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Classical Chinese - books and other ressources thread - GreenDragon - 2012-10-20
Hi, there.
Any good ways to start learning Classical Chinese? I have been learning Modern Chinese for about 2 years now so I am not sure if I can use native material yet.
Any good and comprehensive books you can buy or stuff online?
I have just discovered THIS (http://ia600506.us.archive.org/16/items … 00bull.pdf)
Seems alright (also a bit old), but I would like more examples and detailed explanations.
Any advice?
Thanks!
Classical Chinese - books and other ressources thread - bflatnine - 2012-10-20
I'll re-post here what I said on the RTK board:
You don't want to use that book! It's old, the grammatical understanding of the language was really far off at the time it was written, and it is specifically intended for people who need to read documents written around the time the textbook was written (as in, late 19th century newspapers and books, etc.).
You'll want to start with Fuller's An Introduction to Literary Chinese, it's really the best thing out there. Its goal is to get you able to actually read in the language, rather than translating in your head or parsing the sentence out the way classical languages are often taught, and I think it achieves this goal fairly well. After I studied Fuller, I also used Harold Shadick's A First Course in Literary Chinese. Basically I just used it as a reader rather than as a textbook, because his grammatical analysis is a little outdated and clunky. You'll also want Pulleyblank's Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar as a reference.
Regular dictionaries won't suffice for this stuff, so you'll also want to at least grab a copy of 古漢語常用字字典 by 王力 (preferably in traditional characters, if you're serious about learning classical Chinese), which unfortunately may take some tracking down these days. If you're in China or Hong Kong it should be easy to find, and if you're in Taiwan you might be able to find it at some of the mainland import bookstores. Otherwise you can order it from Sanmin, but it will take a month before they ship it, because it isn't in the warehouse right now. Pleco also has a classical Chinese dictionary coming out soon, so I'd recommend getting that as well.
Once you've finished Fuller and Shadick, I'd recommend (if your modern Chinese is up to the task) getting one of the classical Chinese readers that high school kids in Taiwan use. I have 文言文40篇大探索, but there are other good ones around too.
After that, it's whatever you want to do. At this point you're at what I consider a minimum competency level to be considered fluent in Chinese. That is, you're able to read stuff that high school kids can read, just probably not as quickly. Reaching this level will also have a huge impact on your reading ability in modern Chinese. But if you want or need to go further (let's say you're doing graduate school in Chinese literature), then you can move on to some of the 大學國文 readers, or even better (if you're really serious) would be the 古代漢語 series, again by 王力. You'll probably also want some of the 三民書局 readers (the ones in teal jackets), or at least the 古文觀止.
This will, of course, take some time. Once you finish Fuller and Shadick, you'll probably find that your ability in modern Chinese is what's holding you back from advancing further in classical Chinese, because after that all your material will only be in Chinese. Of course, if your two years of study in Chinese has been in Taiwan or China, that may not be the case. If its been at an American university, then you're going to want to try to spend some time in one of those countries if at all possible. Preferably Taiwan, IMO, because China tends to put a Marxist spin on everything, including commentaries on classical texts. But to reach a high level of ability in Classical Chinese, you need to be competent in modern Chinese, because all the best references are written in that language, not English. Of course, some are in Japanese, so if you can read that you've got a nice leg up.
Good luck.
Classical Chinese - books and other ressources thread - bflatnine - 2012-10-20
I'll say I'm currently using the high school reader sometimes, the 三民 readers sometimes, and the 古代漢語 books sometimes, depending on what I feel like working on at the moment. So it isn't necessarily a straight progression.
There's also a cool book I should mention called Literary Chinese for Advanced Beginners. Its intended audience is either "advanced" learners of modern Chinese who haven't learned any classical Chinese (hence the title), or people who have finished something like Fuller or Shadick and want to go further without using something specifically intended for native speakers. It's very good. The whole book is in Chinese, but it's not especially difficult Chinese (if you've done an advanced course like 思想與社會 or something similar).
Speaking of which, that same publisher (SMC) puts out two excellent advanced Chinese textbooks. One is the aforementioned 思想與社會 Thought and Society, and the other is called 從精讀到泛讀 The Independent Reader. They should be studied in that order, because the vocab in the former is something of a minimum requirement to even be able to attempt the latter. The first is a collection of 10 real articles on different topics (mostly relating to traditional Chinese culture), that have been lightly edited to fit a more formal spoken-style (口語) than written-style (書面語). The content can be fairly boring sometimes but it's still an excellent textbook. The second is a collection of 52 unedited articles written by respected authors from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese diaspora (China refused to give permission for any mainland articles). The aim of the book is to take you from reading "advanced" readers intended for learners, to being able to read serious (non-fiction) prose on a wide range of topics without help. So the further through the book you go, the less help you get with definitions (often they'll just list a word that you may not know and not define it, expecting you to be able to infer meaning from context, the constituent characters, etc.).
I'm afraid I'm getting too far from the topic.
I would NOT recommend SMC's Readings in Classical Chinese. The font used for the Chinese characters throughout the book is some weird dot-matrix looking thing. Unbelievably hard to read, ugly, not even close to being worth the trouble.
I should mention that I'm strongly biased toward reading prose, so there's not a lot of poetry included in the books I've mentioned (though there's a bit in Shadick and a fair amount in 古代漢語). If that's what you're looking for, someone else will have to help, I'm afraid.
Classical Chinese - books and other ressources thread - GreenDragon - 2012-10-26
Hi, bflatnine.
Please accept my apologies for my late reply.
I am truthfully very grateful for your sincere help. I like answers that are both personal and practical — providing almost ALL the available options at becoming good at something. Your recommendations are priceless.
As you have correctly noted, I am still very much a beginner, so I will stick to Fuller’s introduction I think (for some reason I don’t really like or understand Pulleyblank’s explanations).
Also, I found this one: Pretty neat, it seems to me.
http://www.iub.edu/~e103/306/306_Text_2012_1.2.pdf
Thanks again!
Classical Chinese - books and other ressources thread - bflatnine - 2012-10-26
Glad to help.
That textbook by Robert Eno is gold. I don't know how you found it, but it looks really great.
You're not alone in disliking Pulleyblank's book. It's probably the best thing we have in English, but apparently a lot of Taiwanese scholars disagree with his explanations. I'm ambivalent about it, but I do find myself reaching for his book less and my 《漢語語法（文言篇）》 more these days. I'd recommend that once your Chinese is up to the task.
You'll also eventually want a 虛詞 dictionary, once you get out of textbooks and into texts that you have to figure out on your own or with little help. There are several I've seen recommended by different people, and none universally. I went with 《古汉语虚词词典》 (I don't know of any decent ones available in traditional characters, unfortunately), compiled by 白玉林 et al and published by 中華書局. It's been very helpful so far, but I'm sure any other of this type would also be just fine.
As a side note, I'm realizing more and more how much I like Shadick's book. I don't really use his glosses or explanations very much, preferring to work through the texts on my own, but his selection of texts and exercises is really outstanding.
Classical Chinese - books and other ressources thread - GreenDragon - 2012-10-28
《漢語語法（文言篇）… Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll have a look at this one when I get a chance.
Ah, a 虛詞 dictionary is certainly quite useful, even at the beginning. Those are rarely fully explained it seems. Simplified is fine, too. I have gotten used to that somehow. Just difficult switching between the two.
Shadick… well, I will come back to this one once I get a firm grip on the basics, I think.
…Somehow I have noticed, you find the best resources when you are not really looking for them. I have been searching the web for explanations on the suo-particle and then I stumbled over Eno’s work. It’s somehow even strange he has not published it yet...