-
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<
/p>
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,
for whom?
little
Chinese kids go through the
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
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
”
< br>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
“C
hinese”
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 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.
如果我要说的只有这些，
那这些话相当空洞。
中文对我来说当然难喽。
毕竟，
任何外语对非母语
人士都很难，对不对？这个嘛，差不多是这样。不过不是
所有的外语
对任何学生的难度都是一
样的。
它取决于你自己的母语。
一个法国人学意大利语往往比美
国人快，
而一个普通美国人掌握
德语则多半比一个普通日本人快
得多，如此
而已。所以我所谈论的部分观点是指中文很难，相
对于
……
反正相对于你有可能想学的几
乎其他任何语言。
我的意思是中文不但对我们
（英语人士）
来说难，它在绝
对意义上也是难的。这意味着对于中国人来说，中文也很难。
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，
随便问个中国人。
绝大多数中国人都
会高兴地承认他们的语言很难，
可能是地球上
最难的。
（实际上很多人以此为傲，
就好象实际上有些纽约人以居住
在美国最不宜居的城市为傲
一样。
）可能所有中国人都该因为生为中国人而获得一枚奖牌才是。不管怎样，基本上他们早晚
都会意识到他们母语那种珠穆朗玛峰一样
的地位的，
当他们站在那至高无上的山峰上，优越地
俯视着那些有勇无谋的外国人们在陡峭的山崖上
气喘吁吁的时候。
Everyone's heard the supposed fact that
if you take the English idiom
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
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
跟天书一样
meaning
大家都听过这个公认的说法，
那就是如果你考虑英语中的
“It's Greek to me”
（译者注：
原意是
“
< br>这
对我就像希腊文
”
，
引申为
“
难以理解
”<
/p>
。
）
，
然后在全
世界的语言中寻找一个与之相对应的习语，
从
而得到一个关于哪
个语言最难的
共识。那这样一个语言调查的结果将是中文轻松
获得最难解语
言的称号。
（比如，法语就有这种表达
“C'est
du
chinois”
，意为
“
这是中文
”<
/p>
，亦即
“
这是神马我不
< br>懂
”
。其他语言有类似说法。
）
那么问题来了，中国人自己认为什么才是最不可能学会的困难语言
呢？
< br>
你在中文中寻找类似的习语，然后你找到了
——“
跟天书一样
”
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
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 can't stop
now
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?
这些可不完全是在说笑话，
中文那令人心痛的难度是名副其实的。
所有那些试图学习这门语言的<
/p>
人们，除了纯粹以此为乐的，都会对学习中极低的投入产出比感到沮
丧。那些实际上正是被这
门语言吓人的复杂和难度吸引的家
伙，
则绝不会失望。
不管原因为何，
所
有中文学习者早晚都会
问自己这个问题
“
我到底为啥在干这个？
”
还能记着自己初衷的人会明智的选
择立刻放弃，因为
没有什么值得付出如此多的痛苦挣扎。而对自己回答说
“
事已至此，无路可退
”
的人
呢，则有机会
成功，因为他
们拥有学
习中文必需的素质
——
不见黄河不死心的死钻牛角尖精神。
Ok
，解释了
一下我的措辞含义之后，让我回到最初的问题：为什么中文这么
TM
难？
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.
因为书写系统很不合理
优美，复杂，神秘
……
但是莫名其妙。像很多中文学习者一样，
我一开始就是被这些汉字所吸引
的，它们肯定是世界上最迷人的字符之一。你学中文越多就就
越发现汉字的让人上瘾的魅力。
中文汉字的学习可以令人痴迷一生，
很快你就每天一滴滴地从汉字的海洋中积累成癖，
徒劳地试
图建立一点储备，靠着那漏水桶一般
的长期记忆能力。
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
is
easy: Hard in comparison to Spanish, Greek,
Russian, Hindi, or any other sane,
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
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
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
and
basically
comprehend
the
text
without
having
to
look
up
dozens
of
characters
otherwise the
claim is rather empty.)
