Is Chinese really the hardest language in the world to learn?

中文真的是全世界最难学的语言吗？

以下是Quora网友的评论：

Geraldine Cheung

This depends on your mother tongue.

If your mother tongue is English? Then Chinese is HARD.

For one thing, Chinese is nothing like English. There are no letters. You have to memorize each word- comprised of usually two characters- individually.

And some of those characters will look like this:

这取决于你的母语是什么。

如果你的母语是英语，那么中文对你就真的很难。

首先，中文跟英语完全不一样。中文没有字母。你必须单独记忆每个词—通常由两个汉字组成。

其中有些汉字长这样：

And that’s just one character.

There is also a tonal system. In English, you can pronounce a word however you want. You can even stress the word incorrectly and still be understood.

In Chinese, if you don’t get the tone right (and to make life hell for you, there are four of those tones) people wouldn’t understand you.

这只是一个汉字而已。

中文还有声调。说英语的时候，你想怎么发音就怎么发音，就算故意把某个词的重读音节搞错，别人也一样能理解。

在中文里，如果你的声调不对(中文就是来为难人的，一共有四种音调！)，人们就听不懂你说什么了。

You’ll also have to learn different English pronounciations in order to help you read Chinese.

Most textbooks have English characters above the Chinese characters (this is called “pīnyīn”) to show you how to pronounce them, but in order to read the English, you will have to learn how to pronounce “pinyin” English first, as well as how to sound out the tonal marks.

你还必须学习不同的英语发音，帮助你阅读中文。

大多数课本会在汉字上标记英文字母(被称为“拼音”)，告诉人们如何发音，但你必须首先学习如何拼读“拼音”，还要学习如何发出不同的声调。

And these are only the basics.

There are also idioms (poetic, four-character lines which carry entire moralistic stories behind them, of which there are literally thousands), grammar rules, traditional and simplified characters, tons of exceptions to pronounciation, and dialects (lots and lots of them- envision the difference between British English and Scots) to bring into account. And even that’s not all.

这些还只是最基础的。

中文里还有成语(很抽象，一般是四个字，背后都有一个典故，中文有成千上万个成语)，语法规则，繁体字和简体字，大量的特殊发音处理，还有方言(方言多不胜数—你可以想象一下英式英语和苏格兰英语之间的差别)。这些还不是全部。

Now, also remember that 10,000 words is considered to be the point of “fluency” for any language.

In short: Chinese is insanely hard. Not impossible, but it’s the hardest language for an English speaker that I can think of.

对任何语言来说，掌握1万个单词才能达到“流利”的标准。

简而言之：中文实在太难了。学好中文并非不可能，但对于英语母语人士而言，中文是我能想到的最难的语言了。

In fact, in my experience, the only people who say “____ language is only difficult because of ___” are people who already know how to speak some of the language. You couldn’t really know what makes a language difficult if you don’t actually speak some of it. Regardless, knowing what’s difficult and what isn’t doesn’t really make the language easier to learn.

事实上，根据我的经验，会说出“____语言之所以难是因为___”的人，往往都是掌握了这门语言的人。如果你压根没有学习过，你都不可能真的了解这门语言难在哪里。无论如何，知道难点在哪儿可以帮助你更好地学习一门语言。

Tone — usually if they’re stuck they’ll pick a random one and go with it. That doesn’t work. It makes it diffcult to know what they want to say.

Idioms — everyone struggles with this one, even the kids who speak very good Mandarin. They’re hard to remember and easy to forget. And idioms seem to come up a lot more in normal Chinese conversation than they do in English, making them important to learn.

声调—通常如果他们忘记了，他们会随便选择一个声调。但这是不行的。我们很难听懂他们想说什么。

俗语—每个人都会遇到这个问题，即使是普通话说得很好的孩子。这种俗语很难记住，又很容易忘记。俗语在正常的中文对话中出现的频率似乎比英语俚语的出现频率要高，因此学习俗语很重要。

Character system — Chinese does not have an alphabet; you have to memorize individual characters, and then you have to learn which ones to stick together to form words. It is not easy to remember how to write these characters, and it is not easy to remember Chinese words. There are also two writing systems, which makes the whole thing even worse. Chinese is really hard. That’s my opinion.

