Classical Chinese via Japanese

[JAndrews]

Hello!

I am interested in learning Classical Chinese (besides general interest, I'm a graduate student in philosophy and want to read some Chinese phil. texts). After doing some reading, the consensus seems to be that learning some of a relevant modern language first seems to be a good idea, and many good textbooks seem to assume this.

I first thought to learn Mandarin, but I have very little incentive to learn Mandarin except as a vehicle for Classical Chinese. I have much more incentive to learn Japanese- anime and such, friends who speak Japanese and want me to learn, general appreciation for the sound of the language, etc. (Of course I don't mean to offend anyone by this; it's all purely personal)

Would learning Classical Chinese by route of Japanese by as profitable as doing it via Mandarin? Would there be any significant disadvantages (or advantages)?

Thanks,

Jacob Andrews

[Ruben von Zwack]

Hello! I studied Japanese before I went on to modern Chinese, but unfortunately I have zero knowledge of Classical Chinese, so I cannot really compare. But I do know that a lot of Hanzi/Kanji do have different meaning fields, so even if it's the same character, you cannot translate it 1:1. But then, this of course also applies if you study Latin and Spanish, so it's not a specific Chinese/Japanese problem.

Would learning Classical Chinese by route of Japanese by as profitable as doing it via Mandarin?

I'm afraid the answer to that is a big fat "no". No two ways around that.

I wouldn't dare to look at a classical philosphical text, but I noticed that with my modern Mandarin I can look at ancient poems and "kind of" understand (with the same restrictions I have when looking at a medieval English ballad of course). So "yes" to the advantage via Mandarin.

But as I said, I did study Japanese before, so maybe it gave me an advantage and I'm just too blind to see. I'd be curious to know what others think!

[Steingletscher]

Is jumping straight into Classical Chinese and bypassing Modern Chinese any different from simply studying Ancient Greek with no knowledge of Modern Greek?

[Lu]

If you are interested in classical Chinese and not particularly in modern Mandarin, in my opinion studying Mandarin would be a waste of time (and quite a lot of time, too). I don't know Japanese, but I think that will be an even bigger waste (of a comparable amount of time), since you'll learn two alphabets and, if I'm not mistaken, quite a large amount of grammar, neither of which will be any use in classical Chinese. There are textbooks that teach classical Chinese directly from/to English, without any need for Mandarin or Japanese, I suggest you start with those.

The other way around is different: to learn good Mandarin, at some level you can't get around also learning a bit of classical Chinese. And I imagine it'll also come in useful if at one point you decide to learn Japanese.

Good luck!

[OneEye]

Is jumping straight into Classical Chinese and bypassing Modern Chinese any different from simply studying Ancient Greek with no knowledge of Modern Greek?

Of course it is. The best resources for Ancient Greek are not written in modern Greek, but in English, French, etc. But the best resources for Classical Chinese are written in modern Chinese. If you really want to dive into these texts on a scholarly level, you'll need to read modern Chinese, because many of the best modern studies on them are in Chinese. There's a big difference between dabbling a bit in Classical Chinese and really becoming proficient in it, and resources in English are not sufficient for the latter.

Then again, there are many good resources in Japanese too. Early Chinese Texts by Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy lists important Japanese editions for every text, for instance, and the Japanese have a strong tradition in Classical Chinese (they call it 漢文 kanbun) and the classics. If you have a strong preference for Japanese, I don't see why you'd have to learn Chinese, especially if your field isn't really "Chinese studies" or the like. In fact, American grad students in Japanese studies are often required to learn Classical Chinese to a fairly high level, and they don't generally learn modern Chinese. So it may be (my Japanese isn't good enough to know what's out there) that you could do just fine with only knowledge of Japanese.

But really, again, if you want to deal with the texts on a scholarly level and be taken seriously, you'll have to know what other scholars are saying about them, and the bulk of the scholarship is going to be written in Chinese.

So learn both.

[Hofmann]

Have you considered studying Classical Chinese directly from a language you're good at, and then studying Japanese? IMO that's a more efficient and potentially less confusing way to do it. Although the resources aren't as abundant, material in English is still pretty good. After getting somewhat proficient in Classical Chinese, you can use it to strengthen your Japanese studies if you feel like it.

