導讀：本文在網(wǎng)上流毒甚廣，好吧，影響甚廣（考慮到作者大人可能會來觀摩），生動地展示了一位外國人學習者眼中的中文形象。

譯者的話：本文從去年開始醞釀，一直到今日才放出，Bee的懶惰真是令人發(fā)指…… 這是冤枉滴！Bee聯(lián)系到了作者大人本人，所以本篇譯文完全是得到了作者本人同意，并反復審閱修改過的。不過細想想Bee已經(jīng)從一月一翻更加退化到了一季一翻，只希望不要再繼續(xù)惡化了……

Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard

by David Moser

University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies

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 people seem to learn it just fine. When little Chinese kids go through the "terrible twos", it's 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 mean 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 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.

為什么中文這么TM難？

作者：David Moser

看到這篇文章的標題，任何有頭腦的人第一個問題都會是“難，是對誰而言？”問的有理。說到底，中國人看起來學的還挺順當?shù)?。當中國小孩兒?jīng)歷那“狗都嫌的兩歲”時，他們用的是中文來把父母們逼瘋。幾年之后，同樣這些孩子就已經(jīng)在用復雜得不可思議的漢字來歪歪斜斜地寫情書和購物清單了。所以我說的“難”到底是什么意思？既然我早就知道本文的語調(diào)將充滿牢騷和抱怨，那我最好還是說清楚自己到底是什么意思。我的意思是，對我來說很難，一個以英語為母語，試圖學習中文的成年人。他會經(jīng)歷教科書、磁帶、語伴等等這一整套折磨人的繁瑣過程。我的“難”是說的對我自己，呃——當然還對很多其他西方人，那些花費了經(jīng)年累月，在中文的長城上撞到頭大的人們（譯者：原文“Chinese”同時表示“中文”和“中國的”）。

If 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 you're coming from. A 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 I'm contending is that Chinese is hard compared to ... well, compared to almost any other language you might care to tackle. What I mean is that Chinese is not only hard for us (English speakers), but it's also hard in absolute terms. Which means that Chinese is also hard for them, for Chinese people.

如果我要說的只有這些，那這些話相當空洞。中文對我來說當然難嘍。畢竟，任何外語對非母語人士都很難，對不對？這個嘛，差不多是這樣。不過不是所有的外語對任何學生的難度都是一樣的。它取決于你自己的母語。一個法國人學意大利語往往比美國人快，而一個普通美國人掌握德語則多半比一個普通日本人快得多，如此而已。所以我所談論的部分觀點是指中文很難，相對于……反正相對于你有可能想學的幾乎其他任何語言。我的意思是中文不但對我們（英語人士）來說難，它在絕對意義上也是難的。這意味著對于中國人來說，中文也很難。 

If you don't believe this, just ask a Chinese person. Most Chinese people will cheerfully acknowledge that their language is hard, maybe 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 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.

如果你不信，隨便問個中國人。絕大多數(shù)中國人都會高興地承認他們的語言很難，可能是地球上最難的。（實際上很多人以此為傲，就好象實際上有些紐約人以居住在美國最不宜居的城市為傲一樣。）可能所有中國人都該因為生為中國人而獲得一枚獎牌才是。不管怎樣，基本上他們早晚都會意識到他們母語那種珠穆朗瑪峰一樣的地位的，當他們站在那至高無上的山峰上，優(yōu)越地俯視著那些有勇無謀的外國人們在陡峭的山崖上氣喘吁吁的時候。

Everyone's heard the supposed fact that if you take the English idiom "It's Greek to me" and search for equivalent idioms in all the world's languages to arrive at a consensus as to which language is the hardest, the results of such a linguistic survey is that Chinese easily wins as the canonical incomprehensible language. (For example, the French have the expression "C'est du chinois", "It's Chinese", i.e., "It's incomprehensible". Other languages have similar sayings.) So then the question arises: What do the Chinese themselves consider to be an impossibly hard language? You then look for the corresponding phrase in Chinese, and you find Gēn tiānshū yíyàng 跟天書一樣 meaning "It's like heavenly script."

大家都聽過這個公認的說法，那就是如果你考慮英語中的“It's Greek to me”（譯者注：原意是“這對我就像希臘文”，引申為“難以理解”。），然后在全世界的語言中尋找一個與之相對應的習語，從而得到一個關于哪個語言最難的共識。那這樣一個語言調(diào)查的結(jié)果將是中文輕松獲得最難解語言的稱號。（比如，法語就有這種表達“C'est du chinois”，意為“這是中文”，亦即“這是神馬我不懂”。其他語言有類似說法。）那么問題來了，中國人自己認為什么才是最不可能學會的困難語言呢？你在中文中尋找類似的習語，然后你找到了——“跟天書一樣”

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 reason 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 undertaken to study Chinese sooner or later asks themselves "Why in the world 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 "I've come this far -- I can't stop now" will have some chance of succeeding, since they have the kind of mindless doggedness and lack of sensible overall perspective that it takes.

Okay, having explained a bit of what I mean by the word, I return to my original question: Why is Chinese so damn hard?

這些可不完全是在說笑話，中文那令人心痛的難度是名副其實的。所有那些試圖學習這門語言的人們，除了純粹以此為樂的，都會對學習中極低的投入產(chǎn)出比感到沮喪。那些實際上正是被這門語言嚇人的復雜和難度吸引的家伙，則絕不會失望。不管原因為何，所有中文學習者早晚都會問自己這個問題“我到底為啥在干這個？”還能記著自己初衷的人會明智的選擇立刻放棄，因為沒有什么值得付出如此多的痛苦掙扎。而對自己回答說“事已至此，無路可退”的人呢，則有機會成功，因為他們擁有學習中文必需的素質(zhì)——不見黃河不死心的死鉆牛角尖精神。

Ok，解釋了一下我的措辭含義之后，讓我回到最初的問題：為什么中文這么TM難？

1. Because the writing system is ridiculous.

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 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 in the leaky bucket of long-term memory.

1. 因為書寫系統(tǒng)很不合理

優(yōu)美，復雜，神秘……但是莫名其妙。像很多中文學習者一樣，我一開始就是被這些漢字所吸引的，它們肯定是世界上最迷人的字符之一。你學中文越多就就越發(fā)現(xiàn)漢字的讓人上癮的魅力。中文漢字的學習可以令人癡迷一生，很快你就每天一滴滴地從漢字的海洋中積累成癖，徒勞地試圖建立一點儲備，靠著那漏水桶一般的長期記憶能力。

The beauty of the characters is indisputable, but as the Chinese people began to realize the importance of universal literacy, it became clear that these ideograms were sort of like bound feet -- some fetishists may have liked the way they looked, but they weren't too practical for daily use.

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 at most a few dozen symbols to write anything in the language. John DeFrancis, in his book The 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 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 (it's unclear what "comparable levels" means here), but the overall implications are obvious: the Chinese writing system 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 experienced by relatively sluggish post-pubescent foreign learners such as myself.

Everyone has heard that Chinese is hard because of the 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, 50,000, take your pick] separate characters you really only need 2,000 or so to read a newspaper". Poppycock. I couldn't 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 "read and basically comprehend the text without having to look up dozens of characters"; otherwise the claim is rather empty.)

