Cobie

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And so too it would have been for the people at the time of Laozi. So naturally Laozi would not have said that. And indeed he did not. The oldest characters for line 1 Ch 1, include 也 - which totally changes the meaning.

名不正 言不順 míng bù zhèng yán bù shùn name, denominate; morality | not | right | talk | not | follow morality not righteous, talk not followed If it’s morally wrong, it must not be followed. or possibly If it’s morally wrong, it will not be followed (depending on context, it’s from ‘The Analects of Confucius."Zilu’, I not read).

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Imo things seem to have been complicated later on by commentators. E.g. 導引 dao3 yin3 * imo equals 道陰 dao4 yin1 * as in “ 氣功在黃帝內經稱為導引 https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/54363-on-the-nature-and-utility-of-goal-posts-in-meditative-and-energetic-practice/?do=findComment&comment=999148

Yes that’s exactly what I wondered about too (and started me Googling ‘tones’).

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Interesting. Fits with what I was told, that modern Chinese is slowly developing to losing the tones and becoming an agglutinative language.

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I was told most Chinese these days have no interest at all in reading the DDJ. They read the popular interpretation of the first line of it: ‘the true Dao, cannot be expressed in words’. And quite naturally deduce and put it in their minds that there’s no point reading the rest of it.

Yes, I was told Classical Chinese is considered too difficult to read by most Chinese these days.

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Hi @Michael Sternbach thanks for the like. Nice to see you.

That depends on what you’re interested in. If you want to learn about popular Western culture, then reading the translations will suffice If you want to learn what the Laozi said, then you must learn Chinese

There really is no “of course” to that. I think breathing techniques are at best a waste of time, most often counterproductive.

Hi Wondernaut. Welcome to the forum. “Those who know don’t speak” so best to take it all with a pinch of salt. Happy learning.

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I take this to imply the DDJ is easier to read for non-‘native speakers’ * , they are less likely to: - use the modern Chinese meanings for characters - impose the current Chinese cultural paradigm on the meaning ~~~ * There’s academic research into the meaning of the characters at the time of writing of texts, and also into the culture at that time. It often differs from the current use/opinion.

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