The importance or not of learning grammar, classical Chinese and other random things

[Arreat]

[Admin Note, split from this thread]

I think the most important thing of learning a new language is not how but the time you have invested in it.

I think that's the key reason why you've done so successfully.

I've learned Chinese and English as second and third language. But I live in China, so I learned Chinese very

fast. And I'm trying to improve my English recently, that's why I come to here. I'm a programmer, so I have to

learn a lot of programming languages. I don't think it's that much different between learning a programming

language and learning Chinese or any other language. The most important thing to learn a new language is you

must try to use it. But going through a grammar book is boring and much harder than reading some interesting

well-written short articles written in the language you want to learn. It can easily frustrate you and make

you want to give up. I don't know much of learning Chinese. But my experience of learning English is that rather

than read a grammar book, I learned much more useful things by reading lots of English everyday.

But when you know nothing about a language, you do have to learn some basic grammar constructions and characters.

Maybe pick up a book that combined really short and easy sentences or articles with basic grammar knowledges is

a good idea. But don't read thick grammar books at the beginning. After you've know quite a lot about the language,

you can use grammer book and dictionary as reference. Pure grammar book is not the best idea.

[Arreat]

And HEY! Dear OneEye, don't read Classical Chinese. And what Taiwanese people told you are totally inappropriate.

Especially the Classical Chinese part. That's like you English people learning English used in 18th or 19th century

or even worse than that. We don't use Classical Chinese in our life either. That's obscure and wired. After graduated

from high school, we never touched it like forever. And you know what? About 3000 characters is enough to communicate

with Chinese effectively. And memorizing lists of vocabulary words is also a bad idea! You only have to memorize the most

important few hundreds of characters and about 50 constructions. And then, you can use these to learn much more.

For example,

{你好，我是 Arreat，[我] 来自 [中国]。}, # Hi, I'm Areat, I come from China

{[语法] [是] [什么意思？] }, # what's the meaning of 语法?

{{[你能告诉我] [怎么学习中文吗？]}, {[你能告诉我] [这是哪里吗？]}}, # Could you tell me how to learn Chinese? Could you tell me where is this place?

{{[这是][什么]}，{[那是][什么]}} # What's this? What's that?

Just stuffs like these...... Good luck to you!

[OneEye]

I'm starting graduate school in Taiwan next year, studying early (pre-Han) Chinese history and palaeography alongside native speakers (not in one of the "for foreigners" programs). Telling me "don't read Classical Chinese" is terrible advice. Just like telling me to read more classical Chinese to improve my speaking skills is bad advice (which came from a 90 year-old man, so it was well-intentioned and forgivable).

And that's ignoring the fact that yes, native speakers use Classical Chinese all the time, though they may not be explicitly aware of it. I'm not talking about people sitting around reading Zhuangzi as a hobby, but classical constructions are used extensively in formal writing, and anyone hoping to reach a high level of proficiency in modern Chinese does need to learn some classical Chinese.

[Arreat]

Oh man, you are studying Chinese history? Then you indeed need to learn Classical Chinese.

I don't know quite a lot of Taiwanese situation. But in China, we really don't use Classical

Chinese that much. Maybe a little? I don't know. A lot of characters have different meanings

in Mandarin and Classical Chinese. Even we Chinese can't understand many articles written in

Classical Chinese either. It's like a foreign language to us too! If you mean stuffs like

"有朋自远方来，不亦乐乎" or "东临竭石，以观沧海" is Classical Chinese, though not exactly, but I do

know the meanings of these. But you know why? Because I learned them when I was in high school!!

If you give me another article or some wired sentences I never learned before, I am the same as

you guys too....

But when we talk with friends for fun, we will use stuffs like "饭否？ 饭！" which means

"Shall we go have breakfast/lunch/dinner? Hell yeah!" and "告辞!" which means "Bye!". But it's

really just for fun. And we learned it when we were in High School... We'll never talk like that

in public. But some old papas or 40-year-olds may use more Classical Chinese than young people.

