Why Chine Is So Damn Hard
by David Mor
University of Michigan Center for Chine Studies
加速英语The first question any thoughtful person might ask when reading the title of this essay is, "Hard for whom?" A reasonable question. After all, Chine people em to learn it just fine. When little Chine kids go through the "terrible twos", it's Chine they u to drive their parents crazy, and in a few years the same kids are actually using tho impossibly complicated Chine characters to scribble love notes and shopping lists. So what do I mean by "hard"? Since I know at the outt 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 gpu超频>近是什么生肖me, a native English speaker trying to learn Chine 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 cour, for the many other Westerners who have spent years of their lives bashing their heads against the Great Wall of Chine.
If this were as far as I went, my statement would be a pretty empty one. Of cour Chine 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 Japane, and so on. So part of what I'm contending is that Chine is hard compared to ... well, compared to almost any other language you might care to tackle. What I mean is that Chine is not only hard for us (English speakers), but it's also hard in absolute terms. Which means that Chine is also hard for them, for Chine people.1
生日宴请柬If you don't believe this, just ask a Chine person. Most Chine 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 Chine people derve a medal just for being born Chine. 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,
obrve foolhardy foreigners huffing and puffing up the steep slopes.
Everyone's heard the suppod fact that if you take the English idiom "It's Greek to me" and arch for equivalent idioms in all the world's languages to arrive at a connsus as to which language is the hardest, the results of such a linguistic survey is that Chine easily wins as the canonical incomprehensible language. (For example, the French have the expression "C'est du chinois商品出售", "It's Chine", i.e., "It's incomprehensible". Other languages have similar sayings.) So then the question aris: What do the Chine themlvesbad最高级 consider to be an impossibly hard language? You then look for the corresponding phra in Chine, and you find Gēn tiānshū yíyàng 跟天书一样 meaning "It's like heavenly script."
There is truth in this linguistic yarn; Chine does derve its reputation for heartbreaking difficulty. Tho 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. Tho who are actually attracted to the language precily becau of its daunting complexity and difficul
ty will never be disappointed. Whatever the reason they started, every single person who has undertaken to study Chine sooner or later asks themlves "Why in the world am I doing this?" Tho who can still remember their original goals will wily abandon the attempt then and there, since nothing could be worth all that tedious struggle. Tho 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 nsible overall perspective that it takes.
自由鸟Okay, having explained a bit of what I mean by the word, I return to my original question: Why is Chine so damn hard?
1. Becau the writing system is ridiculous.
成吉思汗的简介
Beautiful, complex, mysterious -- but ridiculous. I, like many students of Chine, was first attracted to Chine becau of the writing system, which is surely one of the most fascinating scripts in the world. The more you learn about Chine characters the more intriguing and addicting they become. The study of Chine characters can become a lifel
ong obssion, and you soon find yourlf engaged in the daily task of accumulating them, drop by drop from the vast a of characters, in a vain attempt to hoard them in the leaky bucket of long-term memory.
The beauty of the characters is indisputable, but as the Chine people began to realize the importance of universal literacy, it became clear that the ideograms were sort of like bound feet -- some fetishists may have liked the way they looked, but they weren't too practical for daily u.
