Intelligibility of old/archaic Chinese

[davoosh]

Hello all,

Recently I have been wondering about the intelligibility of *spoken* old Chinese (or even archaic expressions) to a modern Chinese speaker. I have been watching 紅樓夢, and a lot of it is spoken in old or 'pseudo'-old Chinese. I have gathered from the comments that a lot of people seem to have difficulty understanding this type of language, especially when spoken.

So my question is, are old Chinese and perhaps obscure 成語 and other expressions not readily understandable to a speaker who is not already familiar with them? The amount of homophones would surely make it difficult to guess which character (and thus which meaning) is being used with a certain syllable, especially if it is only heard spoken. This obviously would not be a problem when it comes to reading.

It is interesting because it seems that this is much less of a problem if one uses archaic words in English or other European languages in a spoken context, as there are more 'clues' to what the meaning could be (such as the amount of prefixes and suffixes English uses, borrowings from French and Latin, etc.), whereas in Chinese you are just thrown a single syllable.

Any thoughts, comments or experiences on this topic would be very welcome!

Thanks.

[skylee]

I don't think it is a problem. Does the series have no subtitles?

[davoosh]

I'm pretty sure it did have subtitles, but I think the comments came from people who were perhaps born outside of China (and had limited exposure to that kind of Chinese).

Well, another way of posing the question might be, if a Chinese speaker was to hear a piece of old Chinese read aloud (a piece which they might have not seen before), would it be intelligible?

[renzhe]

I assume that you talking about archaic Mandarin, right, like the language of the four classics, and not Classical Chinese?

I believe that it is certainly more challenging for native speakers, but educated native speakers can usually follow it without major trouble. That has been my experience with really heavy Qing dynasty shows and native speakers, and also seems to match what we observed in the First Episode Project, where native speakers didn't have much trouble, while the rest of us bled through our eyes and ears. You just have so much more context and experience as a native speaker.

If it's any consolation, my girlfriend said that following 雍正王朝 without subtitles required some concentration. I didn't understand a single word

[skylee]

IMHO that is probably because there are so many nouns (rather than idioms and expressions ) that are not used nowadays. For example, If you do not know what 粘桿處 is, then you don't know it. If you watch a drama based on the novel 笑傲江湖 and don't know that 司徒 / 司馬/ 司空 are official titles instead of surnames, then you might have difficulty in understanding part of the story.

Idioms, chengyus, expressions etc should not be a problem to educated native speakers.

[simplet]

Are you talking about reading old chinese texts in their original pronunciation (the pronounciation of these characters at the time when they were written), or simply reading the archaic characters and words with modern pronunciation?

If you were to read aloud whole passages of chinese classics (some that are not learned by rote by every chinese person) with modern pronunciation, I imagine most people would find it very difficult if not impossible to understand (have you heard about the books on "sayable chinese" by the linguist Y.R Chao?) If you somehow managed to trace back the pronunciation of the characters during the spring and autumn era and read the Annals of Confucius aloud using this pronunciation, I don't imagine there is a single person on earth that would understand even a single sentence from it.

[davoosh]

Thanks all, yes I was talking about archaic/old Chinese in a modern Chinese pronunciation (Mandaring/Canto). What you say confirms my suspicions that it would be difficult for even a native who has not studied the context to understand it. I guess the huge exposure and amount of time that natives spend in learning the Chinese 'classics' gives them a big advantage.

[renzhe]

But what do you mean by "archaic" and "old Chinese"? Old Chinese hasn't been spoken for 2000 years, and there isn't a person in the world who even knows what it sounded like. Simplet is talking about this kind of Chinese, which is essentially a different language from anything spoken today. Reading Classical Chinese outloud (with the exception with some simple passages and common chengyu) will not make sense to anyone who is not a scholar with a PhD.

But you mentioned 红楼梦. 红楼梦 is a relatively modern book, and characters speak in a language which is very similar to modern language. Pretty much every native speaker with high-school education will understand most of this (although they might miss a few words and odd expressions).

[davoosh]

Yeah I realise 'Old Chinese' hasn't been spoken for however long, but a lot of Chinese are at least somewhat familiar with it, no?

I didn't make a strong distinction between 'old' and 'archaic' because I wanted answers on both, and don't things like 紅樓夢 often borrow heavily from old Chinese, or often make use of a kind of pseudo-old Chinese?

[renzhe]

This is a bit tricky.

Old Chinese, like Middle Chinese was a spoken language. This is also the case with modern Chinese languages, like Mandarin and Cantonese, which developed from Middle Chinese.