汉字的优美是不容置疑的，
不过当中国人意识到普及识字的重要性时
，
有一点就很明显了，
这些
表意文字有
些像裹足小脚
——
可能有些恋物癖喜欢这些小脚，
可是它们在日常中并不实用。首
先，要学会基本识
字要求的汉字就已经是不可理喻的难了。
“
相对什么而难？
”
有人可能会再次发
问。答案很简单：相对
西班牙语，
希腊语，俄语，印地语，或者任何只需要最多几十
个符号就
能完成书写的
“
正常而理智<
/p>
”
的语言。
John
DeFrancis
在他的书
The
Chinese
Language:
Fact
and Fantasy
中
提到，
他的中国同事估计让一个说普通话的人学会读写三千个汉字需要七到八年，
而他的法国和西班牙同事估计他们的母语要达到类似水平则是只
需一半时间。自然的，这些估
计很粗糙，凭印象而已（比如什么算<
/p>
“
类似水平
”
就
没说清楚）
，不过其中寓意是显然的：中文书
写系统在绝对程度
上比字母书写系统
更难学习。在中国，就算是吸收能力处于顶
峰的小孩子，
他们学起汉字来也比其他国家小孩学习其他文字更费劲。
< br>所以想象一下已过青春期的，
学习相对
缓慢的外国
人学习者（比如我）经历的困难吧！
大家都听说过中文很难是因为需要
掌握巨量的汉字，
这一点千真万确。
好多畅销书和文章中淡化<
/p>
了这一困难，说什么
“
尽管中文拥有
（
10000
，
25000
，或者
50000
。来，您选个数字）个不同
的汉字，你其实只需要学习大约
2000
个就能读报了
”
。
这是瞎掰。我学习了
2000
个
汉字的时
候并不能顺利地读报。我常常每看一行就得查几个字，之后
还得冥思苦想文章的意思。
（我假定
读报中
“
读
”
的意思是
< br>“
阅读并且能基本理解文章意思，
而
不需要查几十个字先
”
，
不然的话这个说
法就没什么好讨论的了。
）<
/p>
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
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
EFFECTIVE IN
TREATING
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
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.
这个神话广泛流传，主要因为当考虑出现频率时，任何报纸中超过
95%
的汉字都是在最常用的
2000
个汉字之中。
但这样的数字并没告诉你其实还有非常
多
的由这些熟悉的汉字组成的陌生词
汇。
（比如说，在英文中知道
“up”
和
“tight”
并不意味着你也知道
“uptight”
的意思。
）
（译者注：猜猜
看
< br>
uptight
什么意思？）而且，所有学过任何语言
的人都知道，你常常明白每个词儿的意思，但
就是不懂整段文字的含义。阅读理解可不是
整明白一大堆词儿的
意思就行了，你还得搞清楚这
些词儿和其他词汇在很多不同语境中如何结合使用。此外，很明显，即使你认识一段话里< p>
95%
的汉字，
剩下的
5
%
也常常恰好是理解
文章最需要的部
分。
一个非英语母语的人读到
“JACUZZIS
FOUND EFFECTIVE IN TREATING PHLEBITIS”<
/p>
这条新闻标题时如果不知道什么是
“Jacuzzi”
或
“phlebitis”
，
那他也基本上搞不清这句话什么意思。
（译
者：
jacuzzi
是一种按摩式浴缸；
phlebitis
则是静脉炎。
）
阅读的困难在学习中
国的圈子里是个恼人的问题。
我们汉学家们中有多少人敢在大家面前站出来，
大声阅读一段随机挑选的文字呢？然而自卑情结或是怕丢脸
的心理让很多教师和学生不自觉的
变成了某种无言的共犯：
< br>每个人都假装好像学习四年中文之后，
勤奋的学生就应该能飕飕地阅读
从孔子到鲁迅的任何作品，只是偶
尔停下来查一
些烦人的低频率汉字（当然，用的还得是中中
字典）
。其他一些
人呢，当然对困难的存在就更诚实些。有一天一个学了中文十年以上的同学跟
我说，
“
我的研究被一个问题阻碍着，那就是我
还是不能阅读中文。读两三页书要花掉我好几个
小时，而我甚至不能略读来节省些时间。
”
要是一个学了十年，比如说，法
<
/p>
国文学的学生这么承
认，那可真是令人惊讶。然而我在同侪中常听
到此类评论
（至少在那些放松的时候是这样，
比如
喝了太多青岛啤酒，开始哀叹论文的工作进度多
么缓慢
……
）
我一个老师曾经跟我说了个他和一
个同事会玩的游戏：
他们在亚洲图书馆的中国区里随机从书架
上
抽一本书，
看谁先搞懂这本书在讲什么。
所有在东亚文学作
品集上花过工夫的人都可以证明，
这个游
戏的确相当难，
更不必提真正阅读整本书。
这样的状况真是令那
些迫不及待要在中国文学
的宝库中大快朵颐的学生们伤心沮
<
/p>
丧，头几年他们只能靠乏味的罐装教材，讲义和小心剪辑过
的开胃
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 nausé
e
by Sartre,
Voltaire's Candide, L'é
tranger 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
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
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,
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.