漢字的優(yōu)美是不容置疑的，不過當中國人意識到普及識字的重要性時，有一點就很明顯了，這些表意文字有些像裹足小腳——可能有些戀物癖喜歡這些小腳，可是它們在日常中并不實用。首先，要學會基本識字要求的漢字就已經(jīng)是不可理喻的難了?！跋鄬κ裁炊y？”有人可能會再次發(fā)問。答案很簡單：相對西班牙語，希臘語，俄語，印地語，或者任何只需要最多幾十個符號就能完成書寫的“正常而理智”的語言。 John DeFrancis在他的書The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy中提到，他的中國同事估計讓一個說普通話的人學會讀寫三千個漢字需要七到八年，而他的法國和西班牙同事估計他們的母語要達到類似水平則是只需一半時間。自然的，這些估計很粗糙，憑印象而已（比如什么算“類似水平”就沒說清楚），不過其中寓意是顯然的：中文書寫系統(tǒng)在絕對程度上比字母書寫系統(tǒng)更難學習。在中國，就算是吸收能力處于頂峰的小孩子，他們學起漢字來也比其他國家小孩學習其他文字更費勁。所以想象一下已過青春期的，學習相對緩慢的外國人學習者（比如我）經(jīng)歷的困難吧！

大家都聽說過中文很難是因為需要掌握巨量的漢字，這一點千真萬確。好多暢銷書和文章中淡化了這一困難，說什么“盡管中文擁有（10000，25000，或者50000。來，您選個數(shù)字）個不同的漢字，你其實只需要學習大約2000個就能讀報了”。這是瞎掰。我學習了2000個漢字的時候并不能順利地讀報。我常常每看一行就得查幾個字，之后還得冥思苦想文章的意思。（我假定讀報中“讀”的意思是“閱讀并且能基本理解文章意思，而不需要查幾十個字先”，不然的話這個說法就沒什么好討論的了。）

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 first 2,000 most common ones. But what such accounts don't tell you is that there will still be plenty of unfamiliar words made up of those familiar characters. (To illustrate this problem, note that in English, knowing the words "up" and "tight" doesn't mean you know the word "uptight".) Plus, as anyone who has studied any language knows, you can often be familiar with every single word in a text and still not be able to grasp the meaning. Reading comprehension is not simply a matter of knowing a lot of words; one has to get a feeling for how those words combine with other words in a multitude of different contexts. In addition, there is the obvious fact that even though you may know 95% of the characters in a given text, the remaining 5% are often the very characters that are crucial for understanding the main point of the text. A non-native speaker of English reading an article with the headline "JACUZZIS FOUND EFFECTIVE IN TREATING PHLEBITIS" is not going to get very far if they don't know the words "jacuzzi" or "phlebitis".

The problem of reading is often a touchy one for those in the China field. How many of us would dare stand up in front of a group of colleagues and read a randomly-selected passage out loud? Yet inferiority complexes or fear of losing face causes many teachers and students to become unwitting cooperators in a kind of conspiracy of silence wherein everyone pretends that after four years of Chinese the diligent student should be whizzing through anything from Confucius to Lu Xun, pausing only occasionally to look up some pesky low-frequency character (in their Chinese-Chinese dictionary, of course). Others, of course, are more honest about the difficulties. The other day one of my fellow graduate students, someone who has been studying Chinese for ten years or more, said to me "My research is really hampered by the fact that I still just can't read Chinese. It takes me hours to get through two or three pages, and I can't skim to save my life." This would be an astonishing admission for a tenth-year student of, say, French literature, yet it is a comment I hear all the time among my peers (at least in those unguarded moments when one has had a few too many Tsingtao beers and has begun to lament how slowly work on the thesis is coming).

A teacher of mine once told me of a game he and a colleague would sometimes play: The contest involved pulling a book at random from the shelves of the Chinese section of the Asia Library and then seeing who could be the first to figure out what the book was about. Anyone who has spent time working in an East Asia collection can verify that this can indeed be a difficult enough task -- never mind reading the book in question. This state of affairs is very disheartening for the student who is impatient to begin feasting on the vast riches of Chinese literature, but must subsist on a bland diet of canned handouts, textbook examples, and carefully edited appetizers for the first few years.

這個神話廣泛流傳，主要因為當考慮出現(xiàn)頻率時，任何報紙中超過95%的漢字都是在最常用的2000個漢字之中。但這樣的數(shù)字并沒告訴你其實還有非常多的由這些熟悉的漢字組成的陌生詞匯。（比如說，在英文中知道“up”和“tight”并不意味著你也知道“uptight”的意思。）（譯者注：猜猜看uptight什么意思？）而且，所有學過任何語言的人都知道，你常常明白每個詞兒的意思，但就是不懂整段文字的含義。閱讀理解可不是整明白一大堆詞兒的意思就行了，你還得搞清楚這些詞兒和其他詞匯在很多不同語境中如何結(jié)合使用。此外，很明顯，即使你認識一段話里95%的漢字，剩下的5%也常常恰好是理解文章最需要的部分。一個非英語母語的人讀到“JACUZZIS FOUND EFFECTIVE IN TREATING PHLEBITIS”這條新聞標題時如果不知道什么是“Jacuzzi”或“phlebitis”，那他也基本上搞不清這句話什么意思。（譯者：jacuzzi是一種按摩式浴缸；phlebitis則是靜脈炎。）

閱讀的困難在學習中國的圈子里是個惱人的問題。我們漢學家們中有多少人敢在大家面前站出來，大聲閱讀一段隨機挑選的文字呢？然而自卑情結(jié)或是怕丟臉的心理讓很多教師和學生不自覺的變成了某種無言的共犯：每個人都假裝好像學習四年中文之后，勤奮的學生就應該能颼颼地閱讀從孔子到魯迅的任何作品，只是偶爾停下來查一些煩人的低頻率漢字（當然，用的還得是中中字典）。其他一些人呢，當然對困難的存在就更誠實些。有一天一個學了中文十年以上的同學跟我說，“我的研究被一個問題阻礙著，那就是我還是不能閱讀中文。讀兩三頁書要花掉我好幾個小時，而我甚至不能略讀來節(jié)省些時間?！币且粋€學了十年，比如說，法國文學的學生這么承認，那可真是令人驚訝。然而我在同儕中常聽到此類評論（至少在那些放松的時候是這樣，比如喝了太多青島啤酒，開始哀嘆論文的工作進度多么緩慢……）

我一個老師曾經(jīng)跟我說了個他和一個同事會玩的游戲：他們在亞洲圖書館的中國區(qū)里隨機從書架上抽一本書，看誰先搞懂這本書在講什么。所有在東亞文學作品集上花過工夫的人都可以證明，這個游戲的確相當難，更不必提真正閱讀整本書。這樣的狀況真是令那些迫不及待要在中國文學的寶庫中大快朵頤的學生們傷心沮喪，頭幾年他們只能靠乏味的罐裝教材，講義和小心剪輯過的開胃小文章度日……

The comparison with learning the usual western languages is striking. After about a year of studying French, I was able to read a lot. I went through the usual kinds of novels -- La nausée by Sartre, Voltaire's Candide, L'étranger by Camus -- plus countless newspapers, magazines, comic books, etc. It was a lot of work but fairly painless; all I really needed was a good dictionary and a battered French grammar book I got at a garage sale.

This kind of "sink or swim" approach just doesn't work in Chinese. At the end of three years of learning Chinese, I hadn't yet read a single complete novel. I found it just too hard, impossibly slow, and unrewarding. Newspapers, too, were still too daunting. I couldn't read an article without looking up about every tenth character, and it was not uncommon for me to scan the front page of the People's Daily and not be able to completely decipher a single headline. Someone at that time suggested I read The Dream of the Red Chamber and gave me a nice three-volume edition. I just have to laugh. It still sits on my shelf like a fat, smug Buddha, only the first twenty or so pages filled with scribbled definitions and question marks, the rest crisp and virgin. After six years of studying Chinese, I'm still not at a level where I can actually read it without an English translation to consult. (By "read it", I mean, of course, "read it for pleasure". I suppose if someone put a gun to my head and a dictionary in my hand, I could get through it.) Simply diving into the vast pool of Chinese in the beginning is not only foolhardy, it can even be counterproductive. As George Kennedy writes, "The difficulty of memorizing a Chinese ideograph as compared with the difficulty of learning a new word in a European language, is such that a rigid economy of mental effort is imperative." This is, if anything, an understatement. With the risk of drowning so great, the student is better advised to spend more time in the shallow end treading water before heading toward the deep end.

