The various related but often unintelligible Chinese language varieties collectively have 1.2 billion first-language speakers. Of those varieties, Mandarin, also known as Standard Chinese or Putonghua, has 848 million native speakers, which is higher than any other language on Earth. It’s no wonder that more and more people around the world are seeing the practicality of learning Chinese as a second language.
漢語方言種類繁多，它們雖互有聯(lián)系但也常常難以理解。以漢語作為第一語言的人共有12億人。在漢語方言中，普通話（即我們所說的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)漢語）的母語使用者有八億四千八百萬人，比世界上任何其它語言的母語使用者都要多。毫無疑問，全世界越來越多的人都意識(shí)到學(xué)習(xí)漢語作為第二語言是很實(shí)用的。

However, learning a second language takes time and effort, especially if the intrinsic features of your target language differ significantly from those of your native language. A recent YouTube video titled “Foreigners’ Difficulties of Learning Chinese” explores this exact scenario by asking four Westerners about their own experiences studying the language.
但是，學(xué)習(xí)第二門語言需要耗費(fèi)時(shí)間和精力，特別是當(dāng)你目標(biāo)語言的內(nèi)在特征與你的母語有明顯不同的時(shí)候。最近，在一個(gè)名叫“老外學(xué)中文最痛苦的地方”的YouTube視頻中，四名西方人講述了學(xué)中文的親身經(jīng)歷，探討的正是這種費(fèi)時(shí)費(fèi)力的情況。

Whether you’ve already dabbled in Chinese yourself or are thinking about it, the short clip makes for an interesting watch for anyone looking to expand their linguistic horizons.
不管你是漢語的初學(xué)者還是正打算學(xué)漢語，只要你想開闊眼界，了解語言學(xué)，這段有趣的小視頻一定不會(huì)讓你失望。

At only two minutes and 13 seconds, this video is too short to do any more than touch on some of the basic linguistic features of Chinese or to take into account the different varieties of Chinese in detail. It serves as a great introduction, however, to explain some of the typical difficulties that foreigners run into while studying Chinese as a second language.
這個(gè)視頻只有2分13秒，這么短的時(shí)間只夠我們略窺漢語的基本語言學(xué)特征或者漢語各種變體的具體差異。但是，作為一個(gè)介紹，這個(gè)視頻是非常不錯(cuò)的。在學(xué)習(xí)漢語作為第二語言的過程中，外國人會(huì)遇到很多典型的困難，這個(gè)視頻就對(duì)其中的一些作了解釋。

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