"我还发现,当我们听不懂时,说'是'的时候太多了.我记得有次在早午餐会,有位服务生问我朋友,'白面包还是全麦面包'？"
"He said 'yes'.
"他说'是'."
"We laughed, and he blushed. Ordering food is hard."
"我们都笑了,他脸刷一下就红了,点餐最难."
"I remember when I was preparing for the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) three years ago," recalled Long Yifan, an intern at China Daily USA in New York, from Shaoyang, Hunan province. "I tended to use the newly grasped academic words for oral English practice.
"记得三年前我备考雅思时,我总想在英语口语练习中使用最新掌握的学究词,"《中国日报》美国版驻纽约实习生龙一帆（音）说.
"I had some friends from Scotland, and one day when we ate out, I was in a hurry to find a restroom. I wanted to express my situation in an academic and formal way, so I said I wanted to 'discharge' myself. They were all surprised and amused.
"我有几位来自苏格兰的朋友.一天我们约出去吃饭,我着急找厕所.我想以正式的口吻用学究词表达我的处境,所以我说我想去'排放'我自己.他们很惊讶,也觉得很搞笑."
"I felt something was wrong and wanted to make a clarification, so I said I wanted to urinate. They all burst into laughter."
"我知道说错了,想澄清一下,所以我说我想去�"�.他们笑成一片."
"Just like how learning Chinese is hard for English speakers, the reverse is also true, for many of the same reasons," writes Andy Luan on Quora, a question-and-answer website. "Pronunciation is probably the hardest part of learning English at first.
"就像说英语的人学中文很难一样,中国人学英语也会因为各种同样的原因遇到很多困难," Andy Luan在问答网站Quora上写道,"最初学英语时,最难的可能是发音."
"Grammar is next. English grammar is ridiculous. There are a few so-called 'rules', but just about everything seems to be an exception to these rules."
"其次是语法.英语语法很搞笑,有一些所谓的'规则',但几乎都可以有例外."
One of my observations is that Chinese speakers tend to have trouble with third-person pronouns (he and she aren't interchangeable in English) and collective plurals.
我注意到,讲中文的人经常把英文中的第三人称代词和集体名词单复数搞错（英文中的他和她不能互换）.
Many English words are the same in the singular as in the plural, so sometimes you will hear someone talk about the "researches" they did for a story, which is nonetheless endearing.
很多英文单词的单复数形式没差别,因此有时你会听到有人说为一篇文章做了"很多调查研究",但这么说也很讨喜.
英文来源：中国日报William Hennelly
