What is sacrificed in the Chinese language to make it the world's most compact and efficient? What tasks are more difficult or time consuming in Chinese? There must be some kind of trade-off.

漢語做出了哪些犧牲，才使她成為世界上最緊湊、最高效的語言？她在哪些方面使用起來比較困難或耗時？肯定存在一些平衡折中吧

評論翻譯

原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網(wǎng) http://www.  轉(zhuǎn)載請注明出處


Mo Chen, lives in China (1989-present)

Mo Chen，在中國生活（1989年至今）

This question right here is one of the more legitimate questions I’ve seen on Quora about Chinese language.
We write in Chinese characters, called Hanzi. The entirety of our language is consisted of it.
I won’t know enough about all languages in the world to claim that it’s the “world’s most compact and efficient” one, but it’s definitely at the top of the list, if it is not at the absolute top of it.
Just look at how compact this language is (I have avoided using four-character expressions):

你的提問算是我在Quora上看到的關(guān)于漢語的比較合理的一個問題了。我們用來書寫的漢字，讀作“Hanzi”。我們的整個語言體系就是由它構(gòu)成的。
由于不夠了解世界上所有其他的語言，我不能斷言漢語是“世界上最緊湊、最高效的語言”，但就算不是無可爭議的第一名，它也絕對會是排名最靠前的之一。
看看這種語言有多緊湊吧（我已盡量避免使用四字短語）：



Its advantage would have been more prominent over modern English, which seemed like a much more justifiable tradeoff in its complexity of each character structure. And this is how most Chinese texts are written in dynasty period, because the ancient Chinese people realize that it’s such a hassle writing each character. To quote their own words “(You should) cherish characters as you cherish gold”, or 惜字如金. By this principle, if a thing can be described with two characters, they would not use a third one.
The ancient way of writing is almost half length as that of modern Chinese language, which is already shorter than that of English.
Mind-boggling, isn’t it?
If it is any consolation, you should know that today, most people in China are not proficient in ancient Chinese. We cannot read it easily without external help, much less write in it. In a way, you can regard ancient Chinese a different language than modern Chinese.

和現(xiàn)代英語比起來，古漢語的優(yōu)勢就更明顯了，似乎也更能平衡它在字符結(jié)構(gòu)上的復(fù)雜度。而這就是封建王朝時期幾乎所有中文文獻的寫法，因為古代中國人也意識到書寫的麻煩，用他們自己的話說就是“（你應(yīng)該）像珍惜黃金一樣珍惜你的用字”——即，惜字如金。根據(jù)這一原則，如果能用兩個字描述一件事，就絕不用第三個字。按古漢語的方式書寫，長度幾乎只有現(xiàn)代漢語的一半，而后者已經(jīng)比英文精簡了。
令人難以置信，是不是？
但話又說回來，時至今日大多數(shù)中國人都不再精通古漢語了。如果沒有任何輔助，我們要讀懂它們都不容易，更不要說用古漢語寫作。在某種程度上，你甚至可以認(rèn)為古漢語是不同于現(xiàn)代漢語的另一種語言。



What about 萬人空巷? Or “ten thousand people absent from alleys”? If we say there is a concert of Jay Chow in the city, and it had made the city “ten thousand people absent from alleys”? Does that mean the concert is popular, or so bad that people are fleeing the city?
It actually means the concert is extremely popular, people leave their homes to see it, making the homes empty.
And how about we say a girl is 沉魚落雁? Or “Fish sinks in water, duck falls from the sky”? Is it she was so ugly that creatures die when they see her?
No, it is actually the highest praise of beauty, it means when a fish sees her it forgets to swim, and a duck sees her it forgets to flap.

但另一個例子，“萬人空巷”又如何？它字面意思是“街巷里一下少了一萬人而空空蕩蕩”。比如，“周杰倫舉辦的演唱會讓整座城市萬人空巷”，這是指演唱會很受歡迎呢，還是太可怕人們不得不大量逃離城區(qū)？
實際上它是指演唱會非常受歡迎，人們?nèi)寂苋⒓右灾羷e處都空空蕩蕩。
用成語形容一個女孩“沉魚落雁”又是什么意思？字面上它是說這女孩“讓魚都沉到水底，大雁從天上掉下來”——難道是說她長得太奇特，動物們看她一眼就全都翹了辮子？
不，實際上這是對美的最高評價，意思是魚兒見了她忘了游動，大雁看到她也忘了扇動翅膀。



（答者原文：）
你上公交了么？我上了。
你上清華了么？我上了。
你上小學(xué)了么？我上了。
對面白虎位置不好，我們可以打這波團戰(zhàn)！我上了。(DOTA the game)
你手表記得上發(fā)條。我上了。
炒土豆上醬油了么？我上了。
四號桌菜好了。我上了。
開荒打團了，你人呢？我上了。(World of Warcraft the game)
做好戰(zhàn)斗準(zhǔn)備，槍都上上膛。我上了。

To conclude: In order to achieve conciseness compared to English Language, Chinese language has sacrificed three things:
1. Easiness to write individual characters.
2. Explicit and articulating regular expressions.
3. Independency from context.

總結(jié)一下：為了達到簡捷化，與英語相比，漢語做了三個方面的犧牲：
1，單個字符的書寫難度
2，大量明確而嚴(yán)格的固定表達法
3，對語境的高度依賴

Michael Zhang, Astrophysics graduate student

Michael Zhang，天體物理學(xué)研究生

Short answer: Chinese (specifically Mandarin) is spoken more slowly.
Long answer: This paper investigates the syllable rate, information density, and information rate of different languages. Information density is what you’re thinking of when you say “compact and efficient”. It’s the amount of information, on average, that each syllable of the language contains. Syllable rate is how many sounds an average speaker speaks per second. Information rate is information density multiplied by syllable rate—that is, the amount of information conveyed every second by a speaker.

