英语阅读外国经济学家说中文是最实用的外语.docVIP

美联英语提供：外国经济学家说：中文是最实用的外语 两分钟做个小测试，看看你的英语水平/test/kuaisu.aspx?tid=16-73675-0 一个大一新生的烦恼： I’m gearing up for my freshman year of college, and I’m trying to decide which language to study. I’d like to pick the language that will be most practical. If you had to pick just one, which would you recommend? -Freshman 亲爱的艾米莉， 我正在为我的大一生活做准备，并且我在试着选定要学习的语言。我想选一门最实用的语言。如果你要选一门语言来学习的话，你会推荐哪种语言呢？ ? 经济学家Emily Oster的回答： As someone who took six years of Latin, I am not sure I am the best source for information on what language will be practical, but I’ll give it a try. 作为一个学习了6年拉丁语的人，我不确定自己是否是提供实用语言信息的最佳人选，不过我会试试看。 First, let me say I don’t think you are thinking about this quite the right way. You asked me about what language would be most practical. This suggests you抮e thinking about only one side of the choice: the benefit side. Making the optimal choice requires thinking about both benefits and costs. In this case, I抎 argue there may be very different costs to acquiring?proficiency爄n different languages. It is a lot harder for most English-speakers to learn Japanese than to learn Spanish. 首先，我得说我认为你考虑问题的方式不对。你问我什么语言最实用，这说明你只考虑了这项选择的一个方面：有益的一面。做出最佳选择需要考虑收益和成本两个方面。在这种情况下，我得说，要熟练掌握不同的语言可能会有不同的代价。对多数讲英语的人而言，学日语就比学西班牙语要困难地多。 But let’s start with the benefits. The benefits of a new language arise from the new people you can interact with in your new language. If maximizing this was your only goal, Mandarin would be the best choice: This is the native language for 14% of the world’s population, and most of those people do not speak English, so it’s win-win. 不过咱们先说说益处吧。学一门新语言的好处取决于你在学习新语言的过程中可以与之互动的新朋友。如果使这个优势最大化是你唯一的目标，那么普通话会是最佳的选择：这是占世界人口14%的人民的母语，而且他们多数人不讲英语，所以这是一种双赢。 Another language is Spanish, the native language of 5.8% of the world’s population, followed by English, Hindi, and Arabic. 另一种语言就是西班牙语，这是占世界人口5.8%的人民的母语，然后是英语、印地语和阿拉伯语。 You might also consider how?influential?a given language is likely to be in the future, based on an area’s anticipated economic growth. Mandarin reta