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原因一：書寫方法簡直是天方夜譚
 

Because the writing system is ridiculous

漢字的美麗，無可爭議。不過這種表意文字在日常生活中并不是很實用。漢語之所以難學，就是因為要學的漢字實在太多，這也是絕對的事實。還有，漢字的拼寫方式也不是很規(guī)則，也就是說，如果從一個漢字的組合方式中得不到任何顯而易見的語義提示，或者其中沒有包含什么有用的偏旁部首，就會把一個漢字的寫法忘得干干凈凈。

The beauty of the characters is indisputable, but these ideograms weren't too practical for daily use. It is absolutely true that Chinese is hard because of the huge number of characters one has to learn. And Chinese is not very phonetic, which means that often you just completely forget how to write a character, if there is no obvious semantic clue in the radical, and no helpful phonetic component somewhere in the character.

原因二：漢語是不能用通俗意義上的字母排列來表意的

 Because the language doesn't have the common sense to use an alphabet

英語之所以好學，就是因為掌握英語書寫方法所需要的技能也就是26個字母而已，而且只要沿水平方向、從左到右、從頁面的一邊寫到另一邊就可以了。相比之下，盡管中文也有組成漢字的那些共用的偏旁部首，卻沒有相應的字母?？梢哉f，組成漢字的偏旁部首是按照兩個方向來排列的，而不象字母那樣只按一個方向排列，看起來很整潔。

The English is so easy because of the skills needed to master the writing system are 26 letters and they are written from left to right ,horizontally, across the page, with spaces to indicate word boundaries. In comparison, Chinese has nothing that corresponds to an alphabet, though there are recurring components that make up the characters. It can be said that the components of Chinese characters are arrayed in two dimensions, rather than in the neat one-dimensional rows of alphabetic writing.

原因三：即使在字典中查漢字也是非常復雜

Because even looking up a word in the dictionary is complicated

學習漢語最莫名其妙的困難之一，就是即使僅僅學會怎么查字典，也要耗費一個秘書學校整個學期的學習時間。漢語一定是地球上最精于運用字典的語言了，因為各種各樣的字典實在太多。
One of the most unreasonably difficult things about learning Chinese is that merely learning how to look up a word in the dictionary is about the equivalent of an entire semester of secretarial school. Chinese must also be one of the most dictionary-intensive languages on earth for there are various dictionaries.

原因四：中文里面還有古漢語（文言文）
Because there's classical Chinese (wenyanwen)

如果說，現(xiàn)代漢語再難也不過是讓你無所適從而已，那么古漢語就簡直是故意讓人永遠也別學似的。古漢語確實含有數(shù)千年來積累起來的各種宮廷秘聞，用詞簡潔扼要，簡直象某種密碼，只適合那些天生的知識精英，他們對文學的一切了然于心。

Whereas modern Mandarin is merely perversely hard, classical Chinese is deliberately impossible. Classical Chinese really consists of several centuries of esoteric anecdotes and in-jokes written in a kind of terse, miserly code for dissemination among a small, elite group of intellectually-inbred bookworms who already knew the whole literature backwards and forwards.

原因五：（羅馬式）拼音方案太多且都讓人精疲力盡

Because there are too many romanization methods and they all suck

也許聽起來有些刺耳，但漢語的拼音方案確實太多，而大多數(shù)的拼音方案不是什么文字委員會提倡的，就是語言學家提出來的，更糟糕的是由那些語言學家組成的文字委員會提出來的。當然，要發(fā)明一種羅馬式拼音方案確是一項技巧性很強的高難度工程，盡管有些方案比其他方案好，但任何方案都含有些無法憑直覺讀的拼寫。

Perhaps that's too harsh, but it is true that there are too many of them, and most of them were designed either by committee or by linguists, or -- even worse -- by a committee of linguists. It is, of course, a very tricky task to devise a romanization method; some are better than others, but all involve plenty of counterintuitive spellings.

原因六：漢語語調(diào)稀奇古怪
 Because tonal languages are weird

在學漢語過程中，最容易聽到的抱怨正是這一點，西方人對漢語最害怕的也是這一點，簡直是婦孺皆知。如果不是從小就會說漢語，那你就等著不停地去死記那些元音輔音吧。真正的難題還要等你真的要用漢語進行表達的時候才會出現(xiàn)。漢語的那些語調(diào)和強調(diào)習慣簡直是與生俱來的，根深蒂固的，簡直不可思議。

It's one of the most common complaints about learning Chinese, and it's also one of the aspects of the language that westerners are notoriously bad at. As non-native speakers, you must memorize along with the vowels and consonants. The real difficulty comes in when you start to really use Chinese to express yourself. Intonation and stress habits are incredibly ingrained and second-nature.

原因七：存在文化差異
Because there is culture difference

東方、西方相互之間文化分隔的時間太長，這也是漢語對于西方人來說為何那么難學的主要原因。盡管在過去幾十年里中國和西方之間有了廣泛的接觸，然而，中國人的知識和思想浩瀚如海，西方人卻無緣享用。即使有朝一日西方人想和中國人融合成一體，其障礙往往也并非只是語言一個方面而已，最大的障礙是巨大的文化差異。

One of the main reasons Chinese is so difficult for westerners is that the culture between the East and the West has been isolated for so long. China has had extensive contact with the West in the last few decades, but there is still a vast sea of knowledge and ideas that is not shared by both cultures. When westerners and Chinese get together, there is often not just a language barrier, but an immense cultural barrier as well.