BTW I studied Mandarin first, then Classical Chinese and Japanese using English materials.

[Kobo-Daishi]

At least with Chinese and Japanese, there are literary Chinese dictionaries. While for English there aren't.

Also, for Korean and possibly Vietnamese.

Kobo.

[Lu]

the best resources for Classical Chinese are written in modern Chinese. If you really want to dive into these texts on a scholarly level, you'll need to read modern Chinese, because many of the best modern studies on them are in Chinese. There's a big difference between dabbling a bit in Classical Chinese and really becoming proficient in it, and resources in English are not sufficient for the latter.

Depending on how deep you want/need to go into the texts you want to read, there are several options:

- Read the text in English (or German/French/whatever you can speak) translation, and depending on the text also a few helpful commentaries.

- Spend 1-2 years learning Classical Chinese, read the text in Classical Chinese, perhaps with translation and some commentaries on the side.

- Spend 4 years learning Mandarin, 4 years learning Japanese and 1-2 years learning Classical Chinese, read the text in Classical Chinese and many insightful commentaries on the text in Chinese and Japanese.

Of course, in an ideal world, you'd take that last route, but not everybody has that much time.

[hackinger]

Hi,

I would invest into A new Practical Primer of Literary Chinese by Paul Rouzer

http://www.amazon.co... Chinese rouzer

or get it from a library and see for yourself how it goes without knowing Mandarin. There are forum threads about that book.

I have it in front of me. In each lesson, first a Classical Chinese text is presented. Then each new character is explained, including modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean pronunciations. Then there is some commentary after which the reader should translate the text. Explicit translations of the texts are available in the book only for the first 10 lessons.

The first lesson presents three short proverbs and introduces 27 characters. Later texts are longer, about half a page. Altogether the book introduces about 1400 characters.

Of course if you know neither Chinese nor Japanese, you should get a resource which teaches how to write the characters.

Cheers

hackinger

[OneEye]

Depending on how deep you want/need to go

Of course, this is key. I could be assuming too much, but my assumption was that he wants to use these texts in his research. Of course, he could go into less depth, ignoring what scholars are saying about the texts in the two main research languages of the field, but in that case he wouldn't have much to stand on and I'd personally be disinclined to take much of what he says about the texts seriously. If, however, he's doing this out of general interest and doesn't intend to publish much on Chinese philosophy, then doing less language work isn't a problem, of course.

Spend 4 years learning Mandarin, 4 years learning Japanese and 1-2 years learning Classical Chinese

I dunno, 1-2 years in-country each for Chinese and Japanese would do the trick if he really focused on learning to read academic writing, and he could learn Classical Chinese at the same time. Or maybe a year of classes "on the side" at his university, then a full year at the ICLP (or better yet, two summers and the academic year in between), which would have him reading whatever he needs for his research just fine and would allow him to take some Classical Chinese courses. Academic and Classical Chinese is where the ICLP really excels. Or he could do what I did and spend 5 quarters working as hard as he can at the MTC and teaching himself Classical Chinese on the side, which would be much cheaper. Then, another year at a similar program in Japan. So one year at his university and two years away. Of course, more time in-country would be ideal, but like you said, not everybody has that much time. Anyway, there are scholarships available, such as the one from the Blakemore Foundation, the CSC in China, or the MOE in Taiwan, which would make the whole thing much easier.

Still, I get your point that it's going to be a serious investment of time. That's what grad school is for though, developing the skills you need to use in your professional academic life. Grad school in the humanities takes a while anyway.

[navaburo]

I see two reasons why a knowledge of Modern Chinese or Japanese would assist your Classical Chinese studies: the first is that, as OneEye and others point out, the best resources for learning Classical are written in Modern Chinese or Japanese; but secondly, knowing the modern language gives you a knowledge of many characters which is then largely portable to your Classical studies. Furthermore, learning the modern languages is easier because you have opportunities to reenforce them through conversation and media other than text.

