（原文翻譯提供——尚恩教育留學(xué)事業(yè)部）

(CNN) —With so much time on our hands during lockdown, many of us have entertained the idea of expanding our horizons.

在疫情期間，由于時(shí)間充裕，我們?cè)S多人都愿意去學(xué)習(xí)一些新東西來拓展自己的見識(shí)。

Learning a foreign language is an obvious option.

顯而易見的學(xué)習(xí)外語是一個(gè)不錯(cuò)的選擇。

It's one that I would personally endorse: My individual circumstances were such that, by the age of 12, I could speak German, Greek and English, so languages became my passion and my hobby.

我個(gè)人會(huì)贊同這一點(diǎn)：我的個(gè)人情況是在我12歲時(shí)我會(huì)說德語，希臘語和英語，因此語言成為我的激情和愛好。

My advice is that you should learn a language because you're also interested in the culture and the country.

我的建議是，如果你也對(duì)這個(gè)國家的文化和這個(gè)國家感興趣。你應(yīng)該學(xué)習(xí)這跟國家語言。

If you like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, learn Russian. If you're going to live in Bangkok, learn Thai. If your partner is Mexican, learn Spanish.

如果你喜歡托爾斯泰和陀思妥耶夫斯基，請(qǐng)學(xué)習(xí)俄語。如果你要住在曼谷，請(qǐng)學(xué)習(xí)泰語。如果你的伴侶是墨西哥人，請(qǐng)學(xué)習(xí)西班牙語。

And remember: Although you can get by as a tourist in, possibly, weeks, mastering a language is a long-term commitment taking years, not months.

請(qǐng)記?。弘m然你可以在幾周內(nèi)學(xué)會(huì)一名游客需要的語言水平，但是掌握一種語言是一項(xiàng)長期的任務(wù)，需要花費(fèi)數(shù)年而不是數(shù)月的時(shí)間。

Here are a few examples, ranked in order of the number of hours it takes the average learner to master them from lowest to highest:

以下是一些示例，按普通學(xué)習(xí)者從最低到最高掌握它們所花費(fèi)的小時(shí)數(shù)進(jìn)行排序：

（此處我們挑選的最簡單的和最難的）

Easiest (about 600 hours of study)

最簡單（大約600個(gè)小時(shí)的學(xué)習(xí)時(shí)間）

After just 600 hours of study, you'll have no trouble fitting in on the streets of Paris.

僅需600個(gè)小時(shí)的學(xué)習(xí)，你便可以輕松適應(yīng)巴黎的生活。

Along with Dutch and Norwegian, the popular Latin languages -- Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese -- require about 600 hours of study to achieve 'general professional proficiency' in speaking and reading.

與荷蘭語和挪威語一起，流行的拉丁語-意大利語，法語，西班牙語和葡萄牙語-大約需要600個(gè)小時(shí)的學(xué)習(xí)時(shí)間，就可以達(dá)到口語和閱讀的“一般專業(yè)水平”。

Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest for native English speakers to learn, followed by Portuguese and finally French.

其中，西班牙語和意大利語是母語為英語的人最容易學(xué)習(xí)的語言，其次是葡萄牙語，最后是法語。

They share many words with English, but it's that common vocabulary that creates 'false friends' -- words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly as meanings have drifted with time.

他們與英語共享許多單詞，但是正是這些共同的詞匯創(chuàng)造了“虛假的朋友”，即看起來或聽起來相似，但隨著時(shí)間的推移，意思也不盡相同。

While French and Italian are pretty standardized, you must choose whether to learn Latin American Spanish or 'castellano,' which is spoken in Spain; they differ as much as US English and British English.

雖然法語和意大利語非常標(biāo)準(zhǔn)化，但是您必須選擇學(xué)習(xí)拉丁美洲的西班牙語還是“ castellano”；它們與美國英語和英國英語一樣有很多差別。

The choice is even more striking with Portuguese; long ago I opted for Brazilian and to this day I still can't properly understand speakers from Portugal.

葡萄牙語的選擇更加驚人。很久以前，我選擇了巴西語，但直到今天，我仍然無法正確地理解來自葡萄牙的演講者。

科普：葡萄牙語是繼英語和西班牙語之后世界上使用最廣泛的語種之一。截止至2013年，全世界共有約230,000,000的人口使用葡萄牙語（Português），是世界流行語種的第6位，僅次于漢語、英語、法語、西班牙語和阿拉伯語。葡萄牙語的使用者絕大部分居住在巴西，而只有1200萬左右使用者居住在葡萄牙。

Japanese (2,200 hours)

日語（2,200小時(shí)）

A country that's enriched the world with sushi, karaoke and manga, Japan has many devotees, especially among gamers and geeks.

日本是一個(gè)充斥著壽司，卡拉OK和漫畫的國家，并擁有許多其愛好者，尤其是在游戲玩家和極客之中。

But they are confronted with an extremely challenging language that uses imported Chinese characters (Kanji) cut off from their original meaning as well as two syllabaries -- Hiragana and Katakana (you must learn when to use which).

但是他們面對(duì)的是一種極具挑戰(zhàn)性的語言，該語言使用了從其原始含義中截取的進(jìn)口漢字（漢字）以及兩個(gè)音節(jié)（平假名和片假名）（您必須學(xué)習(xí)何時(shí)使用哪種音節(jié)）。

Counting objects depends on whether they are long and thin (roads), small and round (apples), thin and flat (sheets of paper), broad and flat (rugs) and hundreds more varieties.