對比一般常見的西方語言，差別非常明顯。 只學了一年法語，我就能閱讀很多東西了。我瀏覽了大致的小說名作，薩特的《La nausée》，伏爾泰的《Candide》，卡繆的《L'étranger》，還有數(shù)不清的報紙，雜志，漫畫，等等?；瞬簧俟し颍贿^卻不怎么痛苦：我用到的只是一本好字典和一本舊貨市場上買來的破舊不堪的語法書。

這種“扔到水里學游泳”的方法就是不適用于中文。在學了中文三年的時候，我還沒讀過一本完整的小說。我發(fā)現(xiàn)那讀起來實在太難，太慢，毫無收獲可言。報紙那時候也還是令人畏懼。那時候我讀篇文章恨不得每十個字就得查個字典?？匆槐槿嗣袢請蟮念^版，連一個標題也“解密”不了，這種事兒也一點兒不少見。當時有個人推薦我看《紅樓夢》還送我一套漂亮的三卷版。我只能笑…… 它現(xiàn)在還躺在我的書架上呢，得意洋洋地對我露出勝利者的微笑。只有前二十幾頁涂滿了潦草的筆記和問號，其他部分則是清爽潔凈的處女地。學了中文六年之后，我仍然沒有達到能不借助英文翻譯閱讀它的水平。（閱讀它，我當然是指的閱讀取樂。我估計如果誰拿把槍指著我腦袋然后手里扔本字典，我也能想法兒讀下來它吧吧。）在一開始的階段就沖進中文的浩瀚海洋，這種做法不但有勇無謀，而且適得其反。如同George Kennedy寫的，“記憶一個中文（象形）字比學習一個歐洲語言詞匯難上如此之多，以至于嚴格地節(jié)約精神力是必須的?！边@其實還是低估了難度。（在中文的海洋中）被淹沒的風險非常大，所以學生最好還是先在淺談涉水中多花點時間，再考慮前往深處。

As if all this weren't bad enough, another ridiculous aspect of the Chinese writing system is that there are two (mercifully overlapping) sets of characters: the traditional characters still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the simplified characters adopted by the People's Republic of China in the late 1950's and early 60's. Any foreign student of Chinese is more or less forced to become familiar with both sets, since they are routinely exposed to textbooks and materials from both Chinas. This linguistic camel's-back-breaking straw puts an absurd burden on the already absurdly burdened student of Chinese, who at this point would gladly trade places with Sisyphus. But since Chinese people themselves are never equally proficient in both simplified and complex characters, there is absolutely no shame whatsoever in eventually concentrating on one set to the partial exclusion the other. In fact, there is absolutely no shame in giving up Chinese altogether, when you come right down to it.

好像這些還不夠糟似的，中文書寫另一個發(fā)指的特點是居然有兩套系統(tǒng)（幸好，有部分重疊）：臺灣和香港仍在使用的繁體字，和大陸在五六十年代開始使用的簡體字。所有學中文的外國學生多少都被迫要學習兩種體系，因為他們常常遇到分別來自兩個中文系統(tǒng)的教學材料。這無疑給已經(jīng)不堪重負的學生們壓上最后一根稻草，于是他們這時都很樂意跟西西弗斯交換角色。（譯者注：西西弗斯，希臘神話中被迫不斷推石頭上山的那位。）不過既然中國人自己從來不會同時精通簡繁體，外國人最終只注重學習其中一種也完全沒什么可丟臉的。事實上，當你認真權衡之后，完全放棄中文也沒什么可丟臉的……

2. Because the language doesn't have the common sense to use an alphabet.

To further explain why the Chinese writing system is so hard in this respect, it might be a good idea to spell out (no pun intended) why that of English is so easy. Imagine the kind of task faced by the average Chinese adult who decides to study English. What skills are needed to master the writing system? That's easy: 26 letters. (In upper and lower case, of course, plus script and a few variant forms. And throw in some quote marks, apostrophes, dashes, parentheses, etc. -- all things the Chinese use in their own writing system.) And how are these letters written? From left to right, horizontally, across the page, with spaces to indicate word boundaries. Forgetting for a moment the problem of spelling and actually making words out of these letters, how long does it take this Chinese learner of English to master the various components of the English writing system? Maybe a day or two.

Now consider the American undergraduate who decides to study Chinese. What does it take for this person to master the Chinese writing system? There is nothing that corresponds to an alphabet, though there are recurring components that make up the characters. How many such components are there? Don't ask. As with all such questions about Chinese, the answer is very messy and unsatisfying. It depends on how you define "component" (strokes? radicals?), plus a lot of other tedious details. Suffice it to say, the number is quite large, vastly more than the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. And how are these components combined to form characters? Well, you name it -- components to the left of other components, to the right of other components, on top of other components, surrounding other components, inside of other components -- almost anything is possible. And in the process of making these spatial accommodations, these components get flattened, stretched, squashed, shortened, and distorted in order to fit in the uniform square space that all characters are supposed to fit into. In other words, the components of Chinese characters are arrayed in two dimensions, rather than in the neat one-dimensional rows of alphabetic writing.

2. 因為中文沒有按照常識使用字母

為了進一步解釋為什么中文書寫系統(tǒng)如此之難，也許應該先說清楚為什么英語那么簡單。想象一個普通的成年中國人決定學習英文時面對的任務吧。要掌握這個書寫系統(tǒng)需要什么技能呢？很簡單，26個字母而已（當然是大小寫，再加上一些書寫方式和變體。還有引號，分號，破折號，括號等等，這些中國人自己也用的。）這些字母怎么書寫？從左到右，水平書寫。保留空格來分開各詞。先不考慮拼寫的問題，這個中國人學習這些英文書寫系統(tǒng)的各個要素需要多久？也許只要一兩天吧。

現(xiàn)在再看看另一個決定學習中文的美國大學生。要掌握中文書寫系統(tǒng)需要什么呢？完全沒有和字母對應的東西，雖然漢字里會重復出現(xiàn)一些構件。這些構件有多少個？別問我。就跟所有關于中文的問題一樣，這個問題的答案也是繁復而無跡可尋 ，令人不滿。它取決于你如何定義“構件”，以及很多其他冗長的細節(jié)問題。這么說吧，有很多個，比26個拉丁字母多多了。那么，這些構件如何組成漢字呢？嘛，你說吧，可以從左到右加到別的構件身上，也可以從右至左，或者從上到下，或者包圍起別的構件，或者鉆進別的構件里……怎樣都有可能。而在這些空間組合過程中，這些構件們或變平，或延伸，或壓扁，或縮短，總之會扭曲到能夠符合所有漢字應滿足的方塊區(qū)域為止。換句話說，中文漢字的構件們是在二維上排列，而不是字母系統(tǒng)的簡單明了的一維。

Okay, so ignoring for the moment the question of elegance, how long does it take a Westerner to learn the Chinese writing system so that when confronted with any new character they at least know how to move the pen around in order to produce a reasonable facsimile of that character? Again, hard to say, but I would estimate that it takes the average learner several months of hard work to get the basics down. Maybe a year or more if they're a klutz who was never very good in art class. Meanwhile, their Chinese counterpart learning English has zoomed ahead to learn cursive script, with time left over to read Moby Dick, or at least Strunk & White.

