原来对于英语国家的人来说，这两门外语是最难的
（原文翻译提供——尚恩教育留学事业部）
(CNN) —With so much time on our hands during lockdown, many of us have entertained the idea of expanding our horizons.
在疫情期间，由于时间充裕，我们许多人都愿意去学习一些新东西来拓展自己的见识。
Learning a foreign language is an obvious option.
显而易见的学习外语是一个不错的选择。
It's one that I would personally endorse: My individual circumstances were such that, by the age of 12, I could speak German, Greek and English, so languages became my passion and my hobby.
我个人会赞同这一点：我的个人情况是在我12岁时我会说德语，希腊语和英语，因此语言成为我的激情和爱好。
My advice is that you should learn a language because you're also interested in the culture and the country.
我的建议是，如果你也对这个国家的文化和这个国家感兴趣。你应该学习这跟国家语言。
archaic
If you like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, learn Russian. If you're going to live in Bangkok, learn Thai. If your partner is Mexican, learn Spanish.
如果你喜欢托尔斯泰和陀思妥耶夫斯基，请学习俄语。如果你要住在曼谷，请学习泰语。如果你的伴侣是墨西哥人，请学习西班牙语。
And remember: Although you can get by as a tourist in, possibly, weeks, mastering a language is a long-term commitment taking years, not months.
请记住：虽然你可以在几周内学会一名游客需要的语言水平，但是掌握一种语言是一项长期的任务，需要花费数年而不是数月的时间。
Here are a few examples, ranked in order of the number of hours it takes the average learner to master them from lowest to highest:
以下是一些示例，按普通学习者从最低到最高掌握它们所花费的小时数进行排序：
（此处我们挑选的最简单的和最难的）
Easiest (about 600 hours of study)
最简单（大约600个小时的学习时间）
After just 600 hours of study, you'll have no trouble fitting in on the streets of Paris.
仅需600个小时的学习，你便可以轻松适应巴黎的生活。
Along with Dutch and Norwegian, the popular Latin languages -- Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese -- require about 600 hours of study to achieve 'general professional proficiency' in speaking and reading.
与荷兰语和挪威语一起，流行的拉丁语-意大利语，法语，西班牙语和葡萄牙语-大约需要600个小时的学习时间，就可以达到口语和阅读的“一般专业水平”。
Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest for native English speakers to learn, followed by Portuguese and finally French.
其中，西班牙语和意大利语是母语为英语的人最容易学习的语言，其次是葡萄牙语，最后是法语。
They share many words with English, but it's that common vocabulary that creates 'false friends' -- words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly as
meanings have drifted with time.
他们与英语共享许多单词，但是正是这些共同的词汇创造了“虚假的朋友”，即看起来或听起来相似，但随着时间的推移，意思也不尽相同。
While French and Italian are pretty standardized, you must choose whether to learn Latin American Spanish or 'castellano,' which is spoken in Spain; they differ as much as US English and British English.
虽然法语和意大利语非常标准化，但是您必须选择学习拉丁美洲的西班牙语还是“ castellano”；它们与美国英语和英国英语一样有很多差别。
The choice is even more striking with Portuguese; long ago I opted for Brazilian and to this day I still can't properly understand speakers from Portugal.

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