后，让他去读报纸上广告专版里的个人广告部分。你不知道报纸上广告专版里的个人广告部分都刊登些什么东西？啊，那就举个例子好了：“喜事。大喜，24，160，与会”或“这对温柔的先.和女.，MOD。订，一婚礼。好，设备，车，988-8752 LV。旗下。上马。皆大欢喜。”

In fairness, it should be said that classical Chinese gets easier the more you attempt it. But then so does hitting a hole in one, or swimming the English channel in a straitjacket. 客观的讲，当你读过很多篇文言之后，再读别的文言的时候，难度确实是有所下降的。但是世间又有什么事不是这样呢？不管做什么事，都是熟能生巧，不仅仅是读文言才这样。

7. Because tonal languages are weird. 7.因为声调这东西很奇怪

Okay, that's very Anglo-centric, I know it. But I have to mention this problem because it's one of the most common complaints about learning Chinese, and it's one of the aspects of the language that westerners are notoriously bad at. Every person who tackles Chinese at first has a little trouble believing this aspect of the language. How is it possible that shuxué means \xue means \guojiang means \jiang means \

好吧，我承认这么说确实让人感觉有点白人至上主义。但是这个问题实在是不得不提，因为这是汉语学习者最经常抱怨的问题之一。众所周知，这也是西方人学汉语的时候最拿捏不好的难点之一。开始学汉语的时候，每个人都多多少少的有些难以接受声调系统的存在。shuxué的意思是数学，怎么shuxue的意思就成了输血？？还有为什么guojiang就是过奖的意思，但是guojiang的意思却成了果酱？？

By itself, this property of Chinese would be hard enough; it means that, for us non-native speakers, there is this extra, seemingly irrelevant aspect of the sound of a word that you must memorize along with the vowels and consonants. But where the real difficulty comes in is when you start to really use Chinese to express yourself. You suddenly find yourself straitjacketed -- when you say the sentence with the intonation that feels natural, the tones come out all wrong. For example, if you wish say something like \that's my water glass you're drinking out of!\-- that is, to put a distinct falling tone on the first character of the word for \you will have said a kind of gibberish that may or may not be understood.

就其本身而言，汉语这个属性就已经很难了。这话的意思是，对于我们这些母语非汉语的人来说，声调好像是多出来的一个东西，而且它跟每个人都必须要记住的元因和辅音又毫不相干。但是当你开口说话的时候，这个看起来不太重要的东西却变成了一个超级难点。感觉就像你被戴上了紧箍咒--你说话的时候，会不自觉的用你认为非常自然的语调去读，但是你读出来的声调其实是完全错误的。比如说，你现在想说一句\，当你读这句话的时候，你是完全顺着你的本能反应去读的--你读my这个单词的时候，会很自然的降调--最后你说出来的东西可能就像是胡言乱语一样，别人真不一定听得懂你在说什么。

Intonation and stress habits are incredibly ingrained and second-nature.But with Chinese, where your intonational contours must always obey the tonal constraints of the specific words you've chosen. Chinese speakers, of course, can express all of the intonational subtleties available in non-tonal languages -- it's just that they do it in a way that is somewhat alien to us speakers of non-tonal languages. When you first begin using your Chinese to talk about subjects that actually matter to you, you find that it feels somewhat like trying to have a passionate argument with your hands tied behind your back -- you are suddenly robbed of some vital expressive tools you hadn't even been aware of having.

一个人说话的时候，他的语调和重音习惯，是根深蒂固于脑中的，可以说是第二天性。但是，当你说汉语的时候，你的发音语调至少大体上要服从你所读的词汇的发音规则。当然了，那些说中文的人，可以轻易表达出像英语这种无声调语言里所有语音上的的微妙之处--至于他们怎么做到的，对于我们这些使用无声调语言的人来说，确实有些陌生。当你第一次开口说中文的时候，你会感觉你的手不自觉的背到了身后，并且有一种不知名的力量，让他们在后面不停地搓来挫去---是的，你突然间就被这种不知名的神秘力量绑架了，然而你之前甚至连这种力量的存在都不知道。

8. Because east is east and west is west, and the twain have only recently met. 8.因为东西方是截然不同的，这两种文化不过才刚刚开始融合。

Language and culture cannot be separated, of course, and one of the main reasons Chinese is so difficult for Americans is that our two cultures have been isolated for so long. The reason reading French sentences like \que le gouvernement américain va continuer à défendre le Koweit contre la menace irakienne,\Indo-European family resemblance, but also because the core concepts and cultural assumptions in such utterances stem from the same source. We share the same art history, the same music history, the same history history -- which means that in the head of a French person there is basically the same set of archetypes and the same cultural cast of characters that's in an American's head. We are as familiar with Rimbaud as they are with Rambo. In fact, compared to the difference between China and the U.S., American culture and and French culture seem about as different as Peter Pan and Skippy peanut butter.

语言和文化是不分家的，这不用说。美国人学汉语这么难，其中主要原因之一就是，两种文化互相孤立太久了。举例来说，一个法语句子\gouvernement américain va continuer à défendre le Koweit contre la menace

irakienne,\，一个美国人能大概读懂，并不仅仅是因为英语和法语都属于印欧语系所以比较相似，还因为两国的核心文化也师出同门。我们有着同样的绘画史，同样的音乐史...总而言之，我们所有的历史几乎都相通。也就是说，两个国家的民众脑海里，关于历史和文化的记忆基本相同。我们熟悉他们的诗人兰波，就像他们熟悉我们的影星兰博。比起中美巨大的文化差异，美法文化的区别就像是彼得潘和四季宝花生酱一样（分别为法国和美国的文化象征之一）。

Speaking with a Chinese person is usually a different matter. You just can't drop Dickens, Tarzan, Jack the Ripper, Goethe, or the Beatles into a conversation and always expect