As for the etymological connection, it goes roughly like this: Classical is to Mandarin as Latin is to French, and Classical is to Japanese as Latin is to English: French is a direct decendant of Latin and so shares a great deal of vocabulary and some grammar with Latin. English on the other hand is a Germanic language, but has had such a strong influx of Latin roots that by most estimates 50% of the English lexicon is of Latin origin. So, etymologically speaking, it's probably better to know French (Mandarin) than English (Japanese) for learning Latin in so far as there will be more cognates.

However, it is my unconfirmed suspicion that the meanings of the Chinese characters used in Japanese are consistently closer to their meaning in Classical Chinese than are the modern Mandarin characters. This may be because while Mandarin has evolved organically, including its native writing system in these changes, Japanese has only more recently introduced the Kanji to their language and it is Classical Chinese, not the modern language, on which the Kanji semantics are based.

Whatever you do, try to have fun with it! A few of us are enjoying dabbling in Classical on this forum using the Rouzer text (written in English but including readings in Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean) that hackinger mentioned. You are welcome to join this study group. (I know we are already on lesson 10, but if you are serious you will catch up fast -- we are taking a leisurely pace.)

[Lu]

I see two reasons why a knowledge of Modern Chinese or Japanese would assist your Classical Chinese studies: the first is that, as OneEye and others point out, the best resources for learning Classical are written in Modern Chinese or Japanese; but secondly, knowing the modern language gives you a knowledge of many characters which is then largely portable to your Classical studies. Furthermore, learning the modern languages is easier because you have opportunities to reenforce them through conversation and media other than text.

As for the etymological connection, it goes roughly like this: Classical is to Mandarin as Latin is to French, and Classical is to Japanese as Latin is to English: French is a direct decendant of Latin and so shares a great deal of vocabulary and some grammar with Latin. English on the other hand is a Germanic language, but has had such a strong influx of Latin roots that by most estimates 50% of the English lexicon is of Latin origin. So, etymologically speaking, it's probably better to know French (Mandarin) than English (Japanese) for learning Latin in so far as there will be more cognates.

If you already know French, that will help you in learning Latin. But if you don't know French and want to learn Latin, it's a lot faster to just go ahead and learn Latin. French is also easier to learn if you already know Spanish, but I don't think anyone is going to argue that if you want to learn French, you should learn Spanish first. Just go forth and learn French.

And there are in fact all kinds of resources to learn Classical Chinese from English. It's how I learned it (these days the students in my uni use a Dutch textbook, even). Many of the more famous texts have been translated into various Western languages multiple times, there are all kinds of Chinese-English dictionaries that can be used for Classical Chinese. Unless the text you want to read is especially obscure and especially difficult (in which case you might need more commentaries which will be in Chinese/Japanese), you can get pretty far without learning Mandarin.

Of course, if the OP wants to know what scholars have said of the text he/she wants to read, Mandarin and/or Japanese can come in very useful. I agree with that.

[OneEye]

If you already know French, that will help you in learning Latin. But if you don't know French and want to learn Latin, it's a lot faster to just go ahead and learn Latin. French is also easier to learn if you already know Spanish, but I don't think anyone is going to argue that if you want to learn French, you should learn Spanish first. Just go forth and learn French.

What if a Chinese speaker who knew no Western languages wanted to learn Latin? Is he to dive into Latin using only what's available to him in Chinese? That sounds terrifying, frankly, and it's essentially the same sort of thing you're recommending here.

And taking it back to academia, would you trust what a Chinese scholar had to say about Epictetus if he couldn't read at least one modern Western scholarly language relevant to his research? I sure wouldn't.

Again, if the OP (where is he, by the way?) just wants to dabble in Classical Chinese for fun, then by all means he should just go for it. But if he wants to dive into Chinese philosophical texts on a scholarly level and publish on them, then he needs to learn at least Chinese or Japanese, if not both.

[Lu]

What if a Chinese speaker who knew no Western languages wanted to learn Latin? Is he to dive into Latin using only what's available to him in Chinese? That sounds terrifying, frankly, and it's essentially the same sort of thing you're recommending here.

