posted by zjv5002 on February 11, 2013 | 10 comments
Any recommended textbooks, resources, fiction for learning classical Chinese? I have zero formal exposure to anything other than standard Mandarin and, unsure where to turn, once again find myself on our trusty forum. Thanks in advance, y'all.
zombie_chris on February 11, 2013 | reply
Paging Brendan! A good starting point is Edwin Pulleyblank's Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar.
murrayjames on February 11, 2013 | reply
zjv5002,You should also check the Classical Chinese forum over at Chinese Forums:http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/forum/62-classical-chinese/
D'oh! Just seeing this now. Seconding the recommendation of Pulleyblank -- it's more of a reference book than a textbook, but it's an absolutely fantastic resource for anybody setting out to learn classical Chinese.
Most Chinese students use the 古代漢語 series edited by Wang Li 王力. This should be easy to find in pretty much any bookstore if you're in China, and it's a good introduction as long as you don't mind reading long passages in traditional characters. (Or maybe there's a 简体 version around these days. My copy is 繁體-only, but it's an old edition.) On the other hand, it's intended for native speakers of Chinese, so it might not be the most gentle introduction.
- I began studying Classical Chinese with A First Course in Literary Chinese by Harold Shadick. It worked for me, but more recent textbooks will probably do a better job of explaining things. It also uses Wade-Giles, which some people find annoying. (I'm not one of them.)
- I recently looked over A Practical Primer of Literary Chinese by Paul F. Rouzer and thought it looked promising. Rouzer's textbook assumes that students will not necessarily know Mandarin -- this is a good approach, and one I'd love to see more of...
- ...but you might prefer Classical Chinese Primer by John C.Y. Wang et al, which occasionally saves itself and the reader time by explaining things by analogy to modern Chinese -- 矣 behaving similarly to modern 了 and that sort of thing.
- BLCU has also got a series of classical Chinese textbooks aimed at foreign students. I flipped through them in a bookstore once like eight years ago, so can't say for sure whether or not they're any good, but BLCU's teaching materials are usually less bad than average.
Brendan, Thanks for the rundown. Plenty enough here to make an honest start of it. But the rub: from the perspective of being interested in contemporary Chinese lit/thought, do y'all think it's WORTH learning classical? My guess is that the learner of classical Chinese has an increased ability to access texts that are in the water, so to speak, of everything proceeding afterwards, in the same way that having read the King James can familiarize much art far afield. Or, to better comprehend contemporary lit, should I just read MORE contemporary lit?
@zjv5002 - There's hardly ever a downside to knowing more stuff. I found that a little bit of classical Chinese helped me make sense of certain aspects of modern Chinese, and it helped a ton with set phrases, classical references, and all of the other fragments of the classical language that have embedded themselves in the modern language. It's also a lot of fun - though this can vary depending on your teacher. A while ago I was startled to see some students complaining about having to read Zhuangzi in their classical Chinese class: it turned out that nobody had told them that Zhuangzi is funny, or that one of the most famous passages in the book hinges upon a bad pun. (The passage "魚之樂" in 秋水篇; the pun is that 安 means both "how" and "where.") If you get a tutor, you'll want to make sure to get someone who knows their stuff.There's no downside to reading more contemporary literature either, of course, but it's not really an either/or choice.
leybl_goldberg on March 29, 2013 | reply
What book you'll find suitable depends on your background. I found Jeannette L. Faurot's "Gateway to the Chinese Classics: A Practical Guide to Literary Chinese" (China Books and Periodicals, 1995) very helpful for me to get started. Faurot assumes intermediate level in modern Chinese and only 350 "basic characters", which she lists before Lesson One. I gave up in frustration after the Confucius chapters of Ying Tian's "Introduction to Classical Chinese/古汉语入门“ (Beijing Language and Culture University Press, 2009). Just too many 生字 for me at this stage in my studies. Having the recorded text on MP3 is a selling point, though. (I think I'll stick to the 小朋友 market, for the time being, and look for editions of easy Tang poems with nice, big characters, cute illustrations, and recordings on CD.)