計(jì)數(shù)取決于對(duì)象是長而細(xì)（道路），小而圓形（蘋果），薄而扁平（紙片），寬而扁平（地毯）以及上百種。

What Japanese you speak also depends on your gender. There's a 'rough' language for men and a more 'ladylike' language for women, but you must understand both.

你的性別也決定了你說什么日語。男性有一種“粗俗”的語言，女性有一種“淑女”的語言，但是你必須同時(shí)理解這兩種語言。

By all means start a course of Japanese at home, but if you want to progress at all, pencil in a month of intensive practice in the Land of the Rising Sun.

你可以在家用各種辦法學(xué)習(xí)日語，但是如果你想完全掌握日語，那么你需要在日本刻苦學(xué)習(xí)。

Cantonese/Mandarin (2,200 hours each)

粵語/普通話（每個(gè)2,200小時(shí)）

One of the challenges of learning Mandarin is learning all of the characters.

學(xué)習(xí)普通話的挑戰(zhàn)之一是學(xué)習(xí)所有偏旁。

Each Chinese dialect is effectively another language but Mandarin (Putonghua in Chinese, which means the common language) is considered the official tongue in modern China.They all share (roughly) one evolving writing system, referred to as 書面語 (or written language) invented for administering a large, diverse empire.

每個(gè)漢語方言實(shí)際上都是另一種語言，但普通話（普通話就是被大家都說的話）被認(rèn)為是現(xiàn)代中國的官方語言，它們都（大致）共享一種不斷發(fā)展的書寫系統(tǒng)，普通話會(huì)被稱為書面語言，這種被發(fā)明的書面語掌管著這個(gè)巨大復(fù)雜的語言系統(tǒng)。

To complicate the matter further, there are two main types of written Chinese characters under the same writing system: the traditional Chinese used in Hong Kong and Taiwan and the simplified Chinese in mainland China (standardized and simplified in the 1950s to increase literacy in the country).

使問題更加復(fù)雜的是，在相同的書寫系統(tǒng)下，主要有兩種類型的書面漢字：在香港和臺(tái)灣使用的繁體中文和在中國大陸使用的簡體中文（簡體字：在1950年代進(jìn)行標(biāo)準(zhǔn)化和簡化以提高該國的識(shí)字率） ）。

For example, fly is written as 飛 in traditional Chinese and 飛 in simplified Chinese. They're basically the same character written in two different ways but pronounced differently when spoken in different dialect.

例如，fly用繁體中文寫成“飛”，用簡體中文寫成“飛”。它們基本上是以兩種不同的方式書寫的相同的字符，但是用不同的方言說出的發(fā)音卻不同。

Confused yet?

感到困惑了嗎？

Each written word when spoken is mutually incomprehensible between a Mandarin speaker in Beijing and a Cantonese speaker in Hong Kong. If you think that's odd, consider our number system: the symbol '9' is universally recognized but it's pronounced 'nine' in English and 'devet' in Slovenian.

在北京說普通話的人和在香港說廣東話的人他們都是互相不能理解的。如果你認(rèn)為這很奇怪，請(qǐng)考慮我們的數(shù)字系統(tǒng)：符號(hào)“ 9”是公認(rèn)的，但英語中的發(fā)音為“ NINE”，斯洛文尼亞語的發(fā)音為“ devet”。

Every word must be memorized separately as you can't guess its pronunciation from the script -- but one could say the same of English if you consider plough, dough and tough.

每個(gè)字都必須單獨(dú)記住，因?yàn)槟銦o法從它的構(gòu)造去猜出它的發(fā)音-這時(shí)你可以想象一下英文中的plough, dough and tough，你根據(jù)他們的構(gòu)造無法知道他們的意思。

Meanwhile, dictionaries list words according to stroke count.

同時(shí)，詞典是根據(jù)字的筆劃計(jì)數(shù)來排列的。

These go from one to over 60 strokes. The archaic character zhé -- which, appropriately, means 'verbose' -- has 64 strokes.

這些從1到60多個(gè)筆畫。古老的字符zhé（適當(dāng)?shù)乇硎尽叭唛L”）具有64個(gè)畫。

And then there are the pronunciation challenges.

然后是發(fā)音方面的挑戰(zhàn)。

In the days of the British Empire, if you were going to be sent to Hong Kong as a civil servant, you had to pass a musical test first because all Chinese languages are tonal.

在大英帝國時(shí)代，如果你要以公務(wù)員的身份被送往香港，那么你必須首先通過音樂測試，因?yàn)樗兄形亩季哂幸粽{(diào)。

There are four tones in Mandarin: high pitch (say G in a musical scale), rising pitch (like from C to G), falling (from G to C) and falling low then rising (C to B to G) -- and if you think that's difficult, there are nine tones in Cantonese.

普通話有四個(gè)音調(diào)：高音（例如，以音樂為單位表示G），高音（從C到G），低音（從G到C），低音然后高音（從C到B到G）–和如果您認(rèn)為這很困難，那么廣東話有九種音調(diào)。

In Mandarin, there is a whole poem, 'The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den' with just the syllable 'shi' repeated 107 times in various intonations.

在普通話中，有一首完整的詩《石窟里的獅子吃詩人》，其中的音節(jié)“ shi”在各種語調(diào)中重復(fù)了107次。

我們總結(jié)下來就是如果想學(xué)習(xí)一門語言，那么一定不要脫離這門語言所涵蓋的文化背景， 這樣學(xué)習(xí)起來就更加有趣也更容易哦！