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）

to be understood. I once had a Chinese friend who had read the first translations of Kafka into Chinese, yet didn't know who Santa Claus was. China has had extensive contact with the West in the last few decades, but there is still a vast sea of knowledge and ideas that is not shared by both cultures.

但是跟中国人交流就没那么简单了。跟他们说话的时候，你要是提到狄更斯，人猿泰山，开膛手杰克，歌德什么的，哪怕是提到甲壳虫（即披头士）摇滚乐队，那你就别期盼对方懂你在说什么。我曾有个看过中文版《卡夫卡》一书的朋友，然而他也不知道圣塔克劳斯（圣诞老人的名字）是谁。最近的几十年里，中国已经跟西方有了广泛的接触，然而两种文化之间还是有巨大的鸿沟，有很多知识和想法还没有及时相互交流。

Similarly, how many Americans other than sinophiles have even a rough idea of the chronology of China's dynasties? Has the average history major here ever heard of Qin Shi Huangdi and his contribution to Chinese culture? How many American music majors have ever heard a note of Peking Opera, or would recognize a pipa if they tripped over one? How many otherwise literate Americans have heard of Lu Xun, Ba Jin, or even Mozi?

同样的，除了那些对中国文化一直感兴趣的人之外，有多少美国人对中国各个朝代的演替年表有一个模糊的了解呢？那些学历史专业的人，有多少知道秦始皇，知道他对中华文化的贡献？那些学音乐的人，有多少听过京剧的曲调？如果有一天碰到了一个琵琶，他们中有几个能认得出来？那些学文学的人，又有几个听说过鲁迅、巴金、墨子的大名？

What this means is that when Americans and Chinese get together, there is often not just a language barrier, but an immense cultural barrier as well. Of course, this is one of the reasons the study of Chinese is so interesting. It is also one of the reasons it is so damn hard.

我想说的其实是，中美两国在交流的时候，挡在中间的障碍不仅仅是语言的不同，还有巨大的文化差异。当然了，正是因为不同，所以汉语学起来也格外有意思。也是汉语这么难的主要原因之一。

Conclusion

结论

I could go on and on, but I figure if the reader has bothered to read this far, I'm preaching to the converted, anyway. Those who have tackled other difficult languages have their own litany of horror stories, I'm sure. But I still feel reasonably confident in asserting that, for an average American, Chinese is significantly harder to learn than any of the other thirty or so major world languages that are usually studied formally at the university level (though Japanese in many ways comes close). Not too interesting for linguists, maybe, but something to consider if you've decided to better yourself by learning a foreign language, and you're thinking \

我其实可以再接着说下去，不过我猜读者们读到这里都不耐烦了，所以我也就不再多此一举了。每一个学外语的人都能像我这样，吐槽一大堆自己学的那门语言的难点，这我很确定。但是我可以很负责任的说，对于大部分美国人而言，汉语显然比其余世界上其余三十多种主流语言更难（尽管日语跟汉语在很多地方上是非常相似的）。可能对于语言学家来说比较无聊，但是如果你想通过学一门新外语来提升自己，并且现在还觉得“我去，汉语看上去好带劲啊！”的话，那你不妨在看完这篇文章之后再好好想想。

It's pretty hard to quantify a process as complex and multi-faceted as language-learning, but one simple metric is to simply estimate the time it takes to master the requisite language-learning skills. When you consider all the above-mentioned things a learner of Chinese has to acquire -- ability to use a dictionary,a grasp of principles involved in writing characters (both simplified and traditional) -- it adds up to an awful lot of down time while one is \

对于学习语言这种复杂、全方位的事情来说，很难去找一个合适的量词去量化他的难度，但是掌握一门语言的基本用法所花的时间，倒是一个很简单的量化准则。当你把我在这篇文章里提到的所有难点--包括使用字典的能力，了解简体和繁体汉字写法的能力---这些东西都会额外增加你学习汉语的时间。

How much harder is Chinese? Again, I'll use French as my canonical \is a very rough and intuitive estimate, but I would say that it takes about three times as long to reach a level of comfortable fluency in speaking, reading, and writing Chinese as it takes to reach a comparable level in French. An average American could probably become reasonably fluent in two Romance languages in the time it would take them to reach the same level in Chinese.

中文比其他语言难多少？我又要用法语作为我定义的“简单的语言”里的模板了。以下可能会是一个非常粗略的估算，并且完全是凭我的感觉得出的结论，但是要我说的话，我觉得一个外语学习者要想达到听说读写都流畅的水平，学汉语所花的时间会是学法语所花时间的三倍。如果一个普通美国人花了好几年的时间学汉语，最终他的汉语水平达到了我所说的听说读写都流畅的级别，那么他要是拿同样的时间去学习其他欧洲语言，花同等的时间，他可能已经把两种欧洲语言学到了听说读写都流畅的水平。

One could perhaps view learning languages as being similar to learning musical instruments. Despite the esoteric glories of the harmonica literature, it's probably safe to say that the piano is a lot harder and more time-consuming to learn. To extend the analogy, there is also the fact that we are all virtuosos on at least one \(namely, our native language), and learning instruments from the same family is easier than embarking on a completely different instrument. A Spanish person learning Portuguese is comparable to a violinist taking up the viola, whereas an American learning Chinese is more like a rock guitarist trying to learn to play an elaborate 30-stop three-manual pipe organ.

学习语言很像学习乐器。虽说口琴是一个很难研究透的乐器，但是要是说钢琴更难学、学起来更费时，好像也没什么错。类比到语言的学习上，可以说我们每个人至少都是一款“乐器”（也就是母语）的演奏大师。学习同一个分类下其他的乐器，无疑比学一款完全不同的乐器要轻松得多。比方说，一个西班牙人学葡萄牙语，就好像是一个小提琴手在学中提琴一样，同时一个美国人如果在学汉语，那就像是一个搞摇滚的吉他手去尝试学习管风琴一样。

Someone once said that learning Chinese is \five-year lesson in humility\I used to think this meant that at the end of five years you will have mastered Chinese and learned humility along the way. However, now having studied Chinese for over six years, I have concluded that actually the phrase means that after five years your Chinese will still be abysmal, but at least you will have thoroughly learned humility.

有人曾经说过，学汉语就是“花五年的时间去学习怎么谦虚做人”。我以前以为这句话的意思是，学了五年汉语之后，你就可以彻底掌握汉语了，同时在学习的过程中有了谦逊的品质。然而，我已经学了六年多汉语了，现在我对这句话又有了新的理解：学了五年汉语之后你的语言水平仍会是一团糟，不过在汉语的多年摧残下，至少你学会了怎么谦虚做人。

There is still the awe-inspiring fact that Chinese people manage to learn their own language very well. Perhaps they are like the grade school kids that Baroque performance groups recruit to sing Bach cantatas. The story goes that someone in the audience, amazed at hearing such youthful cherubs flawlessly singing Bach's uncompromisingly difficult vocal music, asks the choir director, \difficult music?\

但是，中国人学习他们自己母语的能力确实让人敬畏。那些中国孩子就像是音乐小学里被交响乐团提前招走的小学生。故事是这样的：交响乐演奏开始了，有的观众对于乐团里的小天使们小小年纪就能演奏出如此高难度的音乐感到震惊。他们问乐团的指挥，“这些曲子这么难，他们是怎么演奏出来的？”

\know.\

“嘘...小声点好吗！”指挥说，“你要是不告诉他们正在演奏的曲子有多难，他们自己又怎么会知道？”

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能看到这里的，哪怕是一路狂拖到这里的，答主也要在这里，感谢你的耐心与支持~么么哒