discern、discriminate与distinguish这些动词均有“区别、辨别”之意。
discern : 语义较笼统，着重精深与准确的观察力，不一定有能分辨关系密切的各项事物的含义。
- I could just discern a figure in the darkness.
在黑暗中我只能看出一个人影。 - It is difficult to discern any pattern in these figures.
在这些数字中很难找出规律。
discriminate : 语气强，指从十分相似的事物中辨出差异，尤其把好坏区分开来。
- Police dogs can discriminate between the different smells.
警犬能辨别各种不同的气味。 - The computer program was unable to discriminate between letters and numbers.
这计算机程序不能辨别字母与数字。 - When do babies learn to discriminate voices?
婴儿什么时候学会辨别嗓音呢？
distinguish : 普通用词，指辨别者的能力或实际观察到的区别，强调辨别所需的技巧。
- He's colour-blind and can't distinguish (the difference) between red and green easily.
他是色盲，很难分清红色和绿色（的不同）。 - I sometimes have difficulty distinguishing Spanish from Portuguese.
我有时很难分清西班牙语和葡萄牙语。
