QA讨论学中文，学汉字，有趣的汉字龜_风闻

【来源龙腾网】

原创翻译：

Is Chinese arguably the toughest language in the world for a westerner to master? 

对于西方人来说，汉语可以说是世界上最难掌握的语言吗?

评论翻译

Viktor Jaded

I’ve been studying Mandarin for 4 months now and I too thought it was hard at first Now that I’ve familiarised myself with the language, I can say with confidence that Chinese characters are not hard, in fact they are the easy part about Chinese because you know each character is different and it has its own tone and meaning. For me maybe as a VISUAL LEARNER is easier because my visual memory is good and Chinese characters vary in difficulty but with practice and repetition I’ve been able to master 740 as of today. 

我已经学习普通话4个月了，一开始我也觉得很难，现在我已经熟悉了这门语言，我可以自信地说，汉字并不难，事实上它们是汉语中容易的部分，因为你知道每个汉字都是不同的，它有自己的声调和意义。对我来说，作为一个视觉学习者可能更容易，因为我的视觉记忆很好，汉字的难度各不相同，但通过练习和重复，我今天已经掌握了740个汉字。

And yes, I have put in lots and lots of effort (sometime ago I did 13 hours on a Saturday). Now the difficult part of mandarin? Speaking, listening and yes getting used to Chinese logic! Listening is still hard although I have studied phonetics extensively. Speaking is even harder! There’s a flow, a rhythm to the way people speak Mandarin. Some say tones matter, some say tones don’t matter — in my opinion, tones matter!! It is important to get this rhythm into your system as early as possible. I still don’t have any rhythm to my Mandarin but characters are so easy I can type this from my head: 

是的，我付出了很多很多的努力(前段时间我在周六学了13个小时)。普通话最难的部分是什么?说，听，是的，还包括习惯中文的逻辑!尽管我广泛地学习了语音学，听力仍然很难。说话就更难了!人们说普通话的方式有一种流动和节奏。有人说声调很重要，有人说声调不重要——在我看来，声调很重要!尽早养成这种节奏是很重要的。我的普通话仍然没有节奏，但汉字很简单，我可以在脑海中打出这样一段话:

（答主自己写的中文：）

四个月前，我还听不懂、无法读写普通话。语言学习尤其是自学时很难。因为就像我的母语一样，它蕴含着数百年的历史、文化和不同的逻辑。但四个月后，我可以用汉字写出这样简单的句子，因为我读了很多书，所以找汉字很容易。普通话最难的是口语！不过，我可以很容易地分辨出 在(zài) 和 再(zài) 之间的区别，但是要完美地发音它们需要疯狂的努力。看电影、听播客和歌曲有助于我的听力。对于演讲，我认为熟能生巧。

Final thoughts, don’t overthink it. Just do it. Move to China if you can, immerse in the language. Shed all your pride and tell yourself that you want to learn Chinese and you don’t know anything about the language and culture. People are more than willing to help you. I haven’t been fortunate enough to move to China so that’s why my speaking and listening sucks but extensive immersion through movies with practice and repetition helps me a lot. I leave you motivation: 世上无难事，只怕有心人.

最后的想法，不要想太多。尽管去做。如果可以的话，搬去中国，沉浸在中文语言环境中。放下你所有的骄傲，告诉自己你想学中文，你对语言和文化一无所知。人们非常愿意帮助你。我没有足够的幸运搬到中国，所以这就是为什么我的口语和听力很差，但通过电影的练习和重复，广泛的语言沉浸感对我有很大帮助。我给借此话激励大家:世上无难事，只怕有心人。

罗洢诺

It’s great to hear that you have made a big progress in learning Chinese.Chinese is an attractive and beautiful language.Hope that you can speak it more and more fluent.BTW,I am an English learner in senior high school.I hope there are no grammatical problems with my comments.

听说你的中文学习有了很大的进步，真是太好了。中文是一种迷人而美丽的语言。希望你能说得越来越流利。顺便说一下，我是一名高中英语学习者。我希望我的评论没有语法问题。

Viktor Jaded

Ha ha ha well, thank you and yes , Chinese is a beautiful language although some difficulties do arise from time to time! (Okay, all the time) but ever since I started learning it, I just feel the need to learn it some more and more.Don’t worry, your English is on point. No need to worry about it. You’re also doing a great job.

哈哈哈，谢谢你，是的，中文是一门美丽的语言，尽管有时会出现一些困难!(好吧，一直都是)但自从我开始学习中文，我就觉得有必要学得越来越多。别担心，你的英语很地道。不用担心。你也做得很好。

David Ng

Hi Viktor, very good! Chinese is my ancestral language and while I grew up speaking Cantonese at home, I also learned Mandarin in school long ago and still pretty conversational at it. Back when I was going to Chinese school as a kid and teenager, I was taught traditional Chinese characters which is even harder if a student just took the entire character for granted without dissecting what each strokes are called and the pattern of its character, which is what I did often back then. 

嗨，Viktor，非常好!中文是我祖先的语言，虽然我在家里说粤语长大，但我很久以前在学校里也学过普通话，现在仍然能用它交谈。当我还是个孩子和青少年的时候，我在中文学校学习繁体字，如果一个学生只是把整个汉字当成理所当然的，而不仔细分析每个笔画的名称和汉字的样式结构，这就更难了，而我当时经常这样做。

What I mean is taking this character, for example:龜 That’s the traditional character for turtle which I struggled for the longest time to remember how to write that. Now I can write that by heart but it wasn’t the case until after graduating from college and when I purchased a book describing the patterns between traditional and simplified characters, the traditional character was overlaid with an actual picture of a turtle so when I rotate that character 90 degrees,I can see what part is the head, the shell, the feet and the tail. That’s when it became simpler for me to master the characters that have a large number of strokes.