This is not exactly big news, I know; the alphabet really is a breeze to learn. Chinese people I know who have studied English for a few years can usually write with a handwriting style that is almost indistinguishable from that of the average American. Very few Americans, on the other hand, ever learn to produce a natural calligraphic hand in Chinese that resembles anything but that of an awkward Chinese third-grader. If there were nothing else hard about Chinese, the task of learning to write characters alone would put it in the rogues' gallery of hard-to-learn languages.

Ok，先不考慮優(yōu)雅的要求，一個西方人要學中文多久，才能看到一個新字的時候至少知道怎么動筆寫出一個差不多的模仿來？難說，不過我估計平均的學習者要花幾個月的努力來掌握基本功。要是個從來不擅長圖畫課的笨手腳的家伙，也許要一年或更多。有這個時間，那個同時學習英文的中國人已經(jīng)學會了書寫英文花體，而且還有空讀讀Moby Dick，或者至少是Strunk&White。

（譯者：Moby Dick即《白鯨記》，赫爾曼·梅爾維爾發(fā)表于1851年的小說，“被視為美國文學史上最偉大的小說之一”；Strunk&White又名the Elements of Style，即《英文寫作指南》，著名的寫作指導工具書。）

這不是什么新鮮事，我知道的：字母學起來很容易。我認識的中國人學過幾年英文后常常能寫出一手跟美國人無法區(qū)別的書法。另一方面，只有很少的美國人能夠?qū)懗鲎匀灰稽c的，至少是比一個笨拙的三年級小孩要好點的中文書法。就算中文其他都不難，光是學習寫漢字的難度就足以把中文放進“難學語言”的陳列室里了。

3. Because the writing system just ain't very phonetic.

So much for the physical process of writing the characters themselves. What about the sheer task of memorizing so many characters? Again, a comparison of English and Chinese is instructive. Suppose a Chinese person has just the previous day learned the English word "president", and now wants to write it from memory. How to start? Anyone with a year or two of English experience is going to have a host of clues and spelling rules-of-thumb, albeit imperfect ones, to help them along. The word really couldn't start with anything but "pr", and after that a little guesswork aided by visual memory ("Could a 'z' be in there? That's an unusual letter, I would have noticed it, I think. Must be an 's'...") should produce something close to the target. Not every foreigner (or native speaker for that matter) has noted or internalized the various flawed spelling heuristics of English, of course, but they are at least there to be utilized.

Now imagine that you, a learner of Chinese, have just the previous day encountered the Chinese word for "president" (總統(tǒng) zǒngtǒng ) and want to write it. What processes do you go through in retrieving the word? Well, very often you just totally forget, with a forgetting that is both absolute and perfect in a way few things in this life are. You can repeat the word as often as you like; the sound won't give you a clue as to how the character is to be written. After you learn a few more characters and get hip to a few more phonetic components, you can do a bit better. ("Zǒng 總 is a phonetic component in some other character, right?...Song? Zeng? Oh yeah, cong 總 as in cōngmíng 聰明.") Of course, the phonetic aspect of some characters is more obvious than that of others, but many characters, including some of the most high-frequency ones, give no clue at all as to their pronunciation.

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.

3. 因為書寫系統(tǒng)并不太與其發(fā)音對應。

關于書寫漢字本身的過程就不多說了。那么記憶如此之多漢字的艱巨任務又如何呢？同樣的，比較中英兩種語言有助于說明。假設，一個中國人前一天學了英文詞兒“president”，現(xiàn)在呢想依靠記憶寫出它來。怎么辦？任何學過英文一兩年的人都能找到大量的線索和竅門（即使不那么完美的）來幫助自己。這個詞兒肯定只能以“pr”開頭，之后呢稍微猜一下再加上視覺記憶（“會有個字母z么？z不太常見，所以有的話我應該會注意到。那么肯定是字母s了?！保湍芘鲆粋€差不多的東西了。不是每個外國人（母語人士也算）能注意到或者不自覺的運用英文中這些有一定缺陷的拼寫竅門的，但至少它們存在。

現(xiàn)在想象你一個學習中文的，昨天剛剛碰到中文里的president“總統(tǒng)”?，F(xiàn)在你想寫它。你如何回憶起這個詞兒呢？首先呢，你 (很可能)已經(jīng)忘掉怎么寫了，生活中很少能忘得如此徹底和干凈…… 你可以盡情地重復學習這個詞，而發(fā)音絕不會幫助你記起如何書寫。當你學了較多漢字，掌握一些發(fā)音構件的規(guī)則時可以情況會好些。（“總”有時出現(xiàn)在其他漢字里，也發(fā)類似的音，對吧？Song？Zeng？對了！“總”在“聰明”里有。）當然有些發(fā)音的構件要更明顯一些，不過很多漢字，包括一些最常見的高頻率漢字，對它們的讀音完全不給任何線索。

這些要表達的是中文跟英文比較起來不怎么表音。（英文呢，反過來又比不上德文或者西班牙文表音，然而中文根本不在一個數(shù)量級上。）有些外行覺得中文完全不表音，這是不對的，不過一個非常聰明的初學者也完全可能幾個月都發(fā)現(xiàn)不了中文表音的地方。中文的表音程度是個復雜的問題。研究觀點從25%（趙元任）到66%（DeFrancis）都有，只是后一個估計要求掌握很多發(fā)音構件的知識，而這些知識絕大多數(shù)學習者都不會擁有。你可以這么說，中文是一種表音語言，就好象性愛是一種有氧運動：技術上講的確如此，但實際上并不是最明顯的特點。而且呢，中文表音的部分只有在你學了幾百個漢字之后才能為你所用，而即使你已經(jīng)學了兩千漢字，中文的薄弱的表音成分仍然不會提供類似英文表音那樣的對記憶的幫助。

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.

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 "tin can", "knee", "screwdriver", "snap" (as in "to snap one's fingers"), "elbow", "ginger", "cushion", "firecracker", and so on. And when I say "forget", 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 "knee" or "tin can"? Or even a rarely-seen word like "scabbard" or "ragamuffin"? I 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 打噴嚔 "to sneeze". I asked my three friends how to write the character, and to my surprise, all three of them simply shrugged in sheepish embarrassment. Not one of them could correctly produce the character. Now, Peking University is usually considered the "Harvard of China". Can you imagine three Ph.D. students in English at Harvard forgetting how to write the English word "sneeze"?? Yet this state of affairs is by no 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 "abracadabra" is hyphenated or not, or get the last few letters wrong on "rhinoceros", 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.

