中文为什么这么难.doc

中文为什么这么难 原文标题：Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard? (by David Moser) 导读：本文在网上流毒甚广，好吧，影响甚广（考虑到作者大人可能会来观摩），生动地展示了一位外国人学习者眼中的中文形象。 译者的话：本文从去年开始酝酿，一直到今日才放出，Bee的懒惰真是令人发指…… 这是冤枉滴！Bee联系到了作者大人本人，所以本篇译文完全是得到了作者本人同意，并反复审阅修改过的。不过细想想Bee已经从一月一翻更加退化到了一季一翻，只希望不要再继续恶化了…… 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, 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. 为什么中文这么TM难？ 作者：David Moser 看到这篇文章的标题，任何有头脑的人第一个问题都会是“难，是对谁而言？”问的有理。说到底，中国人看起来学的还挺顺当的。当中国小孩儿经历那“狗 都嫌的两岁”时，他们用的是中文来把父母们逼疯。几年之后，同样这些孩子就已经在用复杂得不可思议的汉字来歪歪斜斜地写情书和购物清单了。所以我说的 “难”到底是什么意思？既然我早就知道本文的语调将充满牢骚和抱怨，那我最好还是说清楚自己到底是什么意思。我的意思是，对我来说很难，一个以英语为母 语，试图学习中文的成年人。他会经历教科书、磁带、语伴等等这一整套折磨人的繁琐过程。我的“难”是说的对我自己，呃——当然还对很多其他西方人，那些花 费了经年累月，在中文的长城上撞到头大的人们（译者：原文“Chinese”同时表示“中文”和“中国的”）。 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 lang