Vocab level needed for various chinese texts.

[uchihak]

I've frequently heard people say that you need about 3000-4000 characters to comfortably read Chinese newspapers.

What I want to know is how many characters you will need to read older novels like 3 Kingdoms or Dream of Red Mansions? How about Lu Xun's works? Suppose you learned to recognize most of the characters from the various Lu Xun short stories, which vocab level will you be at? How about the Jin Yong wuxia novels?

An idle question perhaps, but I'm curious.

Is it true that Chinese students start reading 3 Kingdoms in Middle School?

[gato]

For reading modern Chinese (i.e. post-1940), you can use the Chinese government's exam for foreign learners (HSK) as a guide. At its top level, you are expected to know approximately 2800 characters and 8800 words. That's just about enough to get you started on reading Lu Xun relatively comfortably (you'll need to know more, maybe 3500 characters and 15,000 words, to be totally comfortable). Your focus really should be on words and not on characters alone (just as it would be for any other language).

Classical works like Dream of Red Chamber are written in classical Chinese, which has a different set of vocabulary and even the grammar used is quite different from modern Chinese. You'll have to learn its vocabulary and grammar to read classical works comfortably. It can be thought of as a different but related language, and there are people who learn classical Chinese before modern. It depends on your interests.

These threads below are useful:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/11620-character-to-words-ratio&highlight=hsk

Character to words ratio

Your first 1000 words need 800 characters

Your first 3000 words need 1500 characters

Your first 5000 words need 2100 characters

Your first 8800 words need 2800 characters

http://www.chinese-forums.com/vocabulary/

HKS Vocabulary database

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/11247-how-many-words&highlight=hsk+vocabulary

How much vocabulary do you think is required to participate effectively

[djwebb2004]

...er... no. Hongloumeng is **not** written in classical Chinese. There is a huge leap between the language of the Analects of Confucious and the 4 vernacular novels. The 4 vernacular novels (Romance of the 3 kingdoms, rebels of water margin, journey to the west, dream of red mansion, and you can add the golden lotus as well) are in early Mandarin - they are in baihua. They contain extracts in classical Chinese, references to poems etc, but they are in baihua, not classical Chinese. That is why Chinese schoolchildren can read the Romance of the 3 kingdoms so easily - this 14th century novel is in Mandarin, not classical Chinese.

[gato]

You might call it 半百半文 (half modern, half classical). There's enough classical Chinese mixed in Dream of Red Chamber that you'd need a decent knowledge of classical Chinese to enjoy it, at least in terms of vocabulary. The grammar used is closer to that of modern Chinese.

Journey to the West is closer to classical Chinese, by the way. See the full text here:

http://www.dxgzs.com/sdmz/xy/index.html

<< 西游记 >>

[uchihak]

Thanks Gato. I will check out the threads suggested.

3500 characters, that's gonna take some effort! I agree with you about how words are the basic units of meaning that I should be learning. But sometimes don't you feel like it's so much easier to learn chinese words if you've already learned their component characters?

Also it seems to me that the more recent a piece of writing is, the more "words" it uses and the less frequently do you bump into unknown characters. For example, chinese newspaper articles (at least the few I've seen) and the chinese Windows manual use a lot of familiar characters, but employs them in unfamiliar groupings.

Anyways, what about modern day novels like Yu Hua's Brothers? I took a look at it the other day and it's definitely easier than Lu Xun.

[jukebox]

Journey to the West is closer to classical Chinese, by the way.

All the 4 great classical novels are written in 白话文. The grammar and vocabulary are much more closer to contempary spoken Mandarin than to Literary Chinese(Classical Chinese/文言文). The four novels have features ,say, poems, sentence patterns, make them seems to be "Classical" though, this doesn't mean that they can be called 文言文.

If you want to enjoy these books in Chinese, you must, however, have some(more or less) knowledge on chinese classical literacy.

Btw, *半白半文* is usually something derogatory.

[gato]

Shouldn't something written in a classical Chinese 文言 sentence pattern be called 文言?

What's a more neutral way of saying that something is part classical Chinese, part modern?

[djwebb2004]

Journey to the West opens with a poem that seems difficult to read, and contains poems throughout in classical Chinese, but the main text is not in classical Chinese at all, and is not in classical Chinese sentence structure either. The sentences don't end in ye3 - it is baihua and nothing else, not ban bai ban wen or anything - just baihua. You can actually see more classical Chinese sentence structures in a book I have posted about on this forum by Yi Zhongtian, who every now and then used sentences ending in ye3 to show off.

An example of the main text in Journey to the West is the suggestion taht a monkey go through the waterfall and become their king:

"那一个有本事的， 钻进去寻个源头出来，不伤身体者，我等即拜他为王。" 连呼了三声，忽见丛杂中跳出一个石猴，应声高叫道：我进去！我进去！好猴！

[gato]

Perhaps there's no clear definition of what 文言文 is. The ending of a sentence with 也 or 矣 is a telling factor, but only one. There are other characteristics of 文言文 that are prevalent in Journey to the West.

The sentence just quoted above contains a dialog, which is written in a much more vernacular style, and the book does have a lot of dialogs. Narratives in the book, however, are closer to classical Chinese style. See these these opening paragraphs of Chapter 2 below, for example. I would say it's about 50% classical Chinese, 50% vernacular. Whatever you call it, it'd be difficult to read without a basic knowledge of classical Chinese.

http://www.dxgzs.com/sdmz/xy/002.htm

第二回 悟彻菩提真妙理　断魔归本合元神

　　话表美猴王得了姓名，怡然踊跃，对菩提前作礼启谢。那祖师即命大众引孙悟

空出二门外，教他洒扫应对，进退周旋之节。众仙奉行而出。悟空到门外，又拜了

大众师兄，就于廊庑之间，安排寝处。次早，与众师兄学言语礼貌，讲经论道，习

字焚香，每日如此。闲时即扫地锄园，养花修树，寻柴燃火，挑水运浆。凡所用之

物，无一不备。在洞中不觉 六七年。一日，祖师登坛高坐，唤集诸仙，开讲大道。

真个是：

　　天花乱坠，地涌金莲。妙演三乘教，精微万法全。慢摇麈尾喷珠玉，响振雷霆

动九天。说一会道，讲一会禅，三家配合本如然。开明一字皈诚理，指引无生了性

玄。

孙悟空在旁闻讲，喜得他抓耳挠腮，眉花眼笑。忍不住手之舞之，足之蹈之。忽被

祖师看见，叫孙悟空道

[djwebb2004]

There is a definition of classical Chinese. Just because some foreign students may not be clear, doesn't mean that Chinese people don't know what classical Chinese is. If statements don't end in ye3 and yi3 or and questions in hu1 or zai1, then it is not Classical Chinese. In factː Classical Chinese, rather than being undefined, is highly defined - it was ossified for thousands of years, and so it was defined.

The example you gave reflects my typical attempts to read the 4 great classics - the text is clearly not Classical Chinese, or anything like it, but I personally could not read the passage without referring to a dictionary, and probably to the translation too. I think what you are referring to is that in the 4 great classics, the grammar and sentence structure are nothing like Classical Chinese, but the lexis, the words, are often monosyllabic, which resembles classical Chinese, or that the meaning of words may not be the first meaning of Chinese nowadays.