Classical Chinese is a written language which was based on Old Chinese grammar and vocabulary. It was used for official writing until the 20th century in China, and also in many other countries. In the 20th century, a switch was made from writing in Classical Chinese to writing in Modern Vernacular Chinese (白话), which is based on modern spoken Mandarin vocabulary and grammar. "Art of War" and "Dao De Jing" were written in Classical Chinese. The four great novels (including 红楼梦) are written in modern vernacular.

Now that I've clarified what I'm talking about : Classical Chinese must be studied. It's like an English speaker reading Latin. A Chinese person will not understand much of Classical Chinese, written or pronounced, unless they studied this at university level, just like an English speaker will not understand Cicero without having studied Latin in school.

Vernacular Chinese is easily understood today, even if it was written 200 years ago (like 红楼梦). Some of it is archaic, but it's not too bad for an educated native speaker, because it's essentially Mandarin and only slightly different from modern literature. This is like an English speaker reading Shakespeare -- it's archaic, but it's still English, and relatively straight-forward.

Vernacular Chinese may sometimes be influenced by Classical Chinese, by using lots of chengyu which derives from Classical Chinese, or by being more compact -- I guess this is what you mean by "borrowing heavily from old Chinese" -- but this does not change things much. It's still infinitely easier than reading Classical Chinese.

[davoosh]

Oh ok, for some reason I thought most Chinese learnt Classical Chinese and had at least a basic passive understanding, it seems this isn't the case. Thanks for the clarification.

[renzhe]

Some of it is covered in school, especially in Taiwan, but then again, kids in Europe learn Latin too, and few can actually speak it

[davoosh]

Very few learn Latin nowadays (being from Europe myself, I know for certain none of my friends in Spain, France and the UK have ever studied Latin). I would be very surprised if anyone under 30 in Europe could even read basic texts in Latin, unless they were specifically studying classics.

I thought that Classical Chinese might have a bit more 'continuity' with modern Chinese, due characters' meaning often being somewhat transparent since they have remained largely unchanged, although I may be wrong? Unlike Latin, which would really only have continuity with the Romance languages, but orthography has obscured a large portion of that.

[simplet]

I think it's actually even more complicated than that. Even if you were a chinese native and a wenyanwen scholar at the same time, you'd probably still be hard pressed to understand a piece of classical chinese that you've never seen before read out loud. A lot of classic texts are deliberately written in a very compact, very abstruse way.

A lot of it is not meant to be said, only read, so without some help from the characters i don't know if it'd really be understandable.

[renzhe]

Very few learn Latin nowadays

I guess I'm an old fogie

I did 6 years. 2 were compulsory for anyone planning to go to university.

I thought that Classical Chinese might have a bit more 'continuity' with modern Chinese, due characters' meaning often being somewhat transparent since they have remained largely unchanged, although I may be wrong?

That's a whole new discussion

Many characters have indeed changed meaning with time. Many only retain the old meaning in fixed phrases derived directly from Classical Chinese. Many new characters were introduced to replace old ones (which are now exceedingly rare as a result).

[davoosh]

Well, I did 6 years. 2 were compulsory.

Haha, I had a feeling you might say something like that, but either you're of a generation when it was still more widely taught, or you're one of the very rare few who did learn it.

A lot of it is not meant to be said, only read, so without some help from the characters i don't know if it'd really be understandable.

I think this is what I was trying to get at. I probably underestimated the difference between classical and modern, and that not many study classical in seriousness.

[Kobo-Daishi]

For example, If you do not know what 粘桿處 is, then you don't know it. If you watch a drama based on the novel 笑傲江湖 and don't know that 司徒 / 司馬/ 司空 are official titles instead of surnames, then you might have difficulty in understanding part of the story.

I looked those up in a bilingual copy of the Xiandai Hanyu Cidian.

All the si1's were surnames. Couldn't find 粘桿處.

Now the Xiandai Hanyu Cidian is considered the best general purpose Chinese dictionary of modern Chinese. If it doesn't have it, what chance do us Chinese learners from an English-speaking background have?

Even a general purpose English dictionary would have quite a few of the more common archaic words from Shakespeare or the Bible. Thou, thee, hark, thy, forsooth, tis', etc.

Do native Chinese have to resort to specialty dictionaries just to watch a historical TV or movie drama?

I do remember watching the Korean historical drama Dae Jang Geum (Da Chang Jin) or Jewel in the Palace and noticing them using "niang" for "mother" all the time and I forgot what they used for "the masses" or "common people". I remember it wasn't "lao bai xing".

Actually it was "leung". It was dubbed in Cantonese. I kept wanting to slap the little girl for not pronouncing it "neung" as it should be.

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

[skylee]

We didn't just read dictionaries, we read history too. (Sadly history is no longer a subject taught at schools here. When I was at secondary school I had to study two history subjects, Chinese and Western, for 3 years. Nowadays there is something called general education instead.)