I strongly believe that Chinese people will never learn Classical Chinese in high school. Only

those who are interested in Classical Chinese itself or early history will learn it in college.

I agree with you, @OneEye, that if anyone hoping to reach a high level of Chinese doese need to

learn some Classical Chinese. But if you only want to use Chinese as a communication tool to talk

with ordinary Chinese people, it's better not to learn much of Classical Chinese. Because that will

make a lot of people don't know what you are talking about!囧 And hey, though there is slight

difference between languages used in China and Taiwan, but there is no problem between us talking

in Chinese.

May this will help you understand better on us. Thanks!

[skylee]

Even we Chinese can't understand many articles written in Classical Chinese either. It's like a foreign language to us too!

Please. By "we Chinese" do you mean you and the people you know? There are billions of Chinese people out there, and there are many on these forums, and they do not go around telling everyone that they are Chinese. Please do not think or act like you represent other Chinese people. Thank you.

But some old papas or 40-year-olds may use more Classical Chinese than young people.

This sounds bad.

[Arreat]

oops, sorry. Maybe I should add prefix of Mandarin Chinese? Is it such a big deal a Chinese tell other people

he is a Chinese? WHY? I didn't mean to "represent" any people. But as far as I know, people around me and

I've met by far, no one speak Mandarin Chinese use much of Classical Chinese. There are about 1.5 billion

Chinese living in China, and over half of these people use Mandarin. In TV and newspapers, people also use

Mandarin. And I've known some Taiwanese, they don't use Classical Chinese either. I can chat with them easily,

though the characters we used are slightly different. What's the matter of you?? :-(

PS: Do you think that it's not appropriate to tell others I'm a Chinese? I really don't understand. I think

declaration can make you guys believe my Chinese is good.

[imron]

I didn't mean to "represent" any people

When you say "we Chinese" how else are people supposed to interpret that?

What you also perhaps didn't realise is that "we Chinese" also includes Skylee, and I guess she doesn't like you speaking for her especially when you make comments that perhaps she disagrees with. Which only goes to demonstrate her point which is that you shouldn't really make a claim about Chinese based solely on your own personal experiences, when there are many people in that group that might be different from you.

[Arreat]

And I have another thing to say. I think the most important usage of a language like Chinese or English is to convey and record information.

It's no big deal. It's just a communication tool to most of human beings. And any language has its structure which is called grammar and

symbol which is called word or character. To master the most important part of a language is not that difficult as many people may think.

A good speech or a good article can be made in many languages. The language itself is not important. Do you guys agree with it?

Chinese is not a very good language. Its logical system has its own flaw. For example, you can't count the words in a sentence like English

with a computer program. And the structure of a Chinese sentence is not clear like English. And meaning of a Chinese sentence can be

different depends on many elements. And sometimes it's difficult to keep simple and clean.

[Arreat]

What you also perhaps didn't realise is that "we Chinese" also includes Skylee, and I guess she doesn't like you speaking for her especially when you make comments that perhaps she disagrees with. Which only goes to demonstrate her point which is that you shouldn't really make a claim about Chinese based solely on your own personal experiences, when there are many people in that group that might be different from you.

hmm...didn't think about that. My point does have some flaws. sorry about that. :-(

But hey, what I said is rather general in China nowadays. You can ask any random people working in cities like Beijing or Shanghai

whether they use Classical Chinese a lot. The truth is they really seldom use it. And students in school are learning Mandarin now.

Maybe Taiwanese are learning a lot of Classical Chinese? But compared with people who are using Mandarin, that is not a big number.

Right?

[OneEye]

I appreciate that you're trying to be enthusiastic and encouraging, but you're misinformed. It comes with the territory. Most native English speakers don't know anything about their own language either.

