Book for learning Classical Chinese?

[Gnu Mind?]

Hello,

 

I have finally had enough of reading only translations of the Daodejing, fascinating though many of them are.

 

Can anyone recommend a book for learning Classical Chinese? English language please.

 

thanks!

 

GM

[silas]

Unless you read classical Chinese every day, you'll start forgetting the characters the moment you learn them. It's not just the characters that matter, it's how to interpret them in context.

 

For the classical texts:

 

Tao Te Ching by Jonathan Starr - includes a character-for-character chart of all the verses.

Zhuangzi by Wang Rong-pei - includes chinese and english translations side by side (hard to find)

 

The Chinese Text Project has all 3 classical texts online (TaoTeChing, ChuangTzu and LiehTzu), but the accompanying translations go back to the 1800s (such as James Legge's translations) and are inaccurate or heavily influenced by a Western viewpoint.

[Gnu Mind?]

Thanks very much to you both.

 

malikshreds, by a happy coincidence I actually have the book you recommend. Good to know this is the one.

 

silas, I'll order those you recommend. J Starr sounds perfect. I'll also look at the CTP, which is new to me.

 

Best, GM

[Gnu Mind?]

For those who are interested I can recommend a Classical Chinese grammar that is intended (among other things) to aid self-study, and which in fact seems pretty accessible: Du's Handbook of Classical Chinese Grammar, by Archie Barnes, Don Starr and Graham Ormerod (Alcuin Academics, 2009). With this and the wonderful Jonathan Star TTC recommended above, all of a sudden getting below the translations seems reasonably doable over time.

 

Whoo-hooo!

 

GM

[Harmonious Emptiness]

I've found the following a great guide to work with:

 

http://ia600506.us.archive.org/16/items/progressiveexerc00bull/progressiveexerc00bull.pdf

[lienshan]

I have finally had enough of reading only translations of the Daodejing, fascinating though many of them are.

 

Can anyone recommend a book for learning Classical Chinese? English language please.

 

http://books.google.dk/books/about/Outline_of_Classical_Chinese_Grammar.html?id=viWF1UZqKC8C&redir_esc=y

 

The above is a MUST if you want to read e.g. the Guodian and the Mawangdui Tao Te Ching versions.

 

Pulleyblank is the one who knows best how the very important ye character was used grammatically in pre-Qin classical chinese. The ye character declined to be an exclamatory marker in Han-times but was earlier used in many ways. An example from the Mawangdui Tao Te Ching chapter one line one:

 

tao ke tao ye fei heng tao ye

 

Pulleyblank explains,that X ye fei Y ye was a standard formula meaning: it's X it isn't Y

Pulleyblank explains too, that ke (maybe/or) always marks the following character as being a verb!

[Gnu Mind?]

Harmonious Emptiness and lienshan,

 

Thanks! Those are two more really helpful books, which I will obtain ASAP (maybe just printing out the PDF, that one looks hard to find). I really appreciate the helpful responses. So glad I stumbled onto this site.

 

GM

[Walker]

Learning classical Chinese is an incredibly time-consuming, life-long project, even for Chinese people. The language is truly vast--if one picks up old books, one is bound to come across new characters and unfamiliar uses of common characters.

 

For a start, as was said above, you need a foundation vocabulary. It is said that a foundation vocabulary of the size needed for scholastic endeavors is around 5,000 characters. People say about 3,000 is what you need for the newspaper. You might think, "well, I don't want to learn modern Chinese, so I will just get a good dictionary and a good grammar of classical Chinese and launch right into the classics," but at best such an endeavor would be exceedingly awkward, imo. Learning modern Chinese is actually a very good foundation for learning classical Chinese because (a) vestiges of classical Chinese remain scattered all throughout the modern language and ( b once you know modern Chinese you can read relevant modern books which can deepen your understanding of the classical language (as well as, potentially, add to you your confusion--but that's another story).

