世界上最难学的语言

如果一个人的母语和英语毫不相关，比如汉语、日语或土耳其语，那他学英语会比瑞典人或德国人难多少呢?我们在英语语言学习中遇到的瓶颈究竟是什么?

When I taught English in the Greek port of Piraeus, a colleague and I used to spend idle time in the staff room speculating on what the hardest language in the world might look like. Perhaps there would be different verb endings for each day of the week. Or possibly the form of address might vary according to the height of the person you were talking to.

在希腊港口城市比雷埃夫斯(Piraeus)教英语时，我和一位同事常在办公室里闲聊，猜测世界上最难的语言会难在哪里。这种语言也许一周里每天的动词词尾都不同。又或者称谓会因谈话对象的身份高低而变化。

The idea of a hardest language is, of course, nonsense. How difficult a language is depends on your starting point.

当然，所谓“最难语言”的想法是无稽之谈。语言的难度取决于你的起点。

As Guy Deutscher wrote in his stimulating book Through the Language Glass: “Swedish is a doddle — if you happen to be Norwegian, and so is Spanish if you are Italian.” Both Swedish and Spanish are harder for English speakers, although not nearly as hard as Arabic, which, in turn, is less difficult if your mother tongue is Hebrew, as Deutscher’s is.

盖伊多伊彻(Guy Deutscher)在他有趣的著作《话/镜:世界因语言而不同》(Through the Language Glass)中写道：“瑞典语很简单——如果你正巧是挪威人，同样，如果你是意大利人那西班牙语也不难学。”对讲英语的人来说，瑞典语和西班牙语都很难，虽然比不上阿拉伯语那么难。但如果和多伊彻一样，你的母语是希伯来语，那阿拉伯语也不难学。

How complex is English? The thought arose after watching French president Emmanuel Macron fielding questions during his joint press conference with Donald Trump and after reading the Economist interview with Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP’s chairman.

英语有多难?在看了法国总统埃马纽埃尔·马克龙(Emmanuel Macron)在与唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)联合召开的记者会上回答提问的环节、以及英国《经济学人》对英国石油(BP)董事长思文凯(Carl-Henric Svanberg)的采访后，我想到了这个问题。

Mr Macron’s answers to the US press corps in English were hugely impressive. With no script, he skilfully evaded any diplomatic foul-ups. Mr Svanberg, who is Swedish, recalled, on the other hand, how a White House encounter went wrong. Speaking to journalists after a meeting with Barack Obama during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in 2010, Mr Svanberg had the press pack yelling in fury after he said of BP: “We care about the small people.”

马克龙用英语回答美国记者的提问令人印象深刻。没有稿子，他巧妙地避开了一切外交上的疏漏。另一方面，瑞典人思文凯回忆起在白宫的一次记者会却出了问题。2010年，在深水地平线钻井平台(Deepwater Horizon)泄油事故期间，思文凯与世界之最克奥巴马(Barack Obama)会晤后对记者们发表讲话。在他谈完英国石油公司后，记者们纷纷怒喊：“我们关心的是老百姓。”

“I was supposed to take a couple of questions but ended up taking six and it was the last one which got me,” Mr Svanberg said, reflecting on the perils of speaking in a second language.

“我本来只要回答两三个问题，但最后一共答了6个，还被最后一个问题问住了，“思文凯说，他反思了用一门外语说话的危险。

If it is challenging for a Swede to speak English, how much harder must it be for a speaker of an unrelated language such as Japanese or Turkish?

如果让一个瑞典人说英语很有挑战性，那么对于一个讲日语或土耳其语这样和英语毫不相关的语言的人来说，让他讲英语又要比瑞典人难多少呢?

At first glance, English looks an easy language to learn. Anything that is not obviously male or female is “it”. There is no need to worry about the gender of “phone” or “stapler” or “stupidity”.

乍一看，学英语似乎比较容易。任何没有明显性别的事物都可以用“it”指代。没必要考虑“电话(phone)”、“订书机(stapler)”或“愚蠢(stupidity)”的性别。

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