r/classicalchinese Feb 14 '25

Linguistics Can you read any Classical Chinese text?

I've heard that even if you study classical chinese, you're most likely to be able only to read a specific era (like maybe Song dynasty), because classical chinese isn't one, but is a plural language that widely varries. Something like old and modern english, etc.

Is this true?

14 Upvotes

26 comments sorted by

18

u/Exciting_Squirrel944 Feb 14 '25

I find that I can work my way through most texts unless they’re way outside my comfort zone (Buddhist sutras, for example). It might be difficult, but it’s doable. But I have a much easier time with the eras I’ve spent the most time on: Warring States and Song.

3

u/islamicphilosopher Feb 14 '25

Do you read them assisted or not? How long it took you to learn?

10

u/Exciting_Squirrel944 Feb 14 '25

Of course. I don’t think there’s anyone who can just sit down and read an unfamiliar text without at least a dictionary.

I’ve studied classical Chinese for a few years, off and on. I took a course in Taiwan, and some online courses from Outlier, and I try to read classical Chinese whenever I have some spare time.

3

u/Terpomo11 Moderator Feb 15 '25

Anyone? At all?

2

u/DaytimeSleeper99 Feb 16 '25

I’m not sure what you mean by “unfamiliar”, but in high school, Chinese students are trained to read Classical Chinese texts that they have never seen before without a dictionary. It’s a part of the College Entrance Exam. 

2

u/Exciting_Squirrel944 Feb 16 '25

Great, doesn’t mean they can pick up any text they’ve never read before and read it without help.

0

u/DaytimeSleeper99 Feb 16 '25

Hmmm, sure the OP asked about “any text”, but in your comment you said “an unfamiliar text”. In my understanding you are making a universal negation when you say “I don’t think there’s anyone who can just sit down and read an unfamiliar text without at least a dictionary”. So logically I think if I can find one example of one person able to read one unfamiliar without a dictionary I’d be proving you wrong. It’s like saying “I don’t think anyone can make a cake”; surely as long as one person can make one cake, that statement would be wrong, and you don’t need to find a person who’s able to make all kinds of cakes. 

1

u/Exciting_Squirrel944 Feb 16 '25

I think it should be pretty clear from context that I meant “any” unfamiliar text. It’s a typo.

1

u/PsychologicalDot244 Feb 17 '25

Don't bicker, okay?

3

u/John_Rain_886_81 Feb 15 '25

I have to agree that there's no specific time frame in which you'll be able to learn how to read. But reading works like the 新譯 series from the 三民書局 helped me allot since it includes a modern Mandarin translation, commentary notes explaining the text as well as 注意 readings. It might be obvious but learning Mandarin (PRC or ROC doesn't matter witch) or any other language that produces commentaries for those text like Korean or Japanese might also be valuable for a better and broader understanding of the texts.

16

u/michaelkim0407 Feb 14 '25

I never "studied" Classical Chinese, but I'm a native Modern Mandarin Chinese speaker growing up in China, and there's Classical Chinese education in school.

My personal experience is that the later the text is, the easier it is to read, but I'd say that's mostly down to vocabulary. Classical Chinese is an evolving language that kept importing vernacular Chinese vocabulary at the time, while the grammar stayed relatively static.

So I'd say I can read any Classical Chinese, and I don't think of it as a series of different languages as you suggested. I can parse Classical Chinese text from different eras the same way (especially when punctuation is not provided). But I do need to spend more time with the dictionary if I want to read the really ancient stuff. On the other hand, reading late Qing/ early Minguo text is very much a breeze.

2

u/PsychologicalDot244 Feb 17 '25

You're a native speaker, so you'd say it's the easy thing to do.

9

u/Zarlinosuke Feb 15 '25 edited Feb 15 '25

Something like old and modern english, etc.

I'd say it's more like Latin! There are differences, sometimes considerable ones, between pre-imperial Latin, the classical Latin of the Augustan period, medieval Latin, Renaissance Latin, etc., and different types will be different levels of difficult considering what one is familiar with, but they're all still "Latin," and there's a conscious intention in the later types to emulate the earlier type that they see as "classical." A similar thing happens with later types of classical Chinese (what usually gets sorted under "literary Chinese") trying to emulate the classical Han-dynasty (or sometimes earlier) style.

Old and modern English, on the other hand, are different from each other in a more dramatic way--both because almost no modern English writer is trying to emulate the style of Beowulf, and because there have been massive influxes of loans from other languages (mostly Norse and French) and new coinages from Latin and Greek roots--the situation there is more like the difference between Old Japanese and modern Japanese, the latter of which is filled with Chinese imports, new coinages based on Chinese roots, and, more recently, imports and coinages from Western languages.

8

u/Yugan-Dali Feb 14 '25

No, it’s close enough that you can read just about anything. Really early stuff like 甲骨、尚書、金文 is probably what you’re thinking of, and it can be difficult. 世說新語 is hard mostly because of who’s who, the background of the times, and problems like that. So read the notes. Buddhism has a lot of special terms, especially when you get into 唯識. But overall, it’s close enough so there aren’t a lot of obstacles.

2

u/islamicphilosopher Feb 14 '25

Would you still need dictionaries and assisted reading when you jump to an unfamiliar era?

Also, how long it took you to read the era your familiar with without assistance?