簡短地說：漢語（尤其是普通話）說起來比較慢。
詳細回答：http://ohll.ish-lyon./ful ... appear_Language.pdf（文章標(biāo)題：《不同語種口語表達信息率的對比分析》）這篇文章研究了不同語言的音節(jié)速率、信息密度和信息速率。當(dāng)你說“緊湊而高效”時你所指的應(yīng)該就是信息密度了——即每一個音節(jié)包含的平均信息量；音節(jié)率則是指說話者每秒鐘能講出多少個音節(jié)；信息速率就是用信息密度乘以音節(jié)速率，即說話者每秒鐘所能傳遞的信息量。



表1：不同語言的信息密度、音節(jié)速率、信息速率對比。（取平均值，誤差不超過5%；以越南語為基準(zhǔn)參照）

If you look at Table 1 on page 40, you see that Mandarin has the highest information density of all the languages they considered, but also the lowest syllable rate, at 5.18 syllables per second. On the other hand, Spanish has the lowest information density, but the highest syllable rate (7.82 syllables per second). These balance out so that every language they tested, except for Japanese, has a very similar information rate. (I’m not sure why Japanese is such an outlier, but this reddit thread has a few clues.)

可以看看第40頁的表1，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)普通話的信息密度是他們所考察的所有語言中最高的，但相應(yīng)地，音節(jié)速率也是最低的，約為每秒5.18個音節(jié)。與之相比，西班牙語的信息密度最低，但音節(jié)率卻最高（達每秒7.82個音節(jié)）。經(jīng)此平衡，使得除了日語之外，每種受測語言都有非常接近的信息速率。（我不確定為什么日語如此奇葩，但Reddit上的這個帖子似乎提供了一些線索：https://www./r/askscie ... e_most_information/）



Learning it is extremely time consuming, making it difficult to adopt.
There were about 20 students in my college class, some of whom spoke of their success with other languages, but i would say at least half of them could not have gotten a passing grade that first semester and in the second semester there were only two of us left.
I made flash cards for every word we learned and drilled on those for an hour plus every night. By the end of the year I think there were about 150 words I could reliably speak, hear, read and write and perhaps another 200 that I had some partial mastery of.
That is way less you would acquire studying a European language.

而由于學(xué)起來非常耗時，導(dǎo)致它難以被廣泛采用。
我大學(xué)（中文）班上大約有20名同學(xué)，其中一些人已經(jīng)成功掌握了其它外語，但他們中至少有一半還是在第一學(xué)期就掛科了。而到第二學(xué)期，我們就只剩下了兩個人。
我給我們學(xué)的每一個漢字制作速記卡，每天晚上花1個小時努力地學(xué)。一年下來，我能準(zhǔn)確無誤地聽、說、讀、寫的漢字大概有150個，或許還有200個字算是部分掌握的。（這學(xué)習(xí)能力……）
學(xué)一門歐洲國家語言需要的精力實在少太多。

Unlike with an alphabetic language, the writing is little indication of the sound.
Our teacher, from Beijing, also told us of the problem of regional variation in pronunciation and said that people from neighboring areas might be incomprehensible to each other.
You have to go pretty far in the English-speaking world to encounter truly incomprehensible English.

與字母語言不同，漢字書寫和發(fā)音幾乎沒有聯(lián)系。
我們來自北京的老師也給我們介紹過漢字發(fā)音的地方差異問題，還說甚至是鄰近地區(qū)的人可能都無法聽懂對方的話。
而在英語世界里，你需要走很遠很遠的路，才可能遇上你真正聽不懂的方言。

Jamie Cawley, LIved in China 2012-2018

Jamie Cawley，2012～2018年生活在中國



James Bollinger, American, Living in Japan

James Bollinger, 美國人，居于日本

I speak and read Japanese about as well as an educated native, and I’ve dabbled in Chinese, but as others have said, the characters are very information dense. One character in Chinese or Japanese could have the same information as several in English.
On the other hand, the syllables themselves are not quite as dense (in Japanese, especially), and there are many homophones. There are so many homophones in Japanese that reading in the phonetic alphabet is much much harder than reading in the Chinese characters.

我的日語讀、說能力不輸給受過教育的當(dāng)?shù)厝恕Ｎ乙苍娅C過漢語，但正如其他人所說，漢字的信息密度非常大。漢語或日語中的一個字符包含的信息可以相當(dāng)于好幾個英文單詞。
另一方面，（尤其是日語的）音節(jié)本身密度卻不那么高，還有就是大量同音字。日語中的同音字如此之多，以至如果僅靠讀注音，要弄懂它比讀漢字的拼音還要困難很多很多。



Anonymous
Oral communication is more difficult.
Because of the compact language, there is only a little room for error in spoken Chinese. It has been shown that Chinese is spoken slower than other languages. It makes sense, considering that there is only a little room for error, it has to be spoken slowly. “inefficient” English and French, on the other hand, can be spoken rapidly.

（漢語）口語交流相對比較困難。
正因為漢語的緊湊性，講漢語時容錯空間非常小。已經(jīng)有研究表明，講漢語比講其它語言的速度慢。這也很合理，考慮到她極小的容錯空間，你必須慢慢講話。與之相比，“低效”的英語和法語可以說得很快。