Is Ancient Chinese Useful?

[ChouDoufu]

I've just started studying Ancient Chinese and am wondering how useful it is. Does anyone who studied it before have any insights on how it might help my general Chinese?

[ananda]

It's quite useful. In my point of view, there're 'none' useful products,

especially literature generated by modern chinese. During the language

revoluaiton of 1919, they broke everything, but produced nothing.

Thank Sky that 'ancient' chinese is never so ancient, many chinese

know them and still use them in 'modern' chinese.

[ChouDoufu]

I did wonder about the changes that were made in written chinese when they switched to 白话。It seems quite odd, because they all talked about creating written Chinese that the average person can understand, but chinese still has a seperation between口语and 书面语. Maybe they could have changed more.

[madizi]

I think that Classical Chinese is still useful, though not vitally important. You can find it in many proverbs (chengyu). Newspaper language also uses some of its structures. Classical Chinese also helps you to understand more deeply the meaning of (normally two) characters that form particular word.

[ananda]

It's easier to understand the difference between 'ancient' and 'modern' chinese by providing an 'ancient' article:

黔之驴 柳宗元

　　黔无驴，有好事者船载以入。至则无可用，放之山下。虎见之，庞然大物

也，以为神，蔽林间窥之。稍出近之，慭慭然，莫相知。

　　他日，驴一鸣，虎大骇，远遁；以为且噬已也，甚恐。然往来视之，觉无异

能者；益习其声，又近出前后，终不敢搏。稍近，益狎，荡倚冲冒。

　　驴不胜怒，蹄之。

　　虎因喜，计之曰，“技止此耳！”因跳踉大噉，断其喉，尽其肉，乃去。

modern version:

　　 黔这个地方没有驴子，有个喜好多事的人用船运载了一头驴进入黔地。运到

后却没有什么用处，便把它放置在山下。老虎见到它，一看原来是个巨大的动

物，就把它当作了神奇的东西。于是隐藏在树林中偷偷地窥探它。老虎渐渐地走

出来接近它，很小心谨慎，不了解它究竟有多大本领。

　　一天，驴子一声长鸣，老虎大为惊骇，顿时远远地逃跑；认为驴子将要吞噬

自己，非常恐惧。然而老虎来来往往地观察它，觉得驴子好象没有什么特殊的本

领似的；渐渐地习惯了它的叫声，又靠近它前前后后地走动；但老虎始终不敢和

驴子搏击。慢慢地，老虎又靠近了驴子，态度更为随便，碰擦闯荡、冲撞冒犯

它。

　　驴禁不住发怒，用蹄子踢老虎。

　　老虎因此而欣喜，盘算此事。心想到：“驴子的本领只不过如此罢了！”于

是跳跃起来，大声吼叫，咬断驴的喉咙，吃完了它的肉，才离去。

From above, the difference of grammar is quite few, the big differences

lie in word and phrase. The ancient is more simpler than the modern one.

BTW, this article is a lesson of Grade 7 in mainland china, the ancient

chinese is not so difficult even for an educated teenage of chinese.

The 'modern' chinese was first appeared in chapter novels of Song

dynasty, and the songs of Yuan dynasty and novels of Ming&Qing

dynasty, we could name it ancient-modern chinese. They were the

bridge of ancient and modern chinese, which were full of slangs and

wordy than ancient chinese. In last century, the elites, both nationalists

and communists, hijacked the modern chinese as the tool to test whether

one supports revolution, so the new modern chinese desperately tried

to keep different with the ancient chinese. That the reason why the gap

is so 'big' between the two.