对比一般常见的西方语言，差别非常明显。
< br>只学了一年法语，我就能阅读很多东西了。我浏览
了大致的小说名作，萨特的《<
/p>
La
nausé
e
》
，伏尔泰的《
Candide
》
，卡缪的《
L'é
tranger
》
，还有
数不清的报纸，杂志，漫画，等等
。花了不少工夫，不过却不怎么痛苦：
我用到的只是一本好<
/p>
字典和一本旧货市场上买来的破旧不堪的语法书。
这种
“<
/p>
扔到水里学游泳
”
的方法就是不适用于中
文。在学了中文三年的时候，我还没读过一本完整
的小说。我发现那读起来实在太难，太
慢，毫无收获可言。
报纸那时候也还是令人畏惧。那时
候我读篇文章恨不得每十个字就得查个字典。
看一遍人民日报的头版，
连一个标题也
“
解密
< br>”
不了，
这种事儿也一点儿不少见。当
< br>
时有个人推荐我看《红楼梦》还送我一套漂亮的三卷版。我只能
笑
……
它现在还躺在我的书架上呢，得意洋洋地对我
露出胜利者的微笑。只有前二十几页涂满
了潦草的笔记和问号，其他部分则是清爽洁净的
处女地。学了中文六年之后，
我仍然没有达到
能不借助英文翻译阅读它的水平。
（阅读它，我当然是指的阅读取乐。我估计如
果谁拿把枪指着
我脑袋然后手里扔本字典，
我也能想法儿读下来
它吧
吧。
）
在一开始的阶段就冲进中文的浩瀚海
洋，这种做法不但有勇无谋，而且适得其反。如同<
/p>
George
Kennedy
写的，<
/p>
“
记忆一个中文（象
形）字比学习一个欧
洲语言词汇难上如此之多，以至于严格地节约精神力是必须的。
”
这其实还
是低估了难度。
（在中文
的海洋中）
被淹没的风险非常大，
所以
学生最好还是先在浅谈涉水中多
花点时间，再考虑前往深处。
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.
好像这些还不够糟似的，
中文书写另一个发指的特点是居然有两套系统（幸好，有部分重叠）
：
< br>台湾和香港仍在使用的繁体字，和大陆在五六十年代开始使用
< br>的简体字。所有学中文的外国学
生多少都被迫要学习两种体系，
< br>因为他们常常遇到分别来自两个中文系统的教学材料。
这无疑给
< br>已经不堪重负的学生们压上最后一根
稻草，
于是他们这时都很乐意跟西西弗斯交换角色。
（译者
注：西西弗斯，希腊神话中被迫不断推石头上山的那位。
）不过既然中国人自己从来不
会同时精
通简繁
体，外国人最终只注
重学习其中一种也完全没什么可丢脸的。事实上，当你认真权衡之
后，完全放弃中文也没
什么可丢脸的
……
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
(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.