Again, I'm not talking about people sitting around reading 莊子 or 韓愈. What I said was that Chinese people use classical Chinese in formal writing all the time. Here's an example from 《漢語書面用語初編 Expressions of Written Chinese》 (2006, 北京語言大學出版社):

（文）此蓋款不敷出之故。

（白）這是因為錢不夠花的原因。

This usage of 蓋/盖 meaning 因為 comes from classical Chinese.

Here's another one:

（文）可行與否需視結果如何而定。

（白）能不能做，要看結果怎樣才能確定。

I could go on. This book contains 300 of these classical patterns used in modern Chinese (this section of the book is entitled 漢語書面語常用古句式初編 Classical Patterns Frequently Used in Modern Chinese). You may not think about them being derived from 文言文 because you grew up learning to read Chinese without having to give these sorts of things much thought, and it is now second nature to you. Not so with adult learners. We have to learn classical Chinese to be able to understand this (or at least, learning classical Chinese makes understanding this sort of formal writing much easier). Again, this is where a native speaker, unless he is trained in teaching Chinese to foreigners, may be a bit out of his depth.

I believe Taiwanese people do tend to study a good bit more classical Chinese in school than people do in the PRC. That has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

[Arreat]

I appreciate that you're trying to be enthusiastic and encouraging, but you're misinformed.....

Can I just use Chinese to explain it to you? If you don't understand, I will try to use English. Writing in English is

really hard to me. And you can see how people like me use Chinese when dicuss with other people on the Internet.

你好，首先，你必须要明白的一个事情是，使用中文的人是非常多的，很多种差别很大的语言都可以称其为中文。

但是我想绝大多数人需要学习的中文应该就是我现在使用的这种。

其次，你举的两个例子在中国大陆是不常用的。台湾人虽然也使用中文，但是其文化和语言与中国大陆是有相当

大的差异的。就像我使用的语言不能代表所有的中国人使用的语言一样，台湾人使用的语言、四川人使用的语言、

广东人使用的语言通通都不能代表所有的中国人和中文。你说的情况在台湾也许的确是很常见的，但是在大陆，

情况并非那样。

那么我们首先就要确定那些想要学习中文的人到底想要学习哪种中文，是想学习使用人口最多的普通话呢？还是

台湾话？我今天晚上刚和一个台湾的朋友聊了一晚上的天，我们之间的对话除了简体字与繁体字的不同外，其他

地方并没有很多区别，当然，台湾人用来记录文字发音和输入中文的方式也与我们不同，不过这并不重要。

最后，就像今天的英语是从过去的英语发展过来的一样，所有的语言都是一点一点发展到今天的。作为中文，怎么

可能将过去的所有文法和单词通通都丢掉？很多文法和单词经过改良都已经成为现代中文的一部分。但是为了学好

现代的中文就要去学习大量的文言文这是错误的，这就好比在学习计算机编程的时候，现在已经很少有人去学习机

器语言或者汇编语言了，你可以问问这个论坛的主人是否会使用机器语言进行编码。

所以，对于只是把中文作为交流的工具来学习的外国人来说，完全可以直接去学习现代中文，而不需要去学习古代

中文的知识，因为只学习现代中文完全可以将中文掌握得绰绰有余。绰绰有余这个词语和很多类似的东西都叫成语，

这些东西都是被保留下来的东西，但是我并不明白这个词语中每个字到底是什么意思，我只知道它是足够的意思，

这就足够了。但是你有一点说的是正确的，对于中文的使用者来说，如果能够使用大量的成语和华丽的辞藻，的确

会使文章增色不少，台湾的一些学者在说话的时候的确会使用很多成语，但是这些成语完全可以用更简洁的词语代

替。

请记住，语言对于大多数人来说，永远只是个工具，重要的是是否能够用其准确地表达一个人的观点和记录信息。

See, did I use much of Classical Chinese? Thanks.

[OneEye]

I'm going to use English, because this is not the Chinese Corner.

I feel inclined to point out (again) to Arreat that the book I quoted in that post was published by Beijing Language And Culture University Press. It is not a Taiwanese publication. I read mainland-published books all the time and they're full of these sorts of constructions.

