学习中文的可贵

　　THE VALUE OF STUDYING CHINESE

　　Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

　　菩提比丘

　　Talk at Spring Semester Graduation Ceremony, June 22nd 2013 Chuang Yen Chinese School

　　2013年6月22日菩提比丘讲于纽约庄严寺中文学校春季学期结业典礼

　　I am delighted to be here today, and I extend my congratulations to Lucia Liu for introducing this program and to all the students who have completed the spring semester. I hope that you who have enrolled in this program won”t stop with an elementary knowledge of Chinese but will continue to study Chinese year after year until you can speak and read it fluently.

　　今天同学们顺利的完成了本学期的学业。在这个充满喜悦的日子，我向你们表示最热烈的祝贺，希望你们一直坚持下去，直到能够讲出一口漂亮的中文。我也向培育你们的老师刘璐致以衷心的感谢。

　　Chuang Yen Monastery opened in the late 1980s.Its primary supporters through all these years have been Chinese people, yet this is the first time that the monastery has introduced a program in the Chinese language. This is due to the enthusiasm and commitment of Ms. Liu. She was not content simply to announce the class to the devotees of the monastery but she even went to the Putnam County School Board to make sure that students in schools throughout the area were informed that a Chinese class would be given at Chuang Yen Monastery. She knows that a knowledge of the Chinese language is not only for people of Chinese ancestry. For this reason we see here children of different racial and ethnic origins who have come to learn Chinese, and I was pleased to hear them speaking it so well. I hope that the Chinese language program here will become an ongoing project and that we will have more teachers, more students, and different levels of progress. It can become a center for disseminating a knowledge of Chinese throughout the greater Hudson Valley.

　　庄严寺是在八十年代由华裔建立的，中文课在这里还是首创。授课老师不仅在寺院里宣布这项活动，还到本地的学区进行大量的宣传工作，因为中文这个凝聚中国五千年智慧和文化的文字符号，不仅是华裔的财产，也是全世界人民的财产，就像中国的四大发明一样。今天，我们欣喜地看到不同种族和民族的学生们在这里学习，而且我很高兴听到你们把中文讲得这么好。我希望我们纽约庄严中文学校，会有更多的老师、更多的学生，和多种程度的班级，我也希望它能够成为整个哈德逊山谷传播知识的中心。

　　It is very important for us to learn to speak and read other languages. The lack of emphasis on language study in the United States should be a reason for national shame. When I went to junior high school and high school, we all had to learn another language—at that time, mainly French or Spanish were taught—but I”ve heard that nowadays language study has fallen into neglect. This is a pity. We Americans think everyone should speak English, but this only encourages a narrow way of thinking. In Europe almost everyone can speak several languages. My friend, the Czech monk Ven. Thomas Dhammadipa, who teaches here from time to time, knows twelve languages, including Hebrew, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese. Another monk friend, Ven. Analayo, knows about eight languages. When I went to Germany, I found that, in addition to German, almost everyone knows at least English and French, and some can speak five or six languages.

　　学习外国语言是非常重要的。我们这个国家对学习外语不够重视，就这一点而言，我们应该感到羞涩，同时这也是一种遗憾。我在上初中和高中的时候，外语是必修课，那时以法语和西班牙语为主。我们美国人认为每个人都应该讲英文，其实这是一种狭隘的思维方式。在欧洲，除了德国人，几乎每个人都知道英文和法文，有的甚至可以讲五、六种语言。我的捷克朋友性空法师，他常在这里指导禅修，他会讲十二种语言，包括希伯来文、俄文、中文和日文；另外一个朋友阿难拉尤(音译)他也会讲八种语言。

　　In today”s world, probably the most important language for everyone in America to learn is Chinese. China is now a major economic and political power, and I expect that in the future the relations between our two countries will grow ever closer. The Chinese cultural sphere extends still further, to Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and elsewhere. Because every language is built upon a different way of thinking, when you learn a new language you learn to think in a different way. You expand the working of your mind. You learn to see the world in a different way, through another pair of eyes. And this enables you to relate to people from different cultural backgrounds.

　　在当今社会，中文对美国人来说，可能是最重要的一种语言。中国现在有着强大的经济…

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