今天的华尔街日报对本年度故事“美国人都争相让他们的孩子学习普通话”进行了后续报道。记者发现，某些家庭突然销声匿迹了一段时间。一名在加州工作的律师休假一年，举家搬迁到成都，就为融入真实的汉语语言环境。某一家庭在2007年移居新加坡，只为使孩子们在说普通话的氛围里成长。其他家长虽动作没那么大，不过
“从加利福尼亚州到缅因州，多数家庭都争相把子女送去学普通话。父母们有的为孩子请中文老师，有的通过网络电话（Skype）跟远在北京的教师学习，有的则为孩子请了会说汉语的保姆。还有一些父母在孩子房间播放普通话配音的迪斯尼影片，而针对孩子学说普通话的苹果手机应用程序就更是不胜枚举。”
文章继续写道：
“普通话是出了名的难学。汉语属声调语言，想要说得流利需掌握成千上万个汉字。汉语能力的构建需2200个学时，其中半数时间须在使用汉语的国家度过。而依据美国国务院外交服务机构调查显示，学习西班牙语只需600至750学时。”
我楼上邻居的几个孩子在纽约市内一所中英文双语学校读了几年。这是本市唯一一所类似的公立学校。出于好奇，有一天，在我带着儿子去公园的路上，我给其中一个年纪较小（约8岁）的孩子出了个小测验。
我问：“你怎么说'家’?”
男孩：“嗯，我忘了。”
我问：“'车’怎么说？”
男孩：“呃...... 呃......”
我问：“怎么说'我是美国人呢’？”
男孩：“我是中国人。”
我说：“嗯，我敢肯定你说的是'我是中国人’。难道'American’不应该说成'美国人’吗？”
男孩：“噢，没错！”
我问：“那该怎么说'他是我的朋友’呢？”
男孩：“哦，他是我的朋友”。
终于……他第一次说对了。
这个小孩子从幼儿园起就在学汉语了。严格来讲，普通话是一个课后自愿学习的科目，但我想几乎所有孩子每天在学校学习汉语的时间都有2.5小时。每学年如按180天计算，只用两年时间，这个孩子学习汉语的时间约达900小时。（有的可能学了三年，这我不确定。）当然，他没法和国务院外交官比，他的智力还无法承担那么多压力。孩子的大脑仍处于发育阶段，这是他能学好口语的原因之一。他是一个聪明的孩子。我也只能认为国务院是对的：学习普通话对于以英语为母语的人来说确实很难，融入对方语言环境的确非常重要。
我对那些学了一段时间汉语的人的经历很感兴趣。华尔街日报提到声调和汉字是学习汉语的难点，但我认为，有一个问题大过其他。即，掌握并使用四声以准确和流利的会话；或学习上万个汉字以能读写，哪一个才是更大的困难？
我在这个孩子家见过他们的书法作业，我也很清楚孩子们在阅读和写作上花了很多时间。可这是对的吗？或者说，当你和小孩子一块时，你关心的是他所说的内容还是他使用的拼音？答案很重要，因为未来几年越来越多的美国人打算学习普通话，采用正确的教学法至关重要。
Jun 27th 2012, 17:49 by R.L.G. | NEW YORKChinese
Learning Mandarin, whatever it takes
families are enrolling their children in Mandarin-immersion programs that are springing up from California to Maine. They are hiring tutors, Skyping with teachers in Beijing and recruiting Chinese-speaking nannies. Some are stocking their playrooms with Disney videos in Mandarin—not to mention the iPhone apps aimed at making kids into Mandarin speakers. The article goes on that Mandarin is notoriously difficult to learn. The language is tonal, and fluency requires mastering thousands of characters. Mandarin competence takes 2,200 class hours, with half of that time spent in a country where it's spoken, according to the U.S. State Department's Foreign Service Institute, whereas Spanish can be learned in 600 to 750 class hours. My upstairs neighbours' children have attended a Chinese-English bilingual school in New York for several years. It's the only public school of its kind in the city. Curious one day, I plied the younger one (eight years old) with a little quiz as we walked to the park with my son. Me: "How do you say 'house'?" Boy: "Uh, I forget." Me: "How about 'car'?" Boy: "Uh... hm..." Me: "How about 'I am American?'" Boy: "Wo shi Zhongguo ren." Me: "Hm, I'm pretty sure that means 'I am Chinese.' Isn't American Meiguo ren?" Boy: "Oh, that's right!" Me: "How about 'he is my friend?'" Boy: "Oh! Ta shi wode pengyou." Finally a perfect answer on the first go. This kid has been in this program since kindergarten. The Mandarin program is strictly speaking an after-school, voluntary one, but all kids go after school and study the language for 2.5 hours per day, I believe. At 180 school days a year, for just two years, he would have had roughly 900 hours of instruction and exposure, starting when he was quite small. (He may have had three years; I'm not sure.) Of course he's still quite small, and unlike State Department diplomats, doesn't have adult intellectual equipment to bring to bear. He does have a child's still-plastic brain, one of the reasons his accent was excellent. He's a bright kid. I can only take it that the State Department is right: learning Mandarin is very hard for a native English-speaker, and true immersion is pretty important. I'm interested in the experience of those who have studied Chinese for a while. The Journal mentions both the tones and characters as difficulties, but I have a hunch one problem is rather bigger than the other. Which is a tougher challenge: mastering and using the four tones (several each second) for accurate and fluent speech? Or learning the thousands of characters needed to read and write?
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