Apart from this, I don't have the time nor interest to respond to that whole thing, and we're seriously derailing this thread. That's all from me.

[Arreat]

To OneEye: Hi, sorry first. It seems we are a little out of control. As to the press and the book, haha, I must say I didn't know it

before I come to here. And how many books have you read by now? And what kind of books are they? If most of them are related to history,

I can understand why you said they are full of the constructions you are talking about. OK, no more argument. And I really hope I can

improve my English in the meantime I can help people with Mandarin Chinese and a little Classical Chinese. It's fair to me. Thanks.

Return to the theme of this thread. Hey, grawrt. As to learnling Chinese, my opinion is that you really should work hard first!

Second, if you find reading grammar book is boring and feel don't learn much of Chinese, try change the way you learn it. In fact, most

way or method can lead to success. But some way is harder than the others. Everyone has different learning habit. That's why we should

keep searching the best way to learn. Maybe the way good to me is not good to you, and vice versa! I've made some mistakes in this thread.

All I can do is to share my experience with learning a language. By far, I've learned two languages which are not my mother language.

They are Chinese and English. Because I didn't know much of Chinese, I stayed in junior high for 4 years which is longer than the

normal of 3 years. Yes, I struggled with Chinese in the first year of junior high! So I'm not a total native speaker of Chinese.

My experience is that reading textbooks which have some important grammar knowledges or simple stories written for people like you who are

new to Chinese. It must be interesting and close to the exact language used by people you want to communicate with. It must make you feel

that you can understand most of its content and learn something you don't know before. And HEY! Though Chinese do have some bad reputation.

But most Chinese are kind and happy to help also. Don't forget that there are over 1.5 billion Chinese people living on the earth. Why do

you learn it by yourself? Maybe Chinese people especially those living in China which is called the mainland by some people here are too

warm to foreigner. And this may make you guys laugh at Chinese people which is really mean. But things are a little different now.

What the same as before is that we are still friendly and happy to help. So go find some Chinese wherever they are living in. There

always are a lot of people who would like to help you with Chinese and don't expect any reward. Not me, I need someone to give me a little

help with my English!! Thanks!

[renzhe]

This is getting off-topic, and should perhaps be split off?

I agree with anonymoose, the threadstarter's general idea is OK, just get going. Consistency is the single most important factor when learning Chinese.

As for the side discussion, I agree that most people want to learn modern language (first) and that they should not start doing this by reading Laozi or memorising grammar books. But I do feel that grammar books are important for adult learners, and that ignoring grammar leads to ignorance of grammar. Also, people do not speak classical Chinese today, but classical Chinese is still very much present in chengyu and formal language, and becomes increasingly so if you consider older materials -- this includes costume dramas, wuxia stories, and modern TV shows referencing them (爱情公寓 is loaded with chengyu and archaic language). Learning some Classical Chinese can be really useful and fun for advanced learners.

[imron]

This is getting off-topic, and should perhaps be split off?

Done.

[Hofmann]

I just want to point out that what Arreat learned in high school regarding Classical Chinese might not be what most of the forum members learned regarding Classical Chinese (from textbooks, here, or from university courses). Just imagine what he/she might have been doing. Wild guess: reciting some passages, or "translating" (but really just remembering what it means, and regurgitating) it into 白話文. True proficiency (i.e. ability to communicate in the language) was not a goal.

[li3wei1]

On the subject of grammar, any serious student should have a grammar book to refer to, and as long as you have it, the time spent reading through it once, no matter what level you're at, is probably not going to be wasted. When I was very young, and learning chess, I read a book that explained the rules, and even though I'd already learned the rules and didn't learn anything new from the book, my game improved a lot (I went from losing to my sister to beating her). Sometimes just seeing something you already know laid out in a systematic way helps you understand and/or remember it better.