我的意思是，以这个字为例:龜这是乌龟的繁体字，我花了很长时间才记住怎么写。现在我可以把它记下来了，但直到大学毕业后，我买了一本介绍繁体字和简体字之间样式结构的书，繁体字上覆盖着一只乌龟的真实图片，所以当我旋转那个汉字90度时，我可以看到头、壳、脚和尾巴。从那时起，掌握那些笔画较多的汉字就变得更简单了。

Best of luck on your journey to become very proficient with the Chinese language and speaking Mandarin. Many children of Chinese immigrants in the USA, like me, struggled learning Chinese writing so I like to share that I am very proud of you and impressed with your valuable efforts learning my ancestral language (Chinese) which is usually challenging for English speakers who never learned a similar language to Chinese.

祝你学习中文和普通话顺利。许多在美国的中国移民的孩子，像我一样，都在努力学习中文写作、说普通话，所以我想分享一下，我为你感到骄傲，你在学习我祖先的语言(中文)方面的宝贵努力给我留下了深刻的印象，对于英语母语者来说，学习中文通常是一个挑战。

Jil Wong

Yes.Yes.Yes.In increasing order of difficulty: grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, and pronunciation.The grammar is simpler than that of English and there are no verb tenses. Just an extra word before or after the verb to indicate if it happens in the present, past, or future. It’s hard to mess this up but if you do people will still understand you.

是的。是的。是的。按照难度的递增顺序:语法、词汇、阅读、写作和发音。中文语法比英语简单，没有动词时态。只是在动词的前面或后面加上一个额外的词来表示它是发生在现在、过去还是将来。这不会搞错，但如果你搞错的话，人们还是会理解你的意思。

Memorizing new vocabulary words is part of the processes of learning any new language.Reading will be hard at first but when you start to learn how to write recognizing characters will get easier. Pinyin (the pronunciation system) is written using the Latin alphabet like romaji in Japanese, so this will be easy for an English speaker.

记忆新单词是学习任何新语言过程的一部分。一开始阅读很难，但当你开始学习如何书写时，识别字符就会变得容易一些。拼音(发音系统)是用拉丁字母写成的，就像日语中的罗马字母一样，所以这对说英语的人来说很容易。

For writing… if you’re just aim to be able to text, send emails, and type documents, all you need to know is how to spell a word using pinyin, like suì jìao (sleep). The AI interpreter in your smartphone or laptop will show you a list of commonly used characters for that pinyin. You tap on the character you want and it shows up in your document.This is how most Chinese people write these days. 

至于写作，如果你只是想发短信、发邮件、写电子文档，你只需要知道如何用拼音拼写一个字就行了，比如suì jìao (sleep)。你的智能手机或笔记本电脑中的人工智能解释器会向你显示该拼音的常用字符列表。你点击你想要的字符，它就会出现在你的文档中。现在大多数中国人都是这么写的。

To formally learn how to write characters with a pen it takes years of practice because you will need to learn the stroke order when writing the character. If your stroke order is wrong people will look down on you and treat you like some kind of backwoods hillbilly (trust me, they will shame you). So, to learn how to properly write with a pen requires years of practice.

要正式学会用笔书写汉字，需要多年的练习，因为你需要学习书写汉字时的笔画顺序。如果你的笔画顺序错了，人们就会看不起你，把你当成偏远地区的乡巴佬(相信我，你会自惭形秽的)。所以，要学会如何正确地用笔写字，需要多年的练习。

Lastly, the pronunciation. It is very hard. The best thing you can do is to develop good musical pitch and a good memory for the different tones.I have seen one American guy in his 30s on social media teaching Chinese phrases. He has lived in China for over 10 years and he STILL has a strong accent. The guy is just not musical; he can’t hear the different tones! On the other hand I worked with a concert singer once years ago who had perfect pitch. He didn’t know any Chinese and I taught him a few phrases. 

最后，发音。这很难。你能做的最好的事情就是培养良好的音高和对不同音调的良好记忆。我在社交媒体上看到一个30多岁的美国人教中文短语。他已经在中国生活了10多年了，他仍然有很重的口音。这家伙不懂音乐;他听不出不同的音调!另一方面，几年前我曾与一位拥有完美音高的音乐会歌手合作过。他不懂中文，我教了他几句。

He could say them perfectly like a native speaker.He was able to impress our Chinese customers and make sales. He was so good that the customers started conversing with him thinking he was fluent. The only reason why I bring up the issue of pronunciation is that Chinese people are hypersensitive to it. Perfect pronunciation means you’re accepted as a Chinese person, you can get promotions, advance in your field, and become a leader. Incorrect pronunciation no matter how good your grammar and vocabulary are will always mark you as a foreigner without opportunities for advancement where you work. Just like in the English-speaking world!

他能像说母语的人一样完美地说出来。他给我们的中国客户留下了深刻的印象，并达成了销售协议。他说得很好，顾客们开始和他交谈，认为他说得很流利。我提出发音问题的唯一原因是中国人对发音非常敏感。完美的发音意味着你被接受为中国人，你可以得到晋升，在你的领域取得进步，成为领导者。不管你的语法和词汇多么好，不正确的发音总是会让你成为一个外国人，在你所在单位，你就得不到晋升的机会