 

Once you are ready to start learning classical Chinese you might consider the Language of the Dragon textbook series which can be found on Amazon. It contains many useful exercises based on small stories that are now standard teaching tools in China.

 

Also, you will need the right dictionaries. Shuowen Jiezi (说文解字) and Kangxi Zidian (康熙字典) are both indispensible. I know that both are available in well-made iPhone apps, and might be in Android, too.

 

When you have a certain level of skill, then there are actually many modern textbooks for native Chinese-speaking university students in China who are studying classical Chinese. A good one will contain numerous exercises including interpretation of meaning; understanding the meaning of a certain character in various contexts; and, very importantly, punctuation (classical texts generally have none, and modern reprints of classical texts contain both punctuation mistakes as well as punctuation decisions which are under debate).

 

Pulleyblank's book looks like a good buy.

Edited April 16, 2013 by Walker

[Guest Jason Croft]

http://tsoidug.org/dizigui/dizigui_web_simp.pdf

 

Translator's Note

Being one of the two or three most popular primers with which youngsters were taught how to be gentlemen during the last two centuries of imperial

China, Di Zi Gui is a treasure trove of traditional Chinese thought, norms and mores. Upon first reading Di Zi Gui in the 1980's, I exclaimed, "I've

found it! I have finally found what my children need!" So I taught them Di Zi Gui. Since they were born and growing up in North America, I had

to translate and transliterate the Chinese text. From that early work and subsequent refinements came this piece on Di Zi Gui.

Looking back, I think learning Di Zi Gui as children has helped them a lot in their behavior, their ability to get along with others, and their self-esteem.

Di Zi Gui has helped give them a sense of pride and identity, a quiet confidence that what they are doing is right, a self-generated drive to always do

their best, and an inner strength to overcome adversity.

Subsequently I've taught Di Zi Gui to some friends' teenage kids, and since then I've been teaching it to teens, whom I think need Di Zi Gui very

badly. I am now putting my teaching materials online, thinking that I might help others take advantage of this wonderful heritage.

To cope with my children's limited ability to understand and my own limited resources in keyboard input of transliteration symbols, I have developed

"home-made" methods of denoting Pinyin and Cantonese transliteration. These methods are still used here because first, the limitations in keyboard

input still hold, and second, though I may be presumptuous I suspect that the Cantonese transliteration system I have devised may be intuitively

easier not only for my children, but also for English speakers in general who are not familiar with the International Phonetic Symbols system.

No doubt there will be room for improvement; I sincerely hope that the reader will be kind enough to forward any suggestions or criticisms.

Feng Xin-ming, 2006

A Keyboard-Friendly Way to Denote Pinyin

by Feng Xin-ming

I find it impossible to input Pinyin on my keyboard, and if I use one of those Pinyin programs it doesn't dovetail with my text input systems. What

to do? So I have come up with the following para-Pinyin system where I denote the four tones by putting an accent at the end of the word:

1st tone - accent: - Example: (1st tone)： di-

2nd tone - accent: ' Example: 敌(2nd tone)：di'

3rd tone - accent: ^ Example: (3rd tone)： di^

4th tone - accent: ` Example: (4th tone)： di`

[Guest Jason Croft]

All Chinese children must "memorize" these 181 lines by the 5th grade

[Guest Jason Croft]

http://www.tsoidug.org/dizigui_trans_simp.php

[Gnu Mind?]

Hey, thanks you all. I realize I'm getting into a major project here, in fact one that may not be completed in my lifetime (I'm 62). But if I held off on the grounds that "I'm too old to start"--possibly a subconscious reason to have delayed already for so long--then I may as well be dead anyway, so what the heck. Maybe this will be Taoist magic to keep me young :-)

 

best, GM

[ChiDragon]

It is advisable to learn the modern meanings of all the characters before attempt to do any translations of the Classic text. Translating classic text word for word without knowing the classic grammar will thrown the original meaning off completely.