[Arreat]

@Hofmann, yes, you are pretty close to the truth. BTW, it's he, not she :-)

I think Classical Chinese which I and many Chinese living in China have learnd is rather different from Mordern Chinese. We call it 文言文. And we call the language we used everyday now 普通话. In fact, I like 文言文 more than 普通话。It's really elegant and clean. A lot of beautiful poems and articles are just gorgeous. They are pearls of Chinese culture.

But if you want to master the language to communicate with Chinese effectively, it's better to learn Mordern Chinese first. Because the grammers and meanings of many characters are very different from language used by Chinese people nowadays. Learning much Classical Chinese at the beginning is like that choosing machine language or assembly language as the first programming language when learning programming. I think narrowing the way of learning Chinese to only Mandarin is good enough to most people who wants to learn Chinese as a tool to communicate with Chinese. Either Taiwanese or language taught in Chinese school is similar to each other. Only we use different

system to mark the pronounciation. You can chose whichever you think is easier and more understandable. It's really no big deal.

As to grammar, it's of course important. A well-organized grammar book for reference is handy. But learning a language from reading pure grammar book is not a good idea, especially at the beginning. A good textbook of a language should make you can actually use the language and tell you how to learn the language by yourself and where you can find the information you needed. I don't know whether there are books belong to this kind, but there are lots of English resources can make me learn English by myself well.

Moreover, establishing a good sense of the language you are learning is more important. The only way to achieve this goal is to read lots of materials written by the language everyday.

These are my experiences of learning a new language. Thanks!

[OneEye]

You seem to think you're telling us things we don't know. I believe everyone in this thread is perfectly clear what 文言文, 白話, 普通話 etc. mean.

From time to time we get native speakers that come in here, guns blazing with enthusiasm, thinking they're going to come in and educate us foreigners about Chinese. The problem is, they usually assume we're all a bunch of blithering idiots when it comes to this language (probably because most foreigners they've dealt with in real life are exactly that), and so they start telling us things you learn the very first day you start studying Chinese, like "we call the language we used everyday now 普通话.” Do you really think that people serious enough about studying Chinese to join a forum solely dedicated to topic won't already know that? When they discover that we're not a bunch of English teachers in China forced to take Chinese because our wives said so and moaning about how "impossible" tones are, they generally leave. I don't know why that is.

I personally would love for more native speakers to be on this board, but if you're going to stick around then please, think better of us rather than worse. Assume we're intelligent and know a thing or two about Chinese. Otherwise it comes off as condescending, and that's really irritating.

Edit: Also, you might want to get clear on what the Taiwanese language actually is. It does not refer to 國語, or Standard Mandarin in Taiwan. It refers to 台灣閩南語 (usually called 台語 in Taiwan), which is a language completely unintelligible with Mandarin.

[Arreat]

You seem to think you're telling us things we don't know.

Dude, calm down. I'm new here. I don't know much about this forum. When I type a bunch of words in English in this forum, I thought I'm contributing to the forum. You should understand that there is a gap between Chinese and English. So the information can be misunderstanded when I use English to convey it. If I did something which is not appropriate, you can just point out. That's no big deal. You see, now I know everyone in this forum know pretty well the difference between 文言文, 白話, 普通話, etc. That's because of you! All right? So, can you forgive my unawareness?

So, is Taiwanese really 台湾闽南语!!?? Holy shit...then it's completely a different language from Chinese. I have a roommate in college whose hometown is Fujian province. We call the language people in his hometown used foreign language. I can't understand any single word of it. I know a lot of people living in Taiwan whose ancestor went to Taiwan island in Qing Dynasty. But I don't know Taiwanese is a fork of 闽南语.

Sorry about that. It seems you know pretty lots of stuffs about Taiwan. That's good. Is it true that Chinese native speaker leaveing here? I don't know why either. I think this place is nice and interesting. I never know that so many people living in other countries have interests to learn Chinese. It's pretty novel to me to see people who are not native speaker are discussing learning of Chinese. I think I will stay quite a long time in this forum. Thanks.