庖丁的刀

我最近学中文学得很难受，汉字太多了。我一天学五十个，第二天就忘一半，越学越觉得记不住。

Learning Chinese has been rough for me lately. There are too many characters. I learn fifty a day, and by the next day I've forgotten half of them. The more I study, the more it feels like I can't remember any of it.

你这是在硬记，一个字一个字地硬记，当然累。我给你讲一个故事吧，是庄子写的，讲一个厨师和一头牛的。

You're memorizing by brute force, character by character, of course that's exhausting. Let me tell you a story. Zhuangzi wrote it, about a cook and an ox.

庄子？他写的不是很难懂的东西吗，怎么会写一个厨师和一头牛？

Zhuangzi? Isn't everything he wrote deep and hard to follow? Why would he write about a cook and an ox?

这个故事里的厨师叫庖丁，他用一把刀已经十九年了，那把刀还跟新的一样快。别的厨师呢，天天用刀去砍骨头，一个月就要换一把新刀。

The cook in the story is called Cook Ding. He's used the same knife for nineteen years, and it's still as sharp as new. Other cooks, though, hack at bone with their knives every day and have to replace theirs every month.

十九年都不用换刀？这也太厉害了，他是有什么特别的刀吗？

Nineteen years without changing knives? That's incredible. Does he have some special kind of knife?

不是刀特别，是他用刀的地方特别。牛的身体里，骨头和骨头中间本来就是空的，他的刀只走那些空的地方，从来不用去砍骨头。别的厨师看不到那些空的地方，只能硬砍，所以刀很快就坏了。

It's not the knife that's special, it's where he puts it. Inside an ox's body, the space between one bone and the next is naturally empty. His knife only travels through those empty spaces, so it never has to hack through bone. Other cooks can't see those empty spaces, all they can do is hack blindly, which is why their knives wear out so fast.

这个故事很好听，我也听懂了，可是汉字跟牛不一样啊，这跟我查字典查得快不快，有什么关系？

That's a nice story, and I get it, but characters aren't an ox. What does any of this have to do with how fast I can look things up in the dictionary?

当然有关系。汉字也有它的骨头和空的地方。一个字常常是几个部分组成的，一个部分可能告诉你意思，另一个部分可能告诉你声音。你查字典的时候，如果只看这个字，不看它是哪几个部分组成的，那就是硬砍。如果你先看它是哪几个部分组成的，就是找那个空的地方。

Of course it does. Characters have their own bones and empty spaces too. A character is often made up of several parts. One part might tell you the meaning, another part might tell you the sound. When you look something up, if you only look at the character as a lump, that's hacking blindly. If you first look at which parts it's made of, that's finding the empty space.

那如果我查字典的时候，多注意这些部分，是不是以后看到差不多的字，就能猜到意思和声音，不用每次都查？

So if I pay more attention to these parts when I look things up, does that mean the next time I see a similar-looking character, I'll be able to guess the meaning and sound, without having to look it up every single time?

差不多。庖丁也不是第一天就那么熟悉牛的身体，他也是用了很多年才越用越快。你现在也一样，不用马上都记住，用得越多，就查得越快。

Pretty much. Cook Ding wasn't that familiar with an ox's body on day one either, it took him many years of practice to get faster and faster. It's the same for you now. You don't have to memorize everything right away. The more you use it, the faster you'll look things up.

这么说，我一直在硬砍骨头，还没找到那些空的地方，不是我记不住。

So basically, I've been hacking at bone this whole time and haven't found those empty spaces yet. It's not that I can't remember.

对，方法不一样，但也不是不用花时间，找空的地方也要练习，只是比硬砍轻松一点。

Right. It's a different method, but it's not that it takes no time at all either. Finding the empty spaces takes practice too, it's just easier than hacking blindly.