资料文章一位外国成年人学习中文感想WhyChineseIsSoHard(中英对照).docxVIP

Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard 中文怎么这么难 by David MoserUniversity of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies 密歇根大学汉学研究中心 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, its 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. 有想法的人看这篇文章题目的第一眼，大概会问，中文对谁而言算难呢？唔，问的挺有道理的。毕竟中国人自己学起来好像还可以啊。当中国的小孩正在度过“狗都嫌弃的两岁”的时候，他们就是用鬼都听不懂的中文把他们的爹妈逼疯的。不过几年过去之后，这帮小孩却可以用复杂到不行的汉字来写情书、写购物清单了。所以我所说的“难”究竟是什么意思呢？开始动笔写这篇文章的时候，我就知道这篇文章肯定会充斥着牢骚和抱怨，那我不妨直截了当的告诉大家我什么意思好了。我所说的“难”，是对于我这种人，这种母语是英语，已经成年，通过课本、磁带、对话伙伴等方式学中文的人。啊！真是一整套即痛苦又没劲的东西。我所说的难，是指对于我很难--当然了，也包括很多其他西方人--那些花了不知道多少年学汉语，但是最后却学得一团糟，烦到想撞墙的西方人。 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 youre 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 Im contending is that Chinese is hard compared to