扎克伯格的普通話究竟有多好？

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

週三，穿着自己喜歡的灰色T恤，帶着憨厚微笑的馬克·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，而且不知怎麼還擠出時間，學會了世界上最難學的語言。

馬克·扎克伯格剛說完“大家好”，觀衆（作爲精英商科學生都會說英語）就發出了興奮的呼喊。“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，第三個原因是因爲中文很難學，而我喜歡挑戰。”

在他展示了一個視頻後，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，以至於扎克伯格進行普通話聊天后立馬被貼上了天才的標籤。

許多其他的企業大亨、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後還試圖繼續用中文交談。作爲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”。扎克伯格並沒有沉溺於自己舒適的溫室中，而是選擇繼續前行。

千里之行，始於足下

那麼扎克伯格的中文到底怎麼樣？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峯。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，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，扎克伯格的中文發音好像他嘴裏塞滿了大理石，這在法語裏是無所謂的，在法語裏，你可以任由不靠譜的口音來改變聲調，但在中文裏，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，他們寧願說自己的方言。她還表示，在會說普通話的9億人中，只有10%的人表達流利。Married couples who love each other tell each other a thousand things without talking

Surely Zuckerberg has an advantage because he can chat away with his wife, Priscilla Chan?

Well, aside from the fact that linguistic ability does not seep across couples by osmosis, his wife is reportedly more comfortable in Cantonese (eight tones, compared to Mandarin’s four), which is as close to Mandarin as English is to Polish.

Chan, the daughter of a Vietnamese-Chinese immigrant, was raised in Massachusetts and studied biology at Harvard. In other words, she is about as American as they come. Many expats in China claim that having a Chinese girlfriend brings the bonus of having a practice partner, but it is probably fair to assume the pillow talk in the Zuckerberg household is in English.

The revolution is not a dinner party

Learning Chinese is hard. In short, the ratio of effort to reward is so dismal that all but the most mindlessly dogged foreigners give up.

The Chinese, of course, have no choice, and their children have hours and hours of after-school homework, trying to drill the tens of thousands of characters into their long-term memory.

Every person who tries to learn Chinese will at some point hit a wall and wonder why on earth they are bothering. Like me, many will find an excuse to settle on the low foothills, terrified at the daunting effort before them. Simple pronunciation, as Zuckerberg discovered, can take years to master. There is nothing more soul-sapping than enthusiastically going to lessons for months and still being faced with blank stares of incomprehension when you simply try to say hello and ask someone’s name.

Grammar is more straightforward, but without rules it is difficult for learners to grasp which part of speech they might have heard. Which means if you do not know all the words in a sentence, you cannot guess its meaning.

A mountain of knives and a sea of fire

And then there is the writing. There is no alphabet. You simply have to rote-learn Chinese characters, forcing thousands, or tens of thousands of them into your leaky brain.

Anyone writing English can piece together the spelling of a word by saying it aloud to themselves in their head. But here you have to try to remember how many brush strokes it takes to write a character.

Even professors of Chinese find it daunting to be handed a book and asked to read a passage. When my Chinese colleague looks at a text message on his phone, it takes him a good minute to decipher its meaning.
彼此相愛的已婚夫婦無需通過語言就可以交流許多事情

扎克伯格真的是因爲他可以與妻子普莉希拉·陳（Priscilla Chan）交談而讓自己漢語的學習更具優勢嗎？

事實上，除了英語能力不能進行夫妻間的相互滲透外，扎克伯格的妻子更喜歡說粵語（相對於只有4個音調的普通話，粵語有8個音調），粵語接近於普通話的程度就如同英語接近於波蘭語。

普莉希拉是越南華僑的女兒，她成長於馬薩諸塞州，隨後在哈佛主修生物學。也就是說，在他們家搬去美國的時候，她就基本是個美國人了。許多外籍人士稱，有個中國女朋友的好處就是有了個練習中文的夥伴，但扎克伯格夫婦間的枕邊話是用英語交談這一假定可能是合理的。

改革不是請客吃飯

學習中文是艱難的，簡而言之，努力的回報率是非常低的，以至於許多最頑強的外國人最後都放棄了。

中國人當然就沒有選擇餘地了，孩子們在放學後要花費幾個小時來完成家庭作業，試圖把成千上萬個文字保存到他們的長期記憶中。

每個試圖學習中文的人都會在某一時候碰壁，接着就琢磨爲什麼它們到底爲什麼這麼惹人困擾。在攀登漢語這座大山時，許多人像我一樣，會找個藉口在低山麓處安定下來，害怕在它面前付出的艱鉅努力。正如扎克伯格發現的那樣，掌握一個簡單的發音都會花費好幾年的時間。你充滿熱情上地去上課，幾個月後會，當你只是試圖跟人打招呼或者問別人的名字，迎來的卻仍是不解的凝視，沒有什麼比這更讓人心靈備受拷打了。

