Do people learn Classical Chinese without ever intending to learn modern Chinese like we currently do with Greek? If so, how does one go about it? I know my university doesn't teach it.
No. Even Chinglers can't read Classical Chinese, really. There was a good thread recently on this. Some guy fluent in bus-shitter came and gave the inside scoop on Chinese culture and the likelihood of your ever reading Classical texts.
>>7832233
Well, what did he have to say?
>>7832233
I've heard the same thing outside of 4chan from some of my Chinese ESL students a while back.
>>7832267
Think it's this guy
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7786351#p7790183
He posted a lot in that thread
TL;DR
>Mao Done Fucked Up China
>Chinese people are vapid self interested brats.
>Capitalism Done Fucked Up America
>Americans are as equally literate as they are fucking vapid cunts.
>Europeans are as proud about their 'culture' as they are vapid.
>South America is the retarded kid in the corner of the classroom that learns the names of colors every day, but will forget them by tomorrow.
>Africa is about to start developing, and China's getting ready to buy it.
>And the Australian public transport system is still a piece of fucking shit.
>Learning any language for the sake of talking to the dimwit plebs and rich smug bastards is useless.
...Did I miss anything?
>>7832233
Modern Chinese not being able to read classical is as relevant as Italians not being able to read Latin.
If you want to study Classical Chinese only you can - there are a couple of good English language Classical Chinese textbooks. There is even a Classical Chinese - English dictionary.
The down side is that not being able to read modern Chinese you are cutting yourself off from using lots of resources - Classical Chinese texts annotated in modern Chinese.
>>7832653
>https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7786351#p7790183
Damn, you can see me checking those celestial trips.
>>7833021
on point senpai, checking in here from Sydney but I kind of like our anachronistic trains, going from my displaced suburbia to the CBD on train provides quite a nice view that slowly moves through the commute
>>7832223
I notice your picture - dream of the red chamber isn't actually written in Classical Chinese strictly speaking. Neither is journey to the west or the water margin. They are written in 18th or 16th century vernacular. If you are studying that you may as well learn modern Chinese too.
Classical Chinese is Confucius and all those old philosophers, 'strange tales from a Chinese studio', all the dynastic histories, poetry and prose by literati throughout the centuries..
The long continuous stories like dream of red chambers or monkey King come from a road side storyteller tradition, so they are written in vernacular.
>>7835140
Fuller - An Introduction to Literary Chinese.
Kroll - A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese
>>7832653
Worst pile of advice I've ever seen.
>TLDR / best advice: don't learn Chinese. Chinese people are fucking horrible,
As horrible and nice as everyone else in the world
>the literature is awful,
The range is so wide across time and genres that there is anything that you could want
>and you'll never, ever, ever get good enough to read the classics.
If you work through this textbook >>7835164 you will be able to read the classics. You won't understand every subtle reference, but who does in any literature.
>Even Chinese people can't understand that old shit.
How is that relevant? What kind of mind state would you have to be in to think that that is relevant? "Don't bother with Shakespeare guys, most Brits prefer snapchat." As if the aim of students of Chinese is to reproduce the mental space of the average modern Chinese person. Fuck you.
Modern Chinese grammar is more simple than Classical Chinese grammar.
It is easier to read and write Modern Chinese than Classical Chinese and there are plenty of sources on learning Classical Chinese in English. I have A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese and Classical Chinese A functional Approach. These books introduce the various grammar specific characters Classical Chinese has that Modern Chinese do not.
The difficulty is not really in the syntax but in the various uses of a single character that maybe confusing to a modern reader because of the multiple meanings it once had. The transition to modernity was that nouns became multi-character while this was rarely the case in classical writing. Differentiation of meaning came from contextual clues. Something modernization tried to steer away from.
Also op pic not related since the novel was instrumental in introducing everyday speech as literature
>>7832653
A faggot trying to look like he knows a lot of shit but in reality he knows nothing.
>>7835500
that thread is actually not that bad overall but leaves me uneasy about whether to learn chinese. i think i'll just learn russian.
>>7835515
I wrote about this topic in another thread before-
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7553875#p7553963
OP's question was a bit different but the same basic points still apply.
>>7835520
I don't get the apprehension, just go for it.
Since there is no verb conjugation in Chinese, to understand a text all you need is a list of vocabulary and a vague idea of grammar (which is basically just word order). Chinese grammar is simple as hell in both its modern and classical forms.
If you work through Fuller - "Introduction to Literary Chinese" you start reading short authentic texts immediately.
You can go directly into classical Chinese poetry with "Chinese Through Poetry" by Archie Barnes.
Just because languages take forever to master, doesn't mean you should be all apprehensive at the doorstep.
>>7835515
Surely the fact that premodern Chinese lit is not connected to western tradition (except thru india) is what makes it so interesting.
>>7835185
>>7835493
Notice they give no counter advice and just offer generalizations about "well, people everywhere are shitty" and "there are lots of books published in China"
It's not that Chinese people prefer snapchat over literary classics, it's that they literally can't read the classics. A college graduate can read Three Kingdoms with some difficulty (somewhere between Shakespeare and Chaucer); probably not Dream of the Red Chamber (Little older than Chaucer). Certainly not Confucius or Laozi or anything that fucking old. It's as different from modern Chinese as the Epic of Gilgamesh is from modern English.
Chinese natives, i.e. people who spend their entire lives reading in Chinese, basically only read commentaries on Confucius -- line by line / character by character explanations of the texts.
