15. Easy and Difficult 易學的和難學的語言

A: People always say that Chinese and English are very hard to learn. Sometimes I wish I were learning French or Japanese. Maybe they'd be easier.

B: Maybe, but maybe not too. It all depends on what language you already speak.

A: Why should that be? What diffrence does it make?

B: Well, languages are more or less equally difficult. Most of the things one language says must be said by every language in some way.

A: You mean I could learn Chinese easily?

B: No, because your native language is Spanish. But Italian might be easy. It has a lot of words that are similar to words in Spanish. Even the sound systems are more similar than that of Chinese is to Spanish. How difficult a language is to learn depends mostly on how much it resembles your own language.

Notes

Sound system-the total arrangement of the vocal units of a language

Resembles-is like

A：人們常說漢語和英語是很難學的。有的時候我想要是我學法語或日語就好了。也許這兩種語言容易些。

B：可能，不過也可能不太容易。這要看你原來是說什么語言的。

A：為什么呢？這有什么關系？

B：哦，語言大體上都是同樣地難學。一種語言中所說的絕大部分東西，在別的語言中差不多都有。

A：你的意思是說我學漢語會很容易？

B：不，因為你的母語是西班牙語。所以意大利語可能容易些。它有很多詞同西班牙語相似。連它的語音體系也比漢語更接近西班牙語。一種語言是否難學，主要看它在多大程度上同自己的語言相近。