這些就意味著，你常常會完全忘記怎么寫一個漢字，完畢。如果字根上沒有語義的明顯線索，也沒有什么表音構件來幫忙，你就完蛋了。即使中國人自己也是如此：跟普遍的迷信正相反，中國人并沒什么天生的記憶字跡的能力。實際上，一個外國學習者最感安慰的時候，就是看到一個中國人被要求寫一個常見漢字時一個筆畫也寫不出來。看到一個母語人士遇到你每天經(jīng)歷的困難時，你真是感到那些委屈得到了莫大的伸冤和解脫。

事實上，這種經(jīng)歷如此令人寬慰，以至于我干脆記了一個單子，上面列著我看到的中國人提筆忘掉的漢字（提筆忘字？）（一個有病的，強迫癥的行為，嗯我自己也知道……）。我見過很有學問的中國人忘掉如何書寫“罐頭”的“罐”，“膝蓋”的“膝”，“改錐”的“錐”，“捻拇指”的 “捻”，“胳臂肘”的 “肘“，“姜”，“墊子”的“墊”，“鞭炮”的“鞭”，等等。我說的忘，指的是他們常常連第一筆畫都不知道怎么寫。你能想象一個教育良好的英語人士完全不會書寫“膝蓋”或者“罐頭”么？（譯者注：分別是knee和tin can）或者哪怕“scabbard”或“ragamuffin”這種少見的詞，他們也不會忘。我有一次和三個北京大學中文系的三個博士生吃午飯，他們?nèi)齻€都是中國人（一個來自香港）。我那天正好感冒，打算給一個朋友寫個紙條取消我們一個約會。我發(fā)現(xiàn)自己想不起來怎么寫“噴嚏”中的“嚏”了。于是我問那三位該怎么寫。結(jié)果嚇我一跳，他們仨都尷尬而難為情地聳聳肩。誰都不能正確地寫這個字兒。各位同學！北京大學常常被認為是中國的哈佛啊。你能想象三個哈佛大學英文系的博士生不會寫“sneeze”（噴嚏）？然而這種情況在中國絕不少見。英文就是大大地比中文容易書寫和記憶。不管這個詞頻率多低，拼寫多奇怪，英語人士總能整出點兒什么來，就是因為拼寫和發(fā)音是有一定對應關系的。你可能不記得“abracadabra”里面有沒有連接符，或者“rhinoceros”最后幾個字母不會拼，但最糟的家伙也能差不多點兒的拼出來幾乎任何詞。與此相反，即使是教育最好的中國人在寫某些特別難記的漢字時也可能束手無策，只能問問別人。

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 "easy" foreign language.) I wake up one morning in Paris and turn on the radio. An ad comes on, and I hear the word "amortisseur" several times. "What's an amortisseur?" I think to myself, but as I am in a hurry to make 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 "AMORTISSEUR" -- the word I heard earlier this morning. Beneath the word on the sign is a picture of a shock absorber. Aha! So "amortisseur" means "shock absorber". And voila! I've learned a new word, quickly and painlessly, all because the sound I construct when reading the word is the same as the sound in my head from the radio this morning -- one reinforces the other. Throughout the next week I see the word again several times, and each time I can reconstruct the sound by simply reading the word phonetically -- "a-mor-tis-seur". Before long I can retrieve the word easily, use it in conversation, or write it in a letter to a friend. And the process of learning a foreign language begins to seem less daunting.

When I first went to Taiwan for a few months, the situation was quite different. I was awash in a sea of characters that were all visually interesting but phonetically mute. I carried around a little dictionary to look up unfamiliar characters in, but it's almost impossible to look up a character in a Chinese dictionary while walking along a crowded street (more on dictionary look-up later), and so I didn't get nearly as much phonetic reinforcement as I got in France. In Taiwan I could pass a shop with a sign advertising shock absorbers and never know how to pronounce any of the characters unless I first look them up. And even then, the next time I pass the shop I might have to look the characters up again. And again, and again. The reinforcement does not come naturally and easily.

作為一個表音書寫系統(tǒng)優(yōu)勢的平凡例子，我在法國時常常遇到這樣一些情況（再一次地我用法語作為“容易”外語的經(jīng)典例子）。在巴黎有天早上我醒來打開廣播，聽到一個廣告，其中有個詞兒“amortisseur”出現(xiàn)了幾次?！癮mortisseur”是什么意思？我想了一下，不過由于當時正要見人，我匆忙離開的時候忘了查字典。幾小時后我正好在街頭一個標志上看到了“amortisseur”，這個我早上剛聽過的詞?！癮mortisseur”這個詞下面是一張減震器的圖片。哈哈，看來“amortisseur”的意思是減震器。就這樣，我學了一個新詞，快捷無痛。僅僅是因為我試圖讀這個詞兒的時候發(fā)音是和我早上聽到的詞一樣的。兩者互相印證。接下來一周我?guī)状慰吹竭@個詞，每次我都能通過照字面閱讀而找到它的發(fā)音“a-mor-tis-seur”。沒多久，我就能輕松想起這個詞兒，在對話中使用，或者在給朋友的信里寫出來。這樣一來，學外語的過程就沒那么可怕了。

當我第一次去臺灣呆幾個月的時候，情況則完全不同。我被漢字的大海完全淹沒了，它們看起來很有趣，可是完全不給什么發(fā)音線索。我?guī)Я艘粋€小字典來查陌生的字，不過在擁擠的街道上查中文字典實在是不可能的任務（后面還會說關于查字典的事兒）。所以我一點兒也沒得到類似在法國的那種發(fā)音的幫助。在臺灣，我可以走過一個賣減震器的商店，卻完全不知道該如何發(fā)任何一個漢字的音，除非我先查字典。即使查了一遍，下次走過的時候我還得再查一遍。然后，再查，再查。記憶增強的過程一點也不自然易行。

4. Because you can't cheat by using cognates.

I remember when I had been studying Chinese very hard for about three years, I had an interesting experience. One day I happened to find a Spanish-language newspaper sitting on a seat next to me. I picked it up out of curiosity. "Hmm," I thought to myself. "I've never studied Spanish in my life. I wonder how much of this I can understand." At random I picked a short article about an airplane crash and started to read. I found I could basically glean, with some guesswork, most of the information from the article. The crash took place near Los Angeles. 186 people were killed. There were no survivors. The plane crashed just one minute after take-off. There was nothing on the flight recorder to indicate a critical situation, and the tower was unaware of any emergency. The plane had just been serviced three days before and no mechanical problems had been found. And so on. After finishing the article I had a sudden discouraging realization: Having never studied a day of Spanish, I could read a Spanish newspaper more easily than I could a Chinese newspaper after more than three years of studying Chinese.

What was going on here? Why was this "foreign" language so transparent? The reason was obvious: cognates -- those helpful words that are just English words with a little foreign make-up. I could read the article because most of the operative words were basically English: aeropuerto, problema mechanico, un minuto, situacion critica, emergencia, etc. Recognizing these words as just English words in disguise is about as difficult as noticing that Superman is really Clark Kent without his glasses. That these quasi-English words are easier to learn than Chinese characters (which might as well be quasi-Martian) goes without saying.

Imagine you are a diabetic, and you find yourself in Spain about to go into insulin shock. You can rush into a doctor's office, and, with a minimum of Spanish and a couple of pieces of guesswork ("diabetes" is just "diabetes" and "insulin" is "insulina", it turns out), you're saved. In China you'd be a goner for sure, unless you happen to have a dictionary with you, and even then you would probably pass out while frantically looking for the first character in the word for insulin. Which brings me to the next reason why Chinese is so hard.

