文档介绍：新概念英语培训:http://edu./460/
There are over 6,000 languages in the world. Some are more important than others,
not better or more advanced, just more important. Why? Because they are spoken by
more people, in more countries. That does not mean that Finnish is not important
to the Finns, and Maori is not important to the Maoris. It is just that these languages
are not so important to the rest of us.
世界上的语言超过 6000 种,其中有些更重要些,有些则不是很重要。这不是说那些重
要的就是更好的或者更高级的语言,而是因为使用者更多、分布也更广。芬兰语对芬兰人很
重要,毛利语对毛利人也很重要,但对于其他人来说就不那么重要了。
On the other hand, Mandarin Chinese is spoken by over one billion people. Chinese
ount for 60% of Japanese, Korean and Vietnamesevocabulary. Knowing
Chinese will help you learn these languages too. It helped me. Chinese culture has
influenced the world for thousands of years with its art, philosophy, technology,
food, medicine and performing arts. Today China’s economy is booming. Chinese seems
well worth learning.
而汉语普通话的使用者有十多亿,而且日语、韩语、越南语中有 60%的词汇都来源
于汉语,掌握了汉语,学习这些语言会容易许多,这是我的亲身体验。中国文化——包括艺
术、哲学、技术、饮食、医药以及表演艺术等——几千年来不断影响着世界,如今中国经济
又日益强大,所以汉语是值得好好学习的。
Spanish, French, Italian and Portugueseare essentially dialectsof the same
language. If you learn one, you can learn the others. I did. If you learn Spanish,
you open the door to the culture, music, history and possible business dealings with
800 million people in 60 countries, including the US and C