外語教育 勾劃未來
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.
在希臘港口城市比雷埃夫斯(Piraeus)教英語時，我和一位同事常在辦公室裡閒聊，猜測世界上最難的語言會難在哪裡。這種語言也許一周裡每天的動詞詞尾都不同。又或者稱謂會因談話對象的身份高低而變化。
The idea of a hardest language is, of course, nonsense. How difficult a language is depends on your starting point.
當然，所謂「最難語言」的想法是無稽之談。語言的難度取決於你的起點。
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.」
蓋伊多伊徹(Guy Deutscher)在他有趣的著作《話/鏡：世界因語言而不同》中寫道：「瑞典語很簡單——如果你正巧是挪威人，同樣，如果你是義大利人那西班牙語也不難學。」
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.
對講英語的人來說，瑞典語和西班牙語都很難，雖然比不上阿拉伯語那麼難。但如果和多伊徹一樣，你的母語是希伯來語，那阿拉伯語也不難學。
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.
英語有多難？在看了法國總統埃馬紐埃爾·馬克龍(Emmanuel Macron)在與唐納·川普(Donald Trump)聯合召開的記者會上回答提問的環節、以及英國《經濟學人》對英國石油(BP)董事長思文凱(Carl-Henric Svanberg)的採訪後，我想到了這個問題。
Mr Macron’s answers to the US press corps in English were hugely impressive. With no script, he skilfully evaded any diplomatic foul-ups.
馬克龍用英語回答美國記者的提問令人印象深刻。沒有稿子，他巧妙地避開了一切外交上的疏漏。
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.」
另一方面，瑞典人思文凱回憶起在白宮的一次記者會卻出了問題。2010年，在深水地平線鑽井平臺洩油事故期間，思文凱與巴拉克歐巴馬會晤後對記者們發表講話。在他談完英國石油公司後，記者們紛紛怒喊：「我們關心的是老百姓。」
「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.
「我本來只要回答兩三個問題，但最後一共答了6個，還被最後一個問題問住了，「思文凱說，他反思了用一門外語說話的危險。
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?
如果讓一個瑞典人說英語很有挑戰性，那麼對於一個講日語或土耳其語這樣和英語毫不相關的語言的人來說，讓他講英語又要比瑞典人難多少呢？
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，學英語似乎比較容易。任何沒有明顯性別的事物都可以用「it」指代。沒必要考慮「電話(phone)」、「訂書機(stapler)」或「愚蠢(stupidity)」的性別。
Adjectives remain the same regardless of the gender of the associated noun: a brave woman, a brave man, a brave new world. Apart from the -s in the third person singular present tense (「she sings」), verbs do not change, no matter what their subject is (「he ran」, 「they ran」).
不論所要形容的名詞的性別是什麼，形容詞都沒有變化：一個勇敢的女人、一個勇敢的男人、一個勇敢的新世界。除了現在時中的第三人稱單數要加「s」之外（「她唱歌」(she sings)），動詞也沒有變化，不管主語是什麼（「他跑」(he ran)、「他們跑」(they ran)）。
The word 「friend」 remains the same whether you say 「he’s my friend」, 「hello, my friend」, 「I kicked my friend」 or 「it’s the house of my friend」.
無論你說「他是我的朋友」、「你好，我的朋友」、「我踢了我的朋友」、還是「這是我朋友的家」，「朋友」這個詞都沒有變化。
In Greek, as I discovered in my Piraeus days, these require an array of noun endings, which differ depending on the gender of the friend.
在希臘語中，正如我在比雷埃夫斯時發現的那樣，根據朋友性別的不同，這些句子中名詞結尾都需要變化。
But there are aspects of English that are devilishly complex. The spelling fails to provide consistent guidance to pronunciation. Consider 「cough」, 「through」, 「bough」, 「though」 and 「hiccough」. There are the irregular past tenses: arose, became, fell, swore, and many more.
但英語有些方面非常複雜。拼寫並不能為發音提供統一的指導。想想這些詞：「咳嗽(cough)」、「通過(through)」、「樹枝(bough)」、「儘管(though)」和「打嗝(hiccough)」。還有不規則動詞的過去時態：出現(arose)、變成(became)、倒下(fell)、咒罵(swore)等等。
There are also phrasal verbs — verbs followed by prepositions, with wild swings in meaning. Learners have every right to feel put out when they put up someone for the night, only to discover that they can’t put up with them. They may want to put off learning English for another time.
還有動詞短語——動詞跟介詞搭配，能變化出廣泛的意義。在留宿(put up)某位朋友後，發現自己根本受不了(put up with)對方，這時學習者完全有理由感到厭煩(put out)。他們可能會將學英語的計劃推遲(put off)。
Some researchers have found that native speakers of Germanic languages, which also have phrasal verbs, find the English versions easier to master, but that Chinese learners of English do everything they can to avoid them.
一些研究人員發現，由於德語中也有動詞短語，所以母語為德語的人會覺得英語中的動詞短語比較容易掌握，但中國的英語學習者們則對動詞短語唯恐避之不及。
As English is the unchallenged language of business and politics, those who want to rise to the top jobs have no choice but to overcome these obstacles.
由於英語在商業與政治領域的地位毋庸置疑，所以那些想要走上事業巔峰的人唯有攻克學習它的障礙。
If, as a non-native speaker, you manage to read the Economist or FT, you are among the most impressive of the lot — and will have your own views on what makes English easy or hard.
如果你的母語不是英語，卻能讀英國《金融時報》或者《經濟學人》，那你的英語水平在同類人中已經很了不起了——而且對於英語的難易之處你也會有自己的見解。
英文來源：Financial Times
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