4. 因為你不能取巧使用同根詞。

我還記著，當我刻苦學習了中文三年的時候，有過一次有趣的經(jīng)歷。有天我正好在旁邊座位上找到一張西班牙文的報紙。我好奇地拿起來看，“嗯～”我想說，“我從來沒學過西班牙語?？纯次业降啄芏嗌??！蔽译S機挑了一篇關于空難的小文開始看。結(jié)果我發(fā)現(xiàn)稍微猜一下就能獲取大部分的文章信息?？针y發(fā)生在洛杉磯附近，186人遇難。沒有幸存者。飛機起飛后一分鐘后即墜毀。飛行記錄上沒有什么特殊狀況的提示，而塔臺則并不知道任何緊急情況。飛機三天前剛維護過，也沒發(fā)現(xiàn)什么機械故障。等等等等?？赐晡恼潞笪彝蝗痪趩实匾庾R到：從沒學過一天西班牙文，我讀起它的報紙卻比學了三年的中文報紙還容易……

這到底是怎么回事？為啥西班牙這個“外語”這么容易？原因很明顯：同根詞。這些同根詞跟英文詞匯相比只有小小的改造。我能讀懂文章，因為絕大多數(shù)關鍵詞基本都是英文：aeropuerto, problema mechanico, un minuto, situacion critica, emergencia,等等。認出這些詞兒不過是一些英文詞穿了馬甲，這難度大約和發(fā)現(xiàn)超人不過是肯克拉克不戴眼鏡的難度差不多。不用說，這些類英文詞比中文漢字好學（中文漢字則多半是類火星文……）。想象一下，一個糖尿病人在西班牙發(fā)現(xiàn)自己需要注射胰島素。他跑進診所，只需很少的西班牙語和猜測的過程，他就能獲救（其實，英語"diabetes" 翻成西班牙語就是 "diabetes" ， "insulin" 等于"insulina"。）在中國呢，他肯定完蛋了。除非他帶了一本中文字典，即便如此，他多半也會在字典里瘋狂地查胰島素第一個漢字時不支暈倒。這正好說明了我下一個要說的中文難的原因。

5. Because even looking up a word in the dictionary is complicated.

One of the most unreasonably difficult things about learning Chinese is that merely learning how to look up a word in the dictionary is about the equivalent of an entire semester of secretarial school. When I was in Taiwan, I heard that they sometimes held dictionary look-up contests in the junior high schools. Imagine a language where simply looking a word up in the dictionary is considered a skill like debate or volleyball! Chinese is not exactly what you would call a user-friendly language, but a Chinese dictionary is positively user-hostile.

Figuring out all the radicals and their variants, plus dealing with the ambiguous characters with no obvious radical at all is a stupid, time-consuming chore that slows the learning process down by a factor of ten as compared to other languages with a sensible alphabet or the equivalent. I'd say it took me a good year before I could reliably find in the dictionary any character I might encounter. And to this day, I will very occasionally stumble onto a character that I simply can't find at all, even after ten minutes of searching. At such times I raise my hands to the sky, Job-like, and consider going into telemarketing.

Chinese must also be one of the most dictionary-intensive languages on earth. I currently have more than twenty Chinese dictionaries of various kinds on my desk, and they all have a specific and distinct use. There are dictionaries with simplified characters used on the mainland, dictionaries with the traditional characters used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and dictionaries with both. There are dictionaries that use the Wade-Giles romanization, dictionaries that use pinyin, and dictionaries that use other more surrealistic romanization methods. There are dictionaries of classical Chinese particles, dictionaries of Beijing dialect, dictionaries of chéngyǔ (four-character idioms), dictionaries of xiēhòuyǔ (special allegorical two-part sayings), dictionaries of yànyǔ (proverbs), dictionaries of Chinese communist terms, dictionaries of Buddhist terms, reverse dictionaries... on and on. An exhaustive hunt for some elusive or problematic lexical item can leave one's desk "strewn with dictionaries as numerous as dead soldiers on a battlefield."

For looking up unfamiliar characters there is another method called the four-corner system. This method is very fast -- rumored to be, in principle, about as fast as alphabetic look-up (though I haven't met anyone yet who can hit the winning number each time on the first try). Unfortunately, learning this method takes about as much time and practice as learning the Dewey decimal system. Plus you are then at the mercy of the few dictionaries that are arranged according to the numbering scheme of the four-corner system. Those who have mastered this system usually swear by it. The rest of us just swear.

Another problem with looking up words in the dictionary has to do with the nature of written Chinese. In most languages it's pretty obvious where the word boundaries lie -- there are spaces between the words. If you don't know the word in question, it's usually fairly clear what you should look up. (What actually constitutes a word is a very subtle issue, of course, but for my purposes here, what I'm saying is basically correct.) In Chinese there are spaces between characters, but it takes quite a lot of knowledge of the language and often some genuine sleuth work to tell where word boundaries lie; thus it's often trial and error to look up a word. It would be as if English were written thus:

FEAR LESS LY OUT SPOKE N BUT SOME WHAT HUMOR LESS NEW ENG LAND BORN LEAD ACT OR GEORGE MICHAEL SON EX PRESS ED OUT RAGE TO DAY AT THE STALE MATE BE TWEEN MAN AGE MENT AND THE ACT OR 'S UNION BE CAUSE THE STAND OFF HAD SET BACK THE TIME TABLE FOR PRO DUC TION OF HIS PLAY, A ONE MAN SHOW CASE THAT WAS HIS FIRST RUN A WAY BROAD WAY BOX OFFICE SMASH HIT. "THE FIRST A MEND MENT IS AT IS SUE" HE PRO CLAIM ED. "FOR A CENS OR OR AN EDIT OR TO EDIT OR OTHER WISE BLUE PENCIL QUESTION ABLE DIA LOG JUST TO KOW TOW TO RIGHT WING BORN AGAIN BIBLE THUMP ING FRUIT CAKE S IS A DOWN RIGHT DIS GRACE."

Imagine how this difference would compound the dictionary look-up difficulties of a non-native speaker of English. The passage is pretty trivial for us to understand, but then we already know English. For them it would often be hard to tell where the word boundaries were supposed to be. So it is, too, with someone trying to learn Chinese.

5. 因為連在字典里查一個字都很復雜。

學中文中最不可理喻的困難之一，就是連學會查字典的難度都基本等于在文秘專業(yè)學一個學期。在臺灣的時候我聽說有時還有初中生查字典比賽。想象一下吧，有種語言里連查字典都成了跟辯論或是排球一樣的技能！你多半不會稱中文是個善待用戶的語言，而中文字典則絕對是虐待用戶的典型。

找出所有部首和它們的變體，再加上處理那些沒有明顯部首模棱兩可的漢字，這是個愚蠢的，花時間的苦差事。和其他擁有合理的字母或類似系統(tǒng)的語言相比，這一點大大放慢了學習中文的過程。我得說，我花了一年時間才能比較順利的在字典中找到任何漢字。而直到今天，我極偶爾還是會遇到即使查個十分鐘還是查不到的漢字。這種時候我就會像（圣經(jīng)中信仰屢受考驗的）約伯一樣，舉手向天，同時考慮去電話營銷業(yè)之類的工作……

中文肯定也是地球上最需要字典的語言之一。我現(xiàn)在手頭有超過二十本各種中文字典在書桌上，每本都有單獨用途：有大陸用的簡體字字典，有香港臺灣用的繁體字字典，還有簡繁體都有的字典；有用威妥瑪拼音的字典，有用大陸拼音方案的字典，還有用其他更超現(xiàn)實主義的拼音的字典；有經(jīng)典的中文虛詞字典，有北京方言字典，有成語字典，有歇后語詞典，有諺語詞典，有中國GCD用語詞典，有佛教用語詞典，還有反查用詞典，不一而足。一次窮盡式的查詢某個難解詞匯可能會讓書桌上“堆滿詞典，如同戰(zhàn)場上的士兵尸體一樣?！?/p>

查陌生漢字的時候還有一種四角系統(tǒng)的查法。有謠言說這方法很迅速，基本上和查字母語言的情況下一樣快（雖然我沒見過誰能第一次就找到正確的編碼）。不幸的是，學習這個查法本身就跟學杜威十進圖書分類法花的時間和精力差不多。此外你還得指望字典的確按照四角系統(tǒng)安排過（這類字典并不多）。那些掌握了這個四角查法的人對其推崇備至，我們其他人則是賭咒發(fā)誓。

