Classical Chinese 1

[vorvayne]

Every time something about modern Chinese media or politics depresses me I get a bit meh and unmotivated about learning the language - which isn't anyone's fault unless I suppose they're one of the committee members who decided BL media should be verboten, but here we are. I don't know what any of it says about me or my reasons for learning and whatnot, but it's probably best not to worry too much: learning languages is such a long term and psychologically obscure and strange process that whatever you need to leverage to keep putting one foot in front of the other is probably fine even if it's a bit weird. 

Anyway I am and have been for some time pretty absurdly into Classical Chinese, so now that my eyes and neck aren't quite as bad as they were the last time I tried that, I've been wandering with reasonable dedication through A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese, which is by approximately a million miles the best book on the subject that I've encountered. Actually, it's so good that I'm annoyed by proxy at all the terrible textbooks that exist. 

I'd say I can't believe I'm going through a textbook doing the exercises for fun, but if you had known me in school this would actually be the least surprising thing about me and my life right now.

I don't quite know what's useful and/or interesting enough to actually put on this journal, but I'll leave you with: the current chapter I'm working on features the example text "Guan Zhong Arrives Late" (管仲後至) where he wanders in (to court, it seems?) late, throws away half his wine, and cheerfully jokes 酒入舌出 - "wine in, tongue out" ie, when you drink wine, you talk rubbish - which is a proverb that ought to have persisted if it hasn't.

The first few chapters were reasonably short proverbs, but from here on out we've got paragraph-length excerpts with a fair few cultural/historical notes, which I'm excited to get to - especially Unit 2, which is made up of excerpts from the "Biographies of Assassin-Retainers" chapter of the 史記/Shiji. I'm also putting a lot of the sentences into anki, both so that I'll remember the new-to-me characters and so that I'll absorb the grammar and structure.

As a neat bonus, I'm losing my overwhelm/intimidation when faced with traditional characters very fast. Apparently what I really needed to do was just get up to my elbows in them and use them to make some sentences in the exercises.

 

Comments

[forestofglory]

Classical Chinese is so great! I'm also working through A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese which I agree is very good! I just wish I could learn the vocabulary faster I keep getting slowed down by how much there is. I'm in the middle of the Assassin-Retainers now but going very slowly, I suspect that you will get to the end well before me.

As person with no Mandarin background before diving into classical I also found Classical Chinese for Everyone helpful for getting started.

[vorvayne]

Listen, the fact that there is one other person in the world who likes Classical Chinese as much as I do brings me so much joy, you have no idea.

There is a lot of vocabulary, and I'm doing okay right now but that's because I already had all the basics down really well, like, all the really common vocab I already knew so well it was pretty much second nature (stuff like 言，君子，小人，以，後，而，行，道，德) - part because of the modern mandarin study and partly because of poking into the Yijing and the Dao De Jing. So don't feel bad about going slowly! There is just a *lot* if you don't have any kind of background and the author says he aimed his textbook at people with some familiarity with a hanzi-using language.

I'm so looking forward to getting to the bit with the assassin-retainers! You might be surprised and get to the end before me; slow and steady wins the race and that's very much not something I'm any good at.

I might see if I can get an ebook version of CCfE just for background reading; I'm very much that bitch who enjoys reading the textbook so even if I'm mostly doing the exercises from ANPPLC it might be handy to have. I do have another CC book on my reMarkable tablet - oh huh I just checked, I have 'An Introduction to Literary Chinese' and 'Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar'.

Outline is very grammar-and-linguistics heavy, so I haven't delved in much.
Introduction is similar in nature to ANPPLC but it doesn't restrict itself to the classical era - which the author of ANPPLC raises as an issue and I think honestly more research has been done in the last 2 decades on the actual classical period - and to be fair it is a bit more rigorous than ANPPLC. I do think ANPPLC is very....well, practical. Especially if you come in knowing already that there is more or less no such thing as a 'preposition' and that if you call 於 a preposition what you're really saying is that it does the job that a preposition would do in English, or that you'd translate it into English using a preposition. Some skimming of the opening chapter on general grammar and on the first 'lesson' suggests it'd actually work better *after* ANPPLC since a bunch of lesson 1 I could only follow because I'd learnt the appropriate vocab in ANPPLC.

Okay update I looked up CCfE and my goodness, I really would send this to everyone learning Chinese, whether classical or not, because of how useful the introduction is. I had no trouble with this stuff because it just slots beautifully into my pattern recognition module but lots of people could really use it!!! I do like the short samples and might add them to my CC anki deck.

[forestofglory]

Yes, it is lovely to have someone who shares my joy in classical Chinese!

The intro to the assassin-retainers sections gave me a lot of zzs feels. Actually a lot of the readings in ANPPLC feel queer, which I'm really enjoying about it.

I get frustrated with the vocabulary because I feel like it would stick better if I could see it in context more, but I don't have enough vocabulary to read things other the the textbook lessons!

Think I have a pdf of Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar somewhere, but I get the impression its more of reference book than a textbook.

After I did the intro section of ANPPLC I didn't feel ready to go on to the next bit so I got An Introduction to Literary Chinese and have been working through it in between the assassin-retainers. It's much more linguistics heavy than ANPPLC so I was very confused when it told me that there are no prepositions in classical Chinese!

I'm glad you found CCfE helpful! It was a really good introduction for me.

I haven't been working on my handwriting as much as I'd like because I got tendonitis in my wrist. But I was gifted a brush fountain pen for my last birthday and it's lovely to use when I'm able.