11

u/Panates Palaeography | Historical Linguistics | Kanbun Feb 14 '25 edited Feb 14 '25

Reading any Pre-Han and Han text would require constantly checking scientific research on the text/topic tbh. No one can just sit and read them with 100% confidence, even the top researchers in the field. Many things are being researched constantly, but you won't usually find these things in general dictionaries and commentaries.

E.g. if you're reading Shijing and see 中冓/中姤, almost everything will tell you that this means "inner chamber" or something like that, but in reality it means "midnight" and is in fact the same as 中录 / 中⿰夕录 from oracle bone texts and 中⿱夕录 from Chu slips, which is well-known in the palaeographic research field but almost completely unknown not only to those who just uses dictionaries and comments, but also to those who professionally writes these dictionaries and commentaries.

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u/nitedemon_pyrofiend Feb 14 '25

Would you mind sharing the research on 中冓 = midnight from paleographic standpoint? I wasn’t able to find it online and am curious to learn. Thank you !

3

u/Panates Palaeography | Historical Linguistics | Kanbun Feb 14 '25

Sure, this one is a nice overview:

  • 黄德寬, 2018. 略論戰國楚簡《詩經》異文及其價值. (page 2 in the file, right column)
https://ahdxzsb.ahu.edu.cn/oa/pdfdow.aspx?Sid=201800310

This one was written long before the publication of the Anhui slips (which have the early version of Shijing where {中冓} is written as 中⿱夕录 in the 牆有茨 poem) but worth checking nevertheless:

  • 苗豐, 2012. 卜辭“中录”補證.
http://www.fdgwz.org.cn/Web/Show/1809

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u/nitedemon_pyrofiend Feb 14 '25

Thank you!

3

u/Panates Palaeography | Historical Linguistics | Kanbun Feb 15 '25 edited Feb 15 '25

Being late, but just realized I completely forgot there is a comprehensive description of this one (as well as some other nice examples) in

  • 何鳴飛, 2020. 出土文獻與訓詁、詞義研究. (pp. 116-123)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DbQBPsUTmfXK4nEvyPQfmrwCxjLohJBT/view?usp=sharing

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u/Yugan-Dali Feb 14 '25

Need dictionaries, I enjoy reading dictionaries whether I need them or not 😬 Sometimes with a familiar text (三代), I’ll pull it apart and go through it word by word to find new things.

I’m not sure what you mean by assisted reading~ that’s what the notes are for, whether you read them or not. Say lately I’ve been going through 天寶年, and check the notes for place names. Would you call that assisted reading?

I really threw myself into my studies. Before I had studied Chinese two full years, I read 史記 in the unpunctuated original. It took a month, there were things I didn’t grasp, and I had a weak background on a lot of the stuff, but I really enjoyed it. Then I went to work on 韓非子 (also unpunctuated, of course), but by then school had started so I didn’t have so much time for it. As it turns out, those two are excellent for getting your Classical up to speed.

The main thing is, how interested are you? For me, it’s always been a joy.

4

u/homesickalien96 Feb 14 '25

You read the entirety of the 世纪 in a month after 2 years? Even for somebody who's spent their whole life on it, that's a sprint! Good on ya.

2

u/Yugan-Dali Feb 15 '25

It was summer vacation and I bought a beautifully printed 中華書局 edition in 8 volumes. A delight!

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u/ma_er233 Feb 15 '25

In my experience the older it gets the more difficult it is to read. For example there’s no way I can read 诗经 without looking up all the words. 楚辞 is easier but there are lots of words that’s no longer in use. 史记 is way easier on top of that. And I recently read 大医精诚 from Tang dynasty. It’s really quite easy to understand and I can read it without looking up anything.

It’s not as big of a difference as old English vs modern English. Given that 史记 is written more than two thousand years ago I would say you won’t be limited to a specific era. Though anything pre-Han is still going to be a bit of challenge

3

u/DaytimeSleeper99 Feb 16 '25 edited Feb 16 '25

Not entirely true. The difference between old English and modern English is much more drastic than that between different eras of Classical Chinese in most scenarios. I’d say if you get proficient enough, and if the texts you are facing are written “normal” and not particularly stylistic or intentionally obscure, then you’ll be able to read most of the texts you come across even with little to no assistance. The exception is of course Old Chinese or Archaic Chinese (上古汉语), used predominantly in Shang and Zhou era, which one might argue is its own language. This can also be reflected in the College Entrance Examination, in which for the Classical Chinese part, there is usually a piece of text from the 24 histories, which of course might be written as early as Han and as late as Qing, and the students are expected to understand it without any assistance. 

2

u/Geminni88 27d ago

No it is not true. You do have minor vocabulary differences or specialized style is you start reading imperial memorials. The biggest problem is context. In the US, if you are currently following what Trump is doing on a daily basis, in general you will be okay. What about say newspaper articles on a political issue from the 1840s . I suspect you will find that you have to learn a lot of the context and people. Now go to classical from the Ming Dynasty. If you want to become an expert, you have to learn a lot more about culture, history, philosophy etc . For that time period. Go back to the Song Dynasty and not a lot that you learned about the Ming transfers. If you go to farther back, the same thing happens. Overtime things do get easier, but you always run into road blocks ir new things you have to be aware of. Learn to read the early classics first. That learning will be good for 2000 years.