查字典還有一個問題來自中文漢字本身的特性。絕大部分語言中詞匯之間的分界很明顯，有空格在那兒。如果你不懂一個詞，那找到該查什么一般不難（當然什么算一個詞是個微妙問題，不過在這個話題方面我的說法基本正確）。在中文里呢，漢字之間有空格，但是得需要好多中文知識和真正的偵探本領才能讓你找出詞匯之間的界限。所以找一個詞兒往往是個試錯過程。就好象英文寫成如下的樣子：

FEAR LESS LY OUT SPOKE N BUT SOME WHAT HUMOR LESS NEW ENG LAND BORN LEAD ACT OR GEORGE MICHAEL SON EX PRESS ED OUT RAGE TO DAY AT THE STALE MATE BE TWEEN MAN AGE MENT AND THE ACT OR 'S UNION BE CAUSE THE STAND OFF HAD SET BACK THE TIME TABLE FOR PRO DUC TION OF HIS PLAY, A ONE MAN SHOW CASE THAT WAS HIS FIRST RUN A WAY BROAD WAY BOX OFFICE SMASH HIT. "THE FIRST A MEND MENT IS AT IS SUE" HE PRO CLAIM ED. "FOR A CENS OR OR AN EDIT OR TO EDIT OR OTHER WISE BLUE PENCIL QUESTION ABLE DIA LOG JUST TO KOW TOW TO RIGHT WING BORN AGAIN BIBLE THUMP ING FRUIT CAKE S IS A DOWN RIGHT DIS GRACE.

想象一下這樣的情況會怎樣加重英文學習者查字典的困難吧。這段話讀起來不難，那是因為我們懂英文。對不懂的人來說搞清楚詞匯之前的界限可不容易。在學中文的時候情況正是如此。

6. Then there's classical Chinese (wenyanwen).

Forget it. Way too difficult. If you think that after three or four years of study you'll be breezing through Confucius and Mencius in the way third-year French students at a comparable level are reading Diderot and Voltaire, you're sadly mistaken. There are some westerners who can comfortably read classical Chinese, but most of them have a lot of gray hair or at least tenure.

Unfortunately, classical Chinese pops up everywhere, especially in Chinese paintings and character scrolls, and most people will assume anyone literate in Chinese can read it. It's truly embarrassing to be out at a Chinese restaurant, and someone asks you to translate some characters on a wall hanging.

"Hey, you speak Chinese. What does this scroll say?" You look up and see that the characters are written in wenyan, and in incomprehensible "grass-style" calligraphy to boot. It might as well be an EKG readout of a dying heart patient.

"Uh, I can make out one or two of the characters, but I couldn't tell you what it says," you stammer. "I think it's about a phoenix or something."

"Oh, I thought you knew Chinese," says your friend, returning to their menu. Never mind that an honest-to-goodness Chinese person would also just scratch their head and shrug; the face that is lost is yours.

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 "personal" section of the classified ads that say things like: "Hndsm. SWGM, 24, 160, sks BGM or WGM for gentle S&M, mod. bndg., some lthr., twosm or threesm ok, have own equip., wheels, 988-8752 lv. mssg. on ans. mach., no weirdos please."

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.

6. 然后還有個文言文……

放棄吧。太難了。如果你以為三四年學習之后你就能輕風般瀏覽過孔孟的文章，就好象差不多的三年級法文學習者能夠閱讀狄德羅和伏爾泰，哥你就杯具了。的確有一些西方人能夠順利地閱讀古代中文，不過他們大都有灰白頭發(fā)，或至少有教授地位……

不幸的是，中國古文到處出現(xiàn)，特別是在中國畫和卷軸里。大部分人以為任何懂中文的人都能閱讀它們。當你在中國餐館，有人請你翻譯一個屏風上的漢字時，那可真是讓人無地自容。

“嗨哥們，你不是懂中文么？這個卷簾上寫的什么？”你抬頭一看，發(fā)現(xiàn)寫的是文言，還用的是無法理解的草書體……這樣的書法就看起來瀕死的心臟病人的心電圖差不多。

“呃……我想我能看懂一兩個字，但我沒法告訴你它什么意思。”你結(jié)結(jié)巴巴地說，“我猜是關于鳳凰之類的東西……”

“噢，我以為你懂中文。”你朋友說道，然后繼續(xù)看他們的菜單。即使那些字一個如假包換的中國人也會撓頭不懂，丟的還是你的臉……

現(xiàn)代漢語僅僅是古怪的難，而古典中文則是刻意讓人不可能學會。漢學家不會告訴你這樣一個小秘密：要看懂文言文一小段話，你必須首先知道它在講什么。因為古典中文根本是由幾個世紀的典故用一種簡要的編碼組成，流傳于一個書蟲們組成的精英小團體中，他們自己都徹底了解任何一點相關的文學背景。一個沒有專業(yè)知識的西方人沒法理解這些，就好象如果孔子本人來到現(xiàn)在，也看不懂分類廣告中“個人”一欄里這類的東西：“Hndsm. SWGM, 24, 160, sks BGM or WGM for gentle S&M, mod. bndg., some lthr., twosm or threesm ok, have own equip., wheels, 988-8752 lv. mssg. on ans. mach., no weirdos please.”（譯者注：這個意思就不翻譯了，好孩子不需要知道……）

公平的講，文言文你越嘗試就會變得越容易。 不過高爾夫一桿進洞或者穿著束身衣橫跨英吉利海峽也是如此。

7. Because there are too many romanization methods and they all suck.

Well, perhaps that's too harsh. But it is true that there are too many of them, and most of them were designed either by committee or by linguists, or -- even worse -- by a committee of linguists. It is, of course, a very tricky task to devise a romanization method; some are better than others, but all involve plenty of counterintuitive spellings. And if you're serious about a career in Chinese, you'll have to grapple with at least four or five of them, not including the bopomofu phonetic symbols used in Taiwan. There are probably a dozen or more romanization schemes out there somewhere, most of them mercifully obscure and rightfully ignored. There is a standing joke among sinologists that one of the first signs of senility in a China scholar is the compulsion to come up with a new romanization method.

7. 因為字母化方案太多了，而且全都不給力。

嘛，這么說可能有點過分。不過真的，把中文用字母表達的方案很多，而絕大多數(shù)都是由某個委員會或是某些語言學家弄出來的。有時候還更糟，是個語言學家組成的委員會…… 當然啦，設計一種字母化方案非常不易，有些方案比較好，但所有的方案都需要很多與直覺抵觸的拼寫。而如果你真想發(fā)展中文方面的職業(yè)道路，那你至少得會其中四五種，還不包括臺灣用的那些鬼畫符?？偣部峙掠谐^一打的字母化方案，大部分都是晦澀難懂而理所應當?shù)乇淮蠹液雎粤?。長久以來在漢學家之間有個笑話：一個漢學學者老年癡呆的標志，就是他感到發(fā)明一種新的字母化方案的迫切性。

8. Because tonal languages are weird.

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 shùxué means "mathematics" while shūxuě means "blood transfusion", or that guòjiǎng means "you flatter me" while guǒjiàng means "fruit paste"?

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 "Hey, that's my water glass you're drinking out of!", and you follow your intonational instincts -- that is, to put a distinct falling tone on the first character of the word for "my" -- you will have said a kind of gibberish that may or may not be understood.

Intonation and stress habits are incredibly ingrained and second-nature. With non-tonal languages you can basically import, mutatis mutandis, your habitual ways of emphasizing, negating, stressing, and questioning. The results may be somewhat non-native but usually understandable. Not so 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.

