外国一位脱口秀演员在讲述自己学汉语的感受时说道，汉字看起来像各种“棚子”形状的小画：

 

You want to be fluent in Chinese? You are going to memorize about 44,000 subtly different drawings of sheds.

如果你要流利地说中文，你需要记住约4.4万个长得差不多的像“棚子”一样的小图画。

 

对于英语母语者来说，英语与汉语最明显的区别在于，英语属于表音文字，字符表示语言符号的音，通过英语单词的拼写可以判断它的读音，汉语则不能。

 

The relationship between the spoken and written Chinese language is rather complex. Its written form has no clues as to how it is actually pronounced.

汉语的书面形式与读音之间的关系相当复杂。从书面文字中无法判断其读音。

 

除此之外，同音字也是学习汉语的一个难点。

 

The tone system also is a pain because there are many homophones in Chinese only distinguishable by the four tones. Even this is often not enough unless the actual context and exact phrase are identified.

声调系统也是一个难题。汉语中有很多同音字，只靠四个声调来区分，而这很难区分开来，除非能确定上下文及短语的含义。