If the resources available in Chinese to learn Latin is similar in quality & quantity to what's available in English to learn Classical Chinese, then yes, that's what I would strongly recommend. For one thing, those textbooks would focus on the issues in Latin that a Chinese speaker would be most likely to have trouble with.

Mandarin is easier to learn if you already know Japanese. (Or Classical Chinese, for that matter.) Would you recommend a Westerner who doesn't know an Asian language yet to learn Japanese or Classical Chinese before diving into Mandarin? I wouldn't.

To read the commentaries, I would recommend the Chinese speaker in question to first find out in what language the most important commentaries are written. If s/he was going to specialise in Epictetus, then I'd recommend s/he learn at least one of the languages in which the most important research is done. But if s/he just wanted to look into Epictetus to compare his views to those of some other, Chinese, ancient scholar, then I'd recommend s/he finds some other solution.

I, too, am looking forward to the OP coming back to tell us more about his research and let us know whether our insights are useful to him.

[luhmann]

I'm currently under the impression that Classical Chinese is actually a lot easier than the modern languages, if I were to start my Asian language adventure again, I would want to learn it as the first thing, provided that I could find a dictionary...

[samwu33]

I find JAndrews' idea interesting , and , it likely only happens when some cultures whose old images and content are still bigger than their modern ones; If you learn TCM ( Traditional Chinese Medicine) , qigong or Taoist alchemy , then studying classical Chinese is definitely needed. However, you still have to chat with other people in modern Chinese about what you have learned , and nowadays hardly can you find lot of people , even Chinese , who can communicate with you in written Classical Chinese.

[Webber King]

Classical Chinese had influenced many EAST ASIAN languages, such as Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc,. But the meanings of many words have been changed since long time ago. I don't recommend you to learn classical Chinese via Japanese, but if you learn classical Chinese first, it will be easier for you to learn Japanese.

[spin13]

I realize that this topic is a few months old, but I have a similar question and would like to use the past discussion as a springboard.  

 

Like OP, I am interested in learning to read Classical Chinese (more precisely, 漢文 as written by Japanese authors), but I am already proficient in Japanese as a second language.   I live in Japan and, as 漢文 is taught in high schools and universities, Japanese language resources are quite abundant.  Most of the books and videos I have looked through, however, seem to focus primarily on converting texts so that they conform to and are understandable using modern Japanese word order and grammar rather than trying to understand the text as is.  As Japanese is an Subject-Object-Verb structured language, the system to do this is quite complex and must be learned as well (example). While this has the benefit of allowing one's understanding of Japanese to do a bit of the heavy lifting, if I have to start from the ground up (at least in terms of learning a whole new notation system), I wonder if I would be better off simply learning how to read Classical Chinese as is.  My impression is that English based textbooks do approach Classical Chinese as is but obviously will not make as much use of an understanding of Japanese.

 

While I am in no way limited to doing only one or the other, I cannot find a library or bookstore that carries Rouzer or Pulleyblank to make a direct comparison, either to each other or to the texts available to me in Japanese.  I'd appreciate any thoughts, opinions, or names of recommended resources in Japanese you can offer me before I shell out for texts and international shipping.  I'm doing this as a hobby, to access some older martial arts documents, and would prefer to make one or two informed purchases rather than have unread books on my shelf.  Thank you.

[Lu]

 

My impression is that English based textbooks do approach Classical Chinese as is but obviously will not make as much use of an understanding of Japanese.

That's what my textbook did (don't remember the title I'm afraid), and I think your impression is in general correct.

 

Even if you don't learn classical Chinese (classical Japanese) directly from Japanese, your knowledge of Japanese will still be very helpful. To start with: characters. The meaning is of course not always the same, but still close enough to make it a lot easier for you than for someone who doesn't have any knowledge of characters. Pronunciation, too, is different but related.

 

I'm afraid I don't have a textbook to recommend, but I know there are good ones out there. Good luck!

[Hofmann]

Just looking on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.jp, I see that Fuller is about $10 more in Japan than in the US. Pulleyblank is about $20 more. I'd consider it worth the additional price to save the trouble of browsing bookstores.