“寻找世界上最难学的语言” 第二弹

                
                专题原文后的读者评论也很有意思。
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sanmartinian 说:
What a sensational article!Congratulations! This is what The Economist used to be.Please come back again and soon.
多么出色的文章！祝贺你们，这样才有《经济学人》当年的风采嘛。请你们早日回来。
Just to add a little detail to gender differentiation in Latin languages just think of this peculiarity: in French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian (I presume in Catalan too, but not so sure) words are either masculine or feminine because God, the devil or usage made them so. Not exactly so in Portuguese: anything that ends in a is feminine, anything that ends in o is masculine. So snakes, wasps, whales, water, kitchens and witnesses (just to quote a few)are all ladies regardless of whether they wear skirts or not...
我想就拉丁语系中名词的性的划分再说两句。有一点很奇怪：在法语，意大利语，西班牙语和罗马尼亚语中，（我想还有加泰罗尼亚语，不过不敢确定），词的阴阳性是由上帝，魔鬼或语言习惯来决定的。但葡萄牙语却不大相同：所有以a结尾的词都是阴性，而所有以o结尾的词则都是阳性。所以，蛇，黄蜂，鲸鱼，水，厨房，还有证人（仅举几个例子）这些词都是姑娘，不管她们到底穿不穿裙子……
Speaking fluently four languages, reasonably two others and dabbling in a few more I'm all for Mr. Whorf's theory that languages do mould the way one thinks. Much as I admire Noam Chomsky, I'm afraid he's very wrong here.
本人能流利应用的语言有四种，基本合格的有两种，还略微涉猎过其他的一些语言。我完全支持沃尔夫的理论，即语言能塑造人的思维方式。虽然我很钦佩诺姆·乔姆斯基，但我恐怕他在这个问题上是完全错误的。
Anyway, give us a lot more articles like this.
不管怎样，以后多给我们来些这样的文章吧。
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generated3386030说:
While studying Hindi I remember the excitement I felt discovering that the words for "yesterday" and "tomorrow" (as well as for "the day before yesterday" and "the day after tomorrow") are the same. Also the concept of using postpositions rather than prepositions was an eye-opener. Now that I am struggling with Mandarin Chinese I finally start to appreciate how similar Northern Indian languages really are to European languages. Apart from the pronunciation (briefly commented in the article) that presents a serious challenge even to a musician, you have to really change your way of thinking about a lot of language concepts. During one of my first lectures my Mandarin teacher told us that we are lucky because Chinese grammar is so simple: there are hardly any rules, you don't ever need to conjugate. I immediately got scared. "No rules" only means a different mindset which is so much more difficult to master.
学印地语的时候，我发现“昨天”和“明天”两个词完全一样，“前天”和“后天”两个词也一样，我现在还记得当时的心情有多么激动。另外，印地语的介词放在名词后面而不是前面，这个概念也让我大开眼界。我现在正在苦苦学习汉语普通话，我终于开始同意，北印度语言和欧洲语言的确十分相近。除了对音乐家来说都是一大挑战的发音学习外，（文章曾简要地提过这点），我们还必须改变对大量的语言概念的认识。在最初的普通话课上，老师告诉我们，我们很幸运，因为汉语语法非常简单：几乎没有什么规矩，连动词变位都没有。我一下子就怕了。“没有规矩”，这种观念掌握起来只能比有规矩的难得多。
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Uakari Monkey说：
Some Indians here in the Amazon can only count up to two. That's because their language has no words for greater numbers. What they have is a word for "more than two" (like "much"or "a lot").
在我们亚马逊，一些印第安人只能数到二。因为他们的语言中没有比二更大的数字了。他们用这样一个词——“大于二”（相当于“很多”）。
It is possible to teach them to count, however, especially if they learn Portuguese while still young.
不过，还是能教会他们数数的。尤其是如果他们年轻时学过葡萄牙语的话。
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sanmartinian说：
Don't be surprised. There are a lot of people in Portugal who can't count above two, either.
They normally end up as politicians or bank managers.
这没什么奇怪的。葡萄牙也有很多人只会数到二。通常，这些人最后会变成政客和银行经理。
(And this is not a joke on the Portuguese, normally told by Brazilians...)
（这不是巴西人用来嘲笑葡萄牙人的笑话……）