因为中文没有按照常识使用字母
为了进一步解释为什么中文书写系统如此之难，
也许应该先说清楚为什么英语那么简单。
想象一
个普
通的成年中国人决定学习英文时面对的任务吧。要掌握这
个书
写系统需要什么技能呢？很
简单，
26
个字母而已
（当然是大小写，
再加上一些书写方式和变体。
还有引号，
分号，
破折号，
括号等等，这些中国人自己也用
的。
）这些字母怎么书写？从左到右，
水平书写。保留空格来分
开各词。
先不考虑拼写的问题，
这个中国人学习这些英文书
写系统的各个要素需要多久？也许只
要一
两天吧。
现在再看看另一个决定学习中文的美国大学生。
要掌握中文书写
系统需要什么呢？完全没有和字
母对应的东西，虽然汉字里会重复出现一些构件。这些构
件有
多少个？别问我。就跟所有关于
中文的问题一样，
这个问题的答案也是繁复而无迹可寻
，
令人不满。
它取决于你如何定义
“
构件
”
，
以及很多其他冗长的细节问题。这么说吧，有很多个，比
26
个拉丁字母多多了。那么，这些构
件如何组成汉字呢？
嘛，你说吧，可以从左到右加到别的构件身上，也可以从右至左，或者从
上到下，或者包围起别的构件，或者钻进别的构件里
……
怎样都有可能。而在这些空间组合
过
程中，这些构件们或变平，或延伸，或压扁，或缩短，总之会扭曲到能够符合所有汉字应满足的
方块区域为止。换句话说，中文汉字的构件们是在二维上排列，而
不是字母系统的简单明了的
一维。
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
，先不考虑优雅的要求，一个西方人要学中文多久，才能看到一个新字的
时候至少知道怎么
动笔写出一个差不多的模仿来？难说，不过我估计平均的学习
者要花几个月的努力来掌握基本
功。要是个从
来不擅长图画课的笨手脚的家伙，也许要一年或更多。有这个时间，那个同时学习
英文的
中国人已经学会了书写英文花
体，
而且还有空读读
Moby Dic
k
，
或者至少是
Strunk&Whi
te
。
（译者：
Moby Dick
即《白鲸
记》
，赫尔曼
·
梅尔维尔发表于
1851
年的小说，
“
被视为美国文学史
上最伟大的小说之一
”
；
Strunk&White
又名
the Elements of Style
，即《英文写作指南》
< br>，著名的
写作指导工具书。
）
这不是什么新鲜事，
我知道的：
字母学起来很容易。
我认识的中国人学过
几年英文后常常能写出
一手跟美国人无法区别的书法。另一方面，只有很少的美国人
能够写出自然一点的，至少是比
一个笨拙
的三年级小孩要好点的中文书法。
就算中文其他都不难，
光是学
习写汉字的难度就足以
把中文放进
“
难
学语言
”
的陈列室里
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
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
after that a little
guesswork aided by visual memory
(
letter, I would have noticed it, I
think. Must be an 's'...
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
总统
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. (
总
is a phonetic component in some other
character, right?...Song? Zeng? Oh
yeah, cong
总
as in cōngmíng
聪明
.
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.
