Jump to content
Chinese-Forums
  • Sign Up

The Duality Code


Recommended Posts

Posted

Bibliography

 

Allan, Sarah, The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1991, p. 31.

 

Ames, Roger T. and Hall, David L., Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong, Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001, title page.

 

André, Naomi, Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman in Early-Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2006, p. 18.

 

Bales, Kevin, Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007, p. 2.

 

Baxter, William H., A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology, Berlin, Mouton De Gruyter & Co, 1992, p. 346.

 

Bernhard, Kathryn, Women and Property in China, 960–1949, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 161.

 

Berry, Rita, and Adamson, Bob (eds.), Assessment Reform in Education: Policy and Practice, Heidelberg, Springer, 2011, p. 95.

Borges, Charles J., The Economics of the Goa Jesuits, 1542–1759: An Explanation of Their Rise and Fall, New Delhi, Concept Publishing Company, 1994, p. 48.

 

Bottéro, Françoise, ‘Revisiting the Wén  and the Zì ’, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, vol. 74, 2002, pp. 14–22.

 

Branigan, Tania, ‘Sound Principles’, The Guardian, 21 February 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/21/china, (accessed 19 June 2016).

 

Cao, Dingyun, ‘Identification of Writing in the Xia Period: A Study of Pottery Glyphs in the Erlitou Culture’, Chinese Archaeology, vol. 5, issue 1, p. 186,

http://www.kaogu.cn/en/Research_work/Exploration_on_the_origin_of_Ch/2013/1211/44721.html, (accessed 19 June 2016).

 

Chen, Ping, ‘China’, in Simpson, Andrew (ed.), Language and National Identity in Asia, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 151.

 

Chen, Ping, Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 186.

 

C’hu, T’ung-tsu, Local Government in China Under the Ch’ing, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1962, p. 174.

 


 

Chung, Paul S., Constructing Irregular Theology: Bamboo and Minjung in East Asian Perspective, Leiden, Brill, 2009, p. 104.

 

Correspondence with the Superintendent of British Trade in China upon the Subject of Emigration from that Country, London, Harrison and Son, 1853, pp. 3–4.

 

Crowder, Linda Sun, ‘The Taoist (Chinese) Way of Death’, in Bryant, Clifton D. (ed.), Handbook Of Death and Dying, Volume Two: The Response To Death, Sage Publications, 2003, p. 680.

 

Davies, Gloria, Lu Xun’s Revolution: Writing In A Time Of Violence, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2013, p. 268.

 

Dawson, Raymond (tr.), Sima Qian: The First Emperor: Selections from the Historical Records, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 74.

 

DeFrancis, John, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 1984, pp. 84, 258, 273.

 

DeFrancis, John ‘The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform’, Sino-Platonic Papers, no. 171, June 2006, pp. 3, 4.

 

De Groot, J. J. M., The Religious System of China, Volume  I, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1892, pp. 263, 323.

 


 

Dillon, Michael, China: A Modern History, London, I. B. Tauris, 2010, pp. 142–143.

 

Ding, Min, and Xu, Jie, The Chinese Way, New York, Routledge, 2015, pp. 101–102.

 

Dodgem, Randall A., Controlling the Dragon: Confucian Engineers and the Yellow River in Late Imperial China, Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001, p. 1.

 

Duyvendak, J. J. L. (tr.), The Book of Lord Shang: A Classic of the Chinese School of Law,  Clark, New Jersey, The Lawbook Exchange Ltd, 2003, p. 278.

 

Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, Women and the Family in Chinese History, London, Routledge, 2003, pp. 42, 48.

 

Elman, Benjamin A., Political, Social, and Cultural Reproduction via Civil Service Examinations in Late Imperial China, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000, pp. 7–28.

 

Elman, Benjamin A., ‘Preface’, in A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000, pp. xxx–xxxi.

 

Elvin, Mark, The Pattern of the Chinese Past: A Social and Economic Interpretation, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1973, p. 33.

 

Epstein, Steven, Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity, and Human Bondage in Italy, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2001, p. 48.

 

Faurot, Jeannette, Asian-Pacific Folