seem的过去式
When considering which foreign languages to study, some people shy away from those that use a different alphabet. Those random–looking squig-gles seem to symbolize the impenetrabil-ity of the language, the difficulty of the task ahead.
每当人们考虑学一门外语，一部分人不愿意学习那些字母跟其母语不一样的语言。那些看似随机的奇形怪状的字母意味着这门语言的神秘莫测，学习难度更是不言而喻。
So it can be surprising to hear devo-tees of Russian say the alphabet is the easiest part of the job. The Cyrillic script, like the Roman one, has its origins in the Greek alphabet. As a result, some letters look the same and are used near identi-cally. Others look the same but have different pronunciations, like the p in Cyrillic, which stands for an r–sound. For Russian, that cuts the task down to only about 20 entirely new characters. These can comfortably be learned in a week, and soon mastered to the point that they present little trouble. An alphabet, in other words, is just an alphabet. A few tricks aside (such as the occasional omis-sion of vowels), other versions do what the Roman one does: represent sounds.
因此，如果谁说学俄语的时候字母是最好学的，那应该是不可能的。像是西里尔字母与罗马字母一样，都源自希腊语。因此，这些语种中，有些长得一样的字母用法可能也基本相同。有些字母虽然长得一样，但是发音不同，比如西里尔语中的字母“p”，读“r”的音。这么一来对于俄罗斯人而言，大概只有20个字母是需要新学的。大大减少了工作量。这些内容一周就可以轻松学会，并很快掌握。换句话说，字母就仅仅是字母。除了一些小的难点（比如偶尔省略元音），其他字母都发音，这跟俄语是一样的。
Foreign languages really become hard when they have features that do not appear in your own—things you never imagined you would have to learn. Which is another way of saying that languages slice up the messy reality of experience in strikingly different ways.
如果一门外语和你的母语之间有很多不同，那么这门语言是很难学的。甚至有些东西是你想像不到的。换句话说，语言用自己的方式，给了不同语种的人们，截然不同的体验。
This is easily illustrated with concrete vocabulary. Sometimes the meanings of foreign words and their English equiv-alents overlap but don’t match exactly. Danish, for instance, does not have a word for “wood”; it just uses “tree” (trae). Or consider colors, which lie on a spec-trum that different languages segment differently. In Japanese, ao traditionally refers to both green and blue. Some green items are covered by a different word, midori, but ao applies to some vegetables and green traffic lights (which, to make matters more confusing, are slightly blueish in Japan). As a result, ao is rather tricky to wield.
这可以通过具体的词汇来进行解说。有时，一个外语单词的意思与其对应的英文单词意思重叠，但不完全一样。比如，丹麦语是没有“木头”这个词的。他们只说“树”。或者，关于颜色，不同语言的色谱也是不一样的。比如，在日语里，ao通常表示绿色和蓝色。但有些绿色的物件，会用另一个单词midori来描述。但但但是，ao又用于描述一些蔬菜和红绿灯里的绿灯（更混乱的是，日本的绿灯其实是有点青色的）。因此，用起来更加难搞。
Life becomes tougher still when other languages make distinctions that yours ignores. Russian splits blue into light (goluboi) and dark (sinii); foreigners can be baffled by what to call, say, a mid-blue pair of jeans. Plenty of other “basic” English words are similarly broken down in their foreign corollaries. “Wall” and “corner” seem like simple concepts, until you learn languages that sensibly distinguish be-tween a city’s walls and a bedroom’s, interior corners and street corners, and so on.
如果一些东西在一门外语里进行了区分，但是你的母语中将其混为一谈，那就更复杂。比如，俄语里明确区分淡蓝色和深蓝色。那么外国人就很难说了，一条，中蓝色的，牛仔裤（译者注：不是很深，也不是很淡）。大多数基础英文单词在其他语种里也被明确地进行了细分。比如，墙和角看起来是两个很简单的单词。但是，有些语言非常“贴心”地用了不同的单词描述城市的墙和卧室的墙，屋里的角和街上的角，等等。
These problems are tractable on their own; you don’t often have to refer to a corner in casual conversation. But when other languages make structural dis-tinctions missing from your native ton-gue—often in the operation of verbs—the mental effort seems never-ending. English has verbs- of- all- work that seem straight- forward enough until you try to translate them. In languages like German, “put” is divided into verbs that signify hanging, laying something flat and placing something tall and thin. “Go” in Russian is a nightmare, with a suite of verbs dis-tinguishing walking and traveling by vehicle, one-way and round trips, single and repeated journeys, and other nice- ties. You can specify all these things in English if you want to; the difference is that in Russian, you must.
这些问题本身是可以解决的。你在日常谈话中也不会经常提到“角”这个词。但是，当一门外语和你的母语在结构上也不相同时，通常是动词的变位，那真的是非常麻烦了。英语的动词看似直白，但却并不容易翻译。德语将动词“放”细分为“挂”，“平放”和“放置瘦高型的物件”。俄语动词“走”的变形非常复杂，包括了“走路”，“乘坐交通工具出行”，“单程”，“往返”，“单词出行”和“反复出行”等等。英语里也可以选择区分这些行为，但在俄语里，你却是别无选择，不得不分。
Sometimes verb systems force choic-es on speakers not only for individual verbs, but for all of them. Many English- speakers are familiar with languages, such as French and Italian, which have two different past tenses, for completed actions and for habitual or continued ones. But verb systems get much more exotic than that.
有时，动词系统迫使讲者不仅要选择单个动词，而是要对所有动词进行选择。很多英语讲者对法语、意大利语这样的语言很熟悉。动词过去式分为过去已完成的动作和习惯或持续的动作。但动词系统就更奇特了。
“Evidential” languages require a verb ending that shows how the speaker knows that the statement made is true. Turkish is one of them; others, such as a cluster in the Amazon, have particularly complex—and obligatory—evidentiality rules. Many languages mark subjects and direct objects of sentences in distinct ways. But in Basque, subjects of intransi-tive verbs look like direct objects themselves, while subjects of transitive verbs get a special form. If Martin catches sight of Diego, Basques say the equivalent of “Martinek sees Diego.”
证据类语言需要一个动词结尾来表明讲者如何确认陈述是正确的。土耳其语就是这样的。其他语言，比如亚马逊的语言集群，有特别复杂和强制性的证据规则。许多语言用不同的方式标记句子的主语和直接宾语。但在巴斯克语中，不及物动词的主语本身就像直接宾语，而及物动词的主语则形式特殊。如果马丁看见了迭戈，巴斯克语与英语结构一致，“马丁看见迭戈”。
In the end, the “hard” languages to learn are not those that do what your own language does in a new way. They are the ones that make you constantly pay attention to distinctions in the world that yours blithely passes over. It is a bit like a personal trainer putting you through entirely new exercises. You might have thought yourself fit before, but the next day you will wake up sore in muscles you never knew you had.
最后，如果一种语言和你的母语规律一致，只是表达形式不同，那不算是难学的语言。那些难学的语言往往需要你不断关注往往被世人忽视的不同点。有点像一个私人健身教练，带你开启一段全新的训练之旅。正如你在健身房里，前一天晚还觉得自己很健美，但转天就会发现自己浑身肌肉酸痛，有些肌肉你根本不知道它们的存在。
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