汉字系统—汉语没有字母表；你必须记住每个中文汉字，然后再学着把汉字组合在一起形成词汇。记住这些汉字的写法不容易，记住中文词汇也不容易。中文还有两种书写系统，更让人头疼。中文真的很难。这是我的个人看法。

Imre Kovacs

It's not the most difficult at all. It just tends to have the reputation of being the most difficult, mostly among people who don't speak it.

Defining 'language difficulty' is an obscure science. You can't really measure this in an objective way. What makes a language difficult? You could argue that Chinese has a difficult to master pronunciation, yet for a Vietnamese speaker Chinese is not difficult to learn to pronounce. Of course, you could then argue that Chinese has a complex writing system, but for a Japanese, Chinese is not that difficult, given that Japanese and Chinese have a large common set of characters and Chinese is more straightforward when you consider the many readings Japanese kanjis tend to have. You could argue that Chinese has a strange grammar, but comparing it to declination and conjugation rich languages like Fsh or Latin, Chinese grammar is by far easier to master.

中文根本算不上最难的。大家往往认为中文最难学，尤其是对那些不说中文的人群而言。

定义“语言难度”是一门晦涩的学问。你无法用客观的方式来衡量。语言到底难在哪里？你可能会说汉语的发音很难掌握，但对于说越南语的人来说，汉语的发音并不太难。当然，你可能会说中文还有复杂的书写系统，但对日本人来说，中文并不是那么难，因为日语和汉语有大量相通的汉字，而且日本汉字往往有很多的读音，中文发音相比之下更简单了。你可能会说中文的语法很奇怪，但和芬兰语或拉丁语等变化多端的语言相比，汉语语法要容易掌握得多。

Chinese is not difficult, it just requires a lot of practice and commitment. But for some reason people in the West cultivate this myth of difficulty.

中文并不难，但需要大量的练习和坚定的决心。但西方人被中文难的谣言误导了。

JB Brian

I have studied over 20 different languages and have a fairly good command of spoken Mandarin, so I feel like I can add my two cents to this one.

I assume by "Chinese", you are referring to "Mandarin Chinese" and not another Chinese language such as Cantonese or Wu so I'll refer to "Chinese" as Mandarin in my answer. Now, if your question was :

Is Chinese really the hardest language in the world to learn to read and write?

... I would give you an emphatic YES!

我学过20多种不同的语言，普通话口语也很流利，所以我觉得我是有发言权的。

假设你说的“中文”指的是“普通话”，不是广东话或吴语等方言，我只针对普通话来回答。如果你的问题是：

中文真的是世界上最难读写的语言吗？

…我会坚定地回答：是的！

Mandarin (and the other Chinese languages) use a pictoral system of writing words and sounds called hanzi 汉字

There are over 100,000 of these and mastering them takes a lifetime, even for native Chinese! Other languages which use modified forms of hanzi such as Japanese (Kanji) or Korean (Hanja) have adopted syllabaries to allow them to spell foreign or unfamiliar words. No such luck in Chinese. Although knowledge of 2500 or so would allow one to be "literate" one could imagine how inadequate this would be for all but the most basic texts.

普通话(以及中国其他方言)使用一种被称为汉字的文字和发音的语言系统。

这种语言拥有超过10万个这样的字符，要想掌握它们需要花上一辈子的时间，即便对中国人自己而言也是如此！其他借用了汉字并进行变形的语言，如日语(日本汉字)或朝鲜语(朝鲜汉字)，都采用音节表来拼写舶来词或生僻词。但中文并非如此。虽然大约2500个汉字储备就可以让人“有文化”了，但可以想象，除了最基本的文章之外，其实还是远远不够用的。

On the other hand, if one wanted only to speak Mandarin, it is FAR from the most difficult language for an English speaker. Mandarin grammar is mercifully simple for anyone who has studied an Indo-European language.

另一方面，如果一个人只想学说普通话，那么对英语母语者而言，普通话绝非最难的语言。汉语语法对任何学过印欧语的人来说都很简单。

There are no genders,

There are no articles

The plural ending is predictable

There are no cases

The syntax is very straightforward: Subject -> Verb -> Object Wo chi fan = I eat rice.

Verbs do not conjugate (Romance language students rejoice!)

Verbs do not have tenses. Yes, there is "aspect" to deal with but compared to Indo-European languages, this is a walk in the park. (Romance language students rejoice again!!!)