語法確實更加直觀，但是如果沒有規則的話，學習者就很難理解講話者所說是哪一部分，也就是說，如果你不認識句子裏的所有漢字，你也就無法猜到它的含義。

上刀山下火海

接下來是寫作，漢語中沒有字母表，你需要的是死記硬背漢字，然後將成千上萬的漢字灌輸到自己的大腦中。

任何一個進行英語寫作的人都可以通過在腦海中回想發音而將單詞拼寫出來，但寫漢字時，你必須努力記住要寫多少筆畫。

如果你給漢語教授一本書，讓他讀一篇文章，連他都會畏縮。當我的一箇中國同事看手機上的信息時，他總會花費好幾分鐘來理解它的含義。How happy it is to have friends from far away!

Fortunately, the Chinese know how hard their language is – which is why efforts like Zuckerberg’s are applauded. I have lost count of the number of times that my dismal Chinese has been praised and complimented, by everyone from taxi drivers to government officials.

After decades (or in the Chinese mind, centuries) of arrogant foreigners arriving in China and not bothering to learn the language, it is a mark of respect to have a go.

Sadly, as you make progress, the novelty wears off. After seven years here, those who once praised and encouraged me now chide me for getting a tone wrong. I suppose it is a sign of progress to be corrected, rather than simply to win patronising praise, but I miss the old days.

The foolish old man who moved the mountains

There is a Chinese folk tale that sums up the effort required to struggle with Mandarin. A man in his nineties began picking up stones in order to level two huge mountains. When told he was an idiot, given the scale of the task and the time he had left, he simply said: “Certainly I cannot do it. But when I die, there will be my children to carry on the work, and the children will have grandchildren, and the grandchildren will again have children. So my children and grandchildren are endless, while the mountains cannot grow bigger in size. Why can’t they be levelled some day?”

You cannot catch a cub without venturing to the tiger’s den

For British schoolchildren, there is no short cut. The popular “Chineasy” pictogram cards are charming, but not a magic bullet. You may learn to recognise a few Chinese pictograms, but they do not teach pronunciation and the sea of non-pictographic characters stretches to the horizon.

The best way to shorten the slog is the most straightforward. While children will not pick up much Mandarin in English classrooms, it may open their minds to visit China. And here, if they can find a place to immerse themselves, they have a good chance of learning the language.
有朋自遠方來不亦樂乎

幸運的是，中國人知道漢語是多麼的難學，這也是爲什麼扎克伯格的努力獲得了一致好評，我已經記不清有多少次，我憋足的漢語得到了人們的好評和讚揚，從出租車司機到政府官員。

在傲慢的外國人踏入中國的幾十年（或者在中國人看來是幾個世紀）不學漢語後，學習漢語也是一種值得發揚下去的對中國的尊重。

可悲的是，當你取得進步時，新奇感就會消退。在中國待了7年後，當初那些表揚並鼓勵我的人們開始指責我音調不對，我把這當做一個需要改正以取得進步的標誌，而不是簡單的想贏得屈尊俯就的表揚，但不可否認，我懷念從前的日子。

愚公移山

中國有個寓言故事可以用來說明學習普通話需要同其做堅定不移的鬥爭。一位老人在90歲時開始搬運石頭以夷平兩座大山，考慮到這一巨大工程耗費的時間之久，而他所剩的時間無幾，人們說他太傻，他說：“我死了有兒子，兒子死了還有孫子，孫子過後還有曾孫子，子子孫孫無窮無盡，而山又不會增大，爲什麼就不會夷平呢？”

不入虎穴焉得虎子

對於英國學生來說，學習漢語沒有捷徑。“簡易中文”卡片是充滿魅力，但它畢竟不是一顆神奇的子彈，你可能會記住幾個漢字的象形圖，但它不會教會你發音，並且非象形文字的海洋已經延伸到地平線了。

縮短學習漢語這一艱難過程的最好方法也是最直接的方法。當孩子們不再在英語課堂裏學習普通話，這可能反而會激發他們想來中國遊玩的好奇心。到了中國之後，如果他們找到了一個自己迷戀的地方，他們就會有個學習語言的良好機會。