Plus the vast majority of those who do engage with those texts don't really look at them critically. They just memorize the standard, accepted meaning and move on (admittedly not all that different from the West).
So if you manage to learn both classical and modern (which, if you intend to do it at all, you ought to), you'll only be able to talk about it with idiots.
If you learn just classical you'll be able to talk about it with... no one. English speakers won't have read an even remotely similar text (they don't translate well) and you won't speak Chinese.
Learn fucking Russian. Or better yet, spend your time with Hegel or Shakespeare or Joyce. At least at the end you'll have spent years thinking rather than years acquiring the tools to think.
>>7835500
also, not samefag.
>>7835556
I think you are making a mistake
All four classical chinese novels are written in the vernacular and high school students have to learn classical chinese
>>7835556
wnat to know how i know you're retarded?
>It's not that Chinese people prefer snapchat over literary classics, it's that they literally can't read the classics. A college graduate can read Three Kingdoms with some difficulty (somewhere between Shakespeare and Chaucer); probably not Dream of the Red Chamber (Little older than Chaucer). Certainly not Confucius or Laozi or anything that fucking old. It's as different from modern Chinese as the Epic of Gilgamesh is from modern English.
rotk and dream of the red chamber are in VERNACULAR chinese. they are not in classical chinese. they're read by fucking middle schoolers, just like how a middle schooler can discern some semblance of meaning from charles dickens, so can a middle schooler get the basic meaning out of any of th efour chinese classics.
>>7835554
>Surely the fact that premodern Chinese lit is not connected to western tradition (except thru india) is what makes it so interesting.
if that's what you want sure. some people just like the western canon/aren't interested in the eastern canon.
>>7835556
>It's not that Chinese people prefer snapchat over literary classics, it's that they literally can't read the classics. A college graduate can read Three Kingdoms with some difficulty (somewhere between Shakespeare and Chaucer); probably not Dream of the Red Chamber (Little older than Chaucer). Certainly not Confucius or Laozi or anything that fucking old. It's as different from modern Chinese as the Epic of Gilgamesh is from modern English.
Classical Chinese is taught in High School. Dream of the Red Chamber is from the 18th century, Chaucer is from the 14th century. Dream of the Red Chamber is basically modern Chinese, what makes it difficult is the strange vocabulary.
Confucius and Laozi are not as different from modern Chinese as Gilglamesh is from modern English. 學而時習之,不亦樂乎!
>>7835515
learn german or french or latin first, then make decisions about less useful languages with canons that have more specialised purposes
personally i'd rather learn 8 languages and be arguing about aristotle's use of mimesis with scholars and translating obscure latin epistles found in egyptian garbage dumps in a tenth the time that it would take me to have any meaningful interaction with zhou era texts, especially when the first half of that latter battle is "speaking to soulless fucking chinese people about their soulless post-mao materialist ant-hill culture"
but that's just me
with russian, at least it's actually pretty easy if you already know another european language or two, so any questions about relevance or usefulness can be disregarded. even if you learn a useless language, it didn't waste tons and tons of your life and distract you from others.
>>7835562
They're written in 半白话. Proper vernacularization of Chinese literature didn't take place until May 4.
I'd say most American college graduates can't read Shakespeare (not an uncommon sentiment here), and by the same standard it's no exaggeration at all that most Chinese can't read that old shit. It's pure fucking hubris to think you'll do it as a non-native. Especially if you can't even be bothered to learn modern Chinese.
If you really intend to read those fucking books in the original, and I mean read them, not pretend to read them or read the characters then read the translation, you'll have to dedicate your entire life to it. Most of the fucks here can't even manage to read Ulysses.
>>7835616
>They're written in 半白话. Proper vernacularization of Chinese literature didn't take place until May 4.
yes but doesn't change the fact that the four classics are perfectly legible to someone who knows modern chinese. and the claim that confucius/laozi = epic of gilgamesh levels of incomprehensibility is absurd.
>
I'd say most American college graduates can't read Shakespeare (not an uncommon sentiment here), and by the same standard it's no exaggeration at all that most Chinese can't read that old shit. It's pure fucking hubris to think you'll do it as a non-native. Especially if you can't even be bothered to learn modern Chinese.
ok sure but this literally has nothing to do with the relationship between classic chinese texts and modern chinese, which is what was being discussed.
>If you really intend to read those fucking books in the original, and I mean read them, not pretend to read them or read the characters then read the translation, you'll have to dedicate your entire life to it. Most of the fucks here can't even manage to read Ulysses.
again, true, but nothing to do with what's being discussed here.
>>7835562
Chinese middle school students are also acing advanced calculus tests and doing a bunch of other shit they don't even begin to comprehend.
They memorize Tang poems and read bawlderized children's versions of the classics, occasionally memorizing sections of the original. Of course they can "read" the original, but it's like playing the violin for a cow. And it's much closer Shakespearean English than it is to Dickens. To say it's written in the vernacular is, while technically true, deeply misleading for people who don't speak Chinese (i.e. almost everyone here)
>>7835616
>Proper vernacularization of Chinese literature didn't take place until May 4.
No, 紅樓夢,儒林外史,海上花列傳,老殘遊記,三俠五義... are all written in vernacular.
>>7835644
i think he used "vernacularization" as equivalent of "modernization" in which case he's technically correct. but yeah modern chinese people can easily read the majority of these old chinese classics.