8. 因為音調(diào)系統(tǒng)很古怪。

Ok，這種說法很白人中心主義，我知道。但我得提一下這一點，因為它是最常見的抱怨之一，也是西方人最惡名昭著的弱項之一。每個學中文的人一開始都無法相信中文有音調(diào)系統(tǒng)的一面存在。怎么可能Shuxue既可以是“數(shù)學”同時還能是“輸血”呢？或者guojiang可以是“過獎”或者是“果醬”？它本身就是中文一個大難點了，因為這意味著我們非母語人士在記憶元音輔音之外，還得記住這些看起來不重要的發(fā)音部分。更大的真正的困難出現(xiàn)在你實際使用中文表達自己的時候：你發(fā)現(xiàn)自己束手束腳的，你可能語調(diào)都挺自然，結(jié)果音調(diào)都搞錯了。比如，你可能想說“嗨你在喝我的杯子里的水！”，然后你想當然地把重音放在“我的”身上（結(jié)果聲調(diào)變成了四聲）(相當于中文四聲的聲調(diào))，那你說的多半是些胡言亂語，可能被理解也可能不被。

語調(diào)和重音習慣具有非常大的追加和自由性質(zhì)。在無音調(diào)的語言中，你基本上可以隨心所欲地（加上必要的修改）按你的習慣來強調(diào)，否定，重視，和質(zhì)疑。說出來的可能不太自然，但絕對能被理解。中文則不然，你的語調(diào)習慣必須遵守每個你用的詞匯音調(diào)的限制。中國人當然能自由地表達所有微妙的語調(diào)，和使用那些無音調(diào)的語言的人一樣。只是他們的方式對我們說無音調(diào)語言的人來說有點陌生。當你真正開始用中文說些你在意的話題時，你就發(fā)現(xiàn)好像你不得不雙手被捆著，同時試圖表達一個激情四射的觀點。你突然被剝奪了一些重要的表達手段，以前你可能還沒意識到自己擁有它們。

9. Because east is east and west is west, and the twain have only recently met.

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 "Le président Bush assure le peuple koweitien que le gouvernement américain va continuer à défendre le Koweit contre la menace irakienne," is about as hard as deciphering pig Latin is not just because of the deep 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.

9. 因為東西方?jīng)芪挤置?，而兩者才剛剛相遇?/p>

語言和文化當然無法分割，這也是中文對美國人如此難的主要原因之一。中美文化隔絕太久了。讀法語句子“Le président Bush assure le peuple koweitien que le gouvernement américain va continuer à défendre le Koweit contre la menace irakienne”的難度僅僅如同于看懂一些行話而已。其原因不但在于印歐語系之間的相似性，還因為這些表達方式中的核心概念和文化背景是同源的。我們有一樣的繪畫史，音樂史，乃至歷史的歷史，后者的意思是一個法國人腦中的各種典型例子以及文化角色的集合和一個美國人一樣的。我們熟悉阿蒂爾·蘭波，就好象法國人熟悉蘭博。事實上，與中美文化的差異比起來，美國和法國文化的區(qū)別就類似于Peter Pan花生醬和Skippy花生醬。（譯者：好吧，換個例子，就好象可口可樂和百事可樂，兩者內(nèi)容幾乎一樣……）

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 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.

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?

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.

和中國人說話往往不一樣。你沒法談話中隨口提到狄更斯，人猿泰山，開膛手杰克，歌德，或者披頭士，同時期望對方總是能明白。我有個中國朋友，他都讀過卡夫卡著作最早的中文譯文，卻仍然不知道Santa Claus是什么。最近幾十年來中國和西方接觸甚多，然而兩者之間仍然有大量的知識和思想差異。

同樣地，除了一些哈中的，有多少美國人對中國朝代有個大致概念呢？一個普通的歷史系學生聽說過秦始皇和他對中國的貢獻么？有多少美國音樂系學生聽過一丁點京劇，或是能認出來琵琶？多少其他方面博學的美國人聽說過魯迅，巴金？更別提墨子了。

這些意味著當兩國人在一起時，不但有語言障礙，還有一個巨大的文化障礙。當然這是學習中文如此有趣的原因之一。這也是中文為啥這么TM難的原因之一。

Conclusion

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 "Gee, Chinese looks kinda neat."

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, familiarity with two or three romanization methods, 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 "learning to learn" Chinese.

How much harder is Chinese? Again, I'll use French as my canonical "easy language". This 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.

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 "instrument" (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.

Someone once said that learning Chinese is "a 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.

There is still the awe-inspiring fact that Chinese people manage to learn their own language very well. Perhaps they are like the gradeschool 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, "But how are they able to perform such difficult music?"

"Shh -- not so loud!" says the director, "If you don't tell them it's difficult, they never know."

結(jié)論

我還能再繼續(xù)，不過我想如果親愛的讀者們能看到此處，多半他們早就已經(jīng)同意我的看法。那些學習其他困難語言的人們有他們自己的恐怖故事，我敢肯定。但我仍然能相當自信地斷言，對于一個普通美國人，中文比世界上三十多種主要語言（亦即在大學階段常常學習的語言）中其他任何一種都難得多。這件事也許不會引起語言學家們的興趣），但它值得你好好考慮一下，如果你決定最好學個外語，想著說“嗯～中文看起來好像不錯?！?/p>

要量化學習語言這樣一個復雜而多層面的過程很難，不過一個量度是掌握必要的語言學習技能的時間?？紤]到上述所有的中文學習者必須具備的東西，使用字典，熟悉兩三種字母化方案，大致了解漢字系統(tǒng)（包括簡繁），這加起來可是很多時間，而你僅僅是在學習如何學習中文。

中文本身要更難多少呢？再次我使用法語作為簡單語言的例子。非常粗略和直覺的估計，不過我想說要達到法語中類似的讀寫流利程度，中文需要你三倍的時間。同樣的時間，一個普通美國人多半可以學會流利使用兩種拉丁語系的語言。

學習語言也許類似于學習樂器。比如說，雖然口琴有某些精彩的作品，一般而言鋼琴學起來要比其他樂器困難而花更多時間。作為類比，可以說我們都是某種樂器的高超演奏家（即我們的母語），而學習同類的樂器則比學習完全不同的樂器容易得多。西班牙人學葡萄牙語類似于小提琴手學習中提琴，而美國人學習中文則更像搖滾吉他手試圖學習演奏擁有三個手鍵盤，三十個音栓的管風琴。

有人說過學習中文是“五年關于謙虛和低調(diào)的課程”。我曾經(jīng)以為這是說五年之后你就能掌握中文，同時學會了謙虛。然而，我現(xiàn)在學習了中文六年，我的結(jié)論是，這句話告訴你五年之后中文對你來說仍然是神秘的深淵，不過至少你已經(jīng)徹頭徹尾地學會了低調(diào)這個好品質(zhì)。

仍然有一個令人敬畏的事實，那就是中國人掌握他們的語言相當不錯?？赡芩麄兙拖袷悄切┌吐蹇怂囆g表演團體招收的小孩子們，然后去表演巴赫的康塔塔清唱劇。那個故事里，有個聽眾十分驚訝于聽到這些胖嘟嘟的小孩子們能夠如此完美無瑕地演唱，而這些樂曲都是巴赫那些困難的要求嚴格一絲不茍的作品。他問合唱團指揮，“但這些孩子們怎么能夠演唱如此高難度的音樂呢？”

“噓！小聲點！”樂團指揮說道，“如果你不告訴他們這有多難，那他們就永遠不知道?！?/p>