没有性别之分，

没有冠词

复数形式一看即知

没有大小写

语法很简单：主语->动词->宾语，比如我吃米饭。

动词无需变形(罗曼语学生可太高兴了！)

动词没有时态。没错，虽然有些“细节”需要处理，但与印欧语言相比，这就是小菜一碟。(学习罗曼语的学生继续欢呼吧！！)

No cumbersome system of honorifics as seen in Korean and Japanese

The "tones" really aren't tough to get a grip with. There are only 4 in Mandarin. Vietnamese has 6 and Cantonese has 9 (by some counts)!

Mandarin is a "standardized" language and thus efforts have been made over the past century to streamline it to make it accessible to all Chinese citizens. ( I'm not necessarily a fan of this, but it does make it easier to learn than, say Cantonese which is peppered with all sorts of slang and colloquialisms!)

没有韩语和日语那样复杂啰嗦的敬语

“声调”也真的并不难掌握。普通话版只有4个声调。越南语有6个声调，粤语有9个声调！

普通话是一种“标准化”的语言，因此在过去的一个世纪里，中国人一直在努力进行简化，力求让所有中国公民都能统一使用。(我对此不置与否，但普通话确实比粤语更容易学，粤语里还有各种俚语和俗语！) 

As far as languages I have studied, I would say the hardest to master (speaking only) is Korean...hands down.. With its undecipherable system of honorifics, more undecipherable system of verb tenses and speakers who sound like they have a mouth full of potatoes, Korean wins my grand prize for most difficult spoken language on earth.

至于我学过的语言，我想说最难掌握的是韩语…我不接受反驳…韩语有着难以理解的敬语，还有更难以理解的动词时态，说话的时候就像嘴里塞满了土豆一样，所以在我看来—地球上最难的口语就是韩语。

Not far behind is Arabic mainly because the "Standard Arabic" that is taught to foreigners is not the Arabic that anyone actually speaks. Every region has their own dialect which could be completely unintelligible to an Arab from another country. In addition, the grammar is heinously complex and the vocabulary (which has been amassing over 2000 years) is monstrous. Still, much easier than Korean!

紧随其后的是阿拉伯语，主要是因为教给外国人的“标准阿拉伯语”并不是阿拉伯人日常使用的语言。阿拉伯各个地区都有自己的方言，一国的阿拉伯人可能完全听不懂另一国人说的话。此外，阿拉伯语的语法极其复杂，词汇量极其惊人(毕竟积累了2000多年)。不过，还是比韩语简单多了！

As far as spoken Mandarin goes, I would put it as only slightly more difficult than the Romance and Germanic languages for English speakers. Certainly easier than any Slavic or Baltic language and much easier than other Asian languages such as Vietnamese, Cantonese, Thai or Khmer!

至于说普通话，我认为对英语母语者来说只比罗曼语和日耳曼语稍微难一点，也当然比所有斯拉夫语或波罗的海语都容易，比其他亚洲语言，如越南语、粤语、泰语或高棉语也容易得多！

Mat Bettinson

No. There are thousands of languages in the world, the vast majority of them have considerably less resources for teaching of the language. So in a practical sense they're going to be harder to learn.

Also, the difficulty of learning Chinese is largely dependent on what your first language is. It's notoriously difficult for speakers of Indo-European languages like English. It's not going to be as difficult to learn as speakers of closely related or similar languages.

不。世界上有成千上万种语言，其中绝大多数语言的教学资源都相当匮乏。所以从实际意义上而言，这些语言更难学。

此外，学习汉语的难度很大程度上取决于你的母语。对于像英语这样的印欧语言来说，是出了名的困难。

Finally, subjectively, Chinese has some challenges certainly. For English native speakers the tonality is very very hard to pick up because our notion of tonality is related to our intonation, which makes it very very hard not to completely butcher a tone because we're trying to introduce intonation such as raising the tone of the last word to indicate a question. However in other ways Chinese is pretty basic. The grammar is very basic. There's no case marking system, not even obligatory plurals and tenses. The phonology also isn't that difficult to pick up.

最后，在主观上，中文当然还是个不小的挑战。对于英语母语者而言，声调是非常非常难掌握的，因为我们对声调的概念和英语的语音语调有关，所以我们很难接受一个全新的声调系统。在其他方面，中文都比较基础。语法很简单，没有区分大小写，甚至也没有强制性的复数和时态。

Of course it's the written system which teleports Chinese into a whole other ball game. There's no getting around that, it requires a vast amount of work.

但文字系统把中文带入了另一个世界，学习者是无法回避的，需要进行大量的努力和练习。

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