因为书写系统并不太与其发音对应。
关于书写汉字本身的过程就不多说了。
那么记忆如此之多汉字的艰巨任务又如何呢？同样的，
比
较中
英两种语言有助于说明。假设，一个中国人前一天学了英
文词
儿
“president”
，现在呢想依
靠记忆写出它来。
怎么办？任何学过英文一两年的人都能找到大量的线索和窍门
（即使不那么完
美的）来帮助自己。这
个词儿肯定只能以
“pr”
开头，之后呢稍
微猜一下再加上视觉记忆（
“
会有
个字
母
z
么？
z
不
太常见，所以有的话我应该会注意到。那么肯定是字母
s
了。<
/p>
”
）
，
他就能弄
出一个差不多的东西了。
不是每个外
国人
（母语人士也算）
能注意到或者不自觉的运用英文中这
些有一定缺陷的拼写窍门的，但至少它们存在。
现在想象你一个学习中文的，
昨天刚刚碰到中文里的
president“
总统
”
。
现在你想写它。
你如何回
忆起这个词儿呢？首先呢，你
(
很可能
)
已经忘掉怎
么写了，生活中很少能忘得如此彻底和干
净
……
你可以尽情地重复学习这个词，
而发音绝不会帮助你记起如何书写。
当你学了较多汉字，
掌握一些发音构件的规则时可以情况会好些。
（
“
总
”
有时出现在其他汉字
里，也发类似的音，对
吧？
Song
？
Z
eng
？对了！
“
总
< br>”
在
“
聪明
”
里有。
）当然有些发音的构件要更明显一些，不过很多汉
字，包括一些最常见的高频率汉
字，对它们的读音完全不给任何线索。
这些要表达的是中文跟英文比较起
来不怎么表音。
（英文呢，反过来又比不上德文或者西班牙文
表
音，然而中文根本不在一个数量级上。
）
有些外行觉得中文
完全不表音，
这是不对的，
不过一
个非常聪明的初学者也完全可能几个月都发现不了中文表音的地方。<
/p>
中文的表音程度是个复杂的
问题。研究观点从
25%
（赵元
任）到
66%
（
DeFrancis
）都有，只是后一个估计要求掌握很多
发音构件的知识，而这些知识绝大多数学习者
都不会拥有。你可以这么说，中文是一种表
音语
言，就好象性爱是一种有氧运动：技术上讲的确如此，但实际上并不是最明显的特点。而且呢，
中文表音的部分只有在你学了几百个汉字之后才能为你所用，而
即使你已经学了两千汉字，中
文的薄弱的表音成分仍然不会提供类似
英文表音那样的对记忆的帮助。
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
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
word like
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
打喷嚔
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
China
English
word
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
on
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.
这些就意味着，你常常会完全忘记怎么写一个汉字，完毕。
如果字根上没
有语义的明显线索，
也
没有什么表音构件来帮忙，你就完蛋了。
即使中国人自己也是
如此：跟普遍的迷信正相反，中
国人并没什么天生的记忆字迹的能力。
实际上，
一个外国学习者最感安慰的时候，
就是看到一个
中国人被要求写
一个常见汉字时一个
笔画也写不出来。看到一个母语人士遇到
你每天经历的困
难时，你真是感到那些委屈得到了莫大的伸冤和解脱。
< br>
事实上，
这种经历如此令人宽慰，
以至于我干脆记了一个单子，
上面列着我看到的中国人提笔忘
掉的汉字（提笔忘字？）
（一个
有病的，强迫症的行为，嗯我
自己也知道
……
）
。我见过很有学
问的中国人
忘掉如何书写
“
罐头
”
的
“
罐
”
，
“
膝盖
”
的
“
膝
”
，
“
改锥
”
的<
/p>
“
锥
”
，
“
捻拇指
”
的
“
捻
”
，
“
胳臂肘
”
的
“
肘
“
，
“
姜
”
，
“
垫子
”
的
“
垫
”
，
“
鞭炮
”<
/p>
的
“
鞭
”
，等等。我说的忘，指的是他们常常连第一笔画都不
知道怎么写。你能
想象一个教育良好的英语人士完全不
会书写
< br>“
膝盖
”
或者
< br>“
罐头
”
么？（译者注：
分别是
knee
和
t
in can
）
或者哪怕
“scabb
ard”
或
“ragamuffin”
这种少见的词，
他们也不会忘。
我有
一
次和三个北京大学中文系的三个博士生吃午饭，
他们三
个都是中国人
（一个来自香港）
。
我那
天正好感冒，打算给一个朋友写个纸条取消我们一个约会。我发现自己
想不起来怎么写
“
喷嚏
”
中
的
“
嚏
< br>”
了。于是我问那三
位该怎么写。结果吓我一跳，他们仨都尴尬而难为情地耸耸肩。谁都
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