中國網站品牌欄目（頻道）
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Confucius said the superior man puts all his energy into everything he does... On Wednesday, armed only with his favourite grey T-shirt and goofy smile, Mark Zuckerberg held court in one of China’s most prestigious universities for half an hour. In Mandarin. So this son of a New York dentist gets a gold star – or a red flower, as they are called in China – for not only mastering the internet by the age of 30 but also somehow finding time to learn the world’s most difficult language. “Hello everyone,” he said, to whoops of excitement from the audience (who, being elite business students could all speak English). “There are three reasons I decided to learn Chinese. The first, my wife is Chinese. Her grandmother can only speak Chinese. When I told her in Chinese I was going to marry Priscilla, she was very shocked. Then I want to study Chinese culture. The third: Chinese is hard and I like a challenge!” After he posted a video, there were also swoons of envy across the world. Speaking Mandarin, with the assumption that it bring the keys to the new global superpower, is now such a prized social goal that Mark Zuckerbergwas instantly labelled a genius for his Chinese chitchat. Plenty of other tycoons, politicians and sycophants arrive in Beijing claiming to be beavering away at Chinese, but I have never seen anyone attempt more than a few polite interchanges before reverting to English. George Osborne, the Cabinet’s leading Sinophile, only got as far as a “hello” on his most recent visit. Zuckerberg was out of his comfort zone, but he just kept going.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step So how good was Zuckerberg’s Chinese? It was good enough to wow the world, but in truth, four years of studying has brought him only to base camp. Mandarin still rises up before him, a mountain that most adult learners will climb for ever, with no peak to reach. I studied Chinese every morning for two hours for the first four years of my time here, but neglected my homework and have recently been overtaken by my three-and-a-half year-old son, who babbles away cheerfully to everyone he meets. One of my American colleagues wrote that Zuckerberg’s pronunciation was as if he had a “mouthful of marbles”. That is fine in French, where you can just about rub by with a wonky accent, but in China it is fatal. One slip of your tones and all meaning is lost. Zuckerberg was trying to say “China”, but it came out sounding like “Middle Kiss”. Still, it is not just foreigners who find Chinese tricky. In September, Li Weihong, the director of China’s State Language Commission, said about a third of China’s population, roughly 400 million people, cannot speak Mandarin either, preferring their local dialects. And of the 900 million people who can speak Mandarin, only 10 per cent speak it “fluently”, he said. |
孔子曰，吾道一以貫之 周三，穿著自己喜歡的灰色T恤，帶著憨厚微笑的馬克·扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg），在中國最負聲望的大學之一清華大學與主持人進行了半個小時的普通話交談。 這個紐約牙醫(yī)的兒子因此獲得了一個獎勵，或者中國人說的獲得了一朵大紅花——他不僅在30歲就掌控了互聯網，而且不知怎么還擠出時間，學會了世界上最難學的語言。 馬克·扎克伯格剛說完“大家好”，觀眾（作為精英商科學生都會說英語）就發(fā)出了興奮的呼喊。“有三個原因使我決定學習漢語。首先，我的妻子是中國人，她的祖母只會說中文，當我用中文告訴他我將和普莉希拉結婚時，她顯得很震驚，第二個原因是我想學習中國的文化，第三個原因是因為中文很難學，而我喜歡挑戰(zhàn)。” 在他展示了一個視頻后，全世界都羨慕起他。講普通話，假設這可以打開這個新的全球超級大國的市場，這個社交目的是如此有利，以至于扎克伯格進行普通話聊天后立馬被貼上了天才的標簽。 許多其他的企業(yè)大亨、政治家和奉承者抵達北京時聲稱他們會好好學習漢語，但我從未見過有誰在用中文進行簡單的禮貌問候之后還試圖繼續(xù)用中文交談。作為親華人士的英國財政大臣喬治·奧斯本，在最近的訪華過程中只學會一句中文“你好”。扎克伯格并沒有沉溺于自己舒適的溫室中，而是選擇繼續(xù)前行。
千里之行，始于足下 那么扎克伯格的中文到底怎么樣？雖然好到足以讓世界震驚，但事實上，4年的學習只讓他達到了山底的大本營，普通話這座大山仍然屹立在他面前，這是一座大部分成年學習者將要傾其一生去攀登，卻永遠達不到頂點的山峰。在中國的最初四年，我每天早上花費兩個小時學習中文，但我忽視了家庭作業(yè)，最近我三歲半的兒子已經超越我了，他見了誰都會興高采烈地牙牙學語。 我的一個美國同事寫道，扎克伯格的中文發(fā)音好像他嘴里塞滿了大理石，這在法語里是無所謂的，在法語里，你可以任由不靠譜的口音來改變聲調，但在中文里，這是毀滅性的災難，任何一個音調的滑落都會改變句子本身的意思。扎克伯克試圖說“中國”，但聽起來像是說“中間吻”。 而且，不只是外國人發(fā)現漢語是棘手的。在9月份，中國國家語言文字工作委員會主任李衛(wèi)紅表示：將近1/3的中國人，也就是約4億人，不會說普通話，他們寧愿說自己的方言。她還表示，在會說普通話的9億人中，只有10%的人表達流利。
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