欢迎各位参加汉语学习班。作为学习班的第一课，我想介绍一下汉语有别于欧洲语言的一些普通特征。

对于那些只熟悉普通的欧洲语言的人来说,汉语是一种截然不同的语言。但是，如果我们仔细观察一下汉语的结构，我们便可发现这种结构并非特别复杂。事实上汉语在许多方面较西方语言更为简单。既然汉语与欧洲语言之间存有一些根本性的不同点，那么了解一下汉语结构及其发展过程，将有助于各位学习汉语。

Welcome to the Program of Chinese as a Foreign Language. For the first session of this program, I wish to highlight some general aspects of Chinese which distinguish this language from European languages.

To people who are familiar only with the common European languages, the Chinese language is strikingly different. Yet, when we examine the structure of the Chinese language, we find that it is not conspicuously complex. Indeed, in many ways it is simpler than the Western languages. But since Chinese does differ from European languages in some fundamental respects, some knowledge of its structure and historical development will help you to learn the language.

在西方人看来，汉语的书写体系是一种全新的体系：他们所看到的不是排列整齐、笔画简单的字母,而是数以千计、形态各异的文字，许多文字看上去错综复杂,笔画纵横交错得令人难以置信。对许多西方人来说，汉语听上去颇有旋律感,或许有点像歌曲。你若透过汉语的表象看其内部结构,也许会有更多的惊讶。汉语基本上没有什么动词变化形式,也没有名词变格。汉语的语法全然没有那些令西方学童生畏的、语法手册中必有的词形变化表。例如,英语动词 to buy有各种变化形式,如buy, bought 和 buying,而汉语只有一种形式“买”。又如英语名词book有单复数之分,而汉语只有“书”一种形式。上下文常常可以清楚地表明动词的时态和语态,以及名词的数。因而,汉语无需依靠这种特别的语法结构。也许正因为汉语这种结构上的简洁性,著名的美国人类学暨语言学家爱德华・萨皮尔将汉语描绘为一种有着“合理的逻辑性”的语言。

To the Western eye, the writing system of Chinese is altogether novel: instead of neat rows of simple alphabetic letters there are thousands of unique characters. many of which seem incredibly intricate. To the ear of many Westerners, the language sounds rather melodious, perhaps a little like singing. When you peer below the surface, there may be more surprises for you. The language has virtually no conjugation for its verbs and no declension for its nouns. The inevitable paradigns that Western school-children have come to dread in their grammar books are all-together absent in the grammar of Chinese. For example, for the various forms of the English verb "to buy", such as "buy", "bought" and "buying", Chinese has the single form mai. For the singular and plural forms of the English noun "book", the Chinese is shu. Most of the time it is quite clear from the context what tense or mood is intended for a verb and what number is intended for a noun. Hence the Chinese language does not bother much with this particular type of redundancy in its grammar. Perhaps it is this structural simplicity of the language that moves the well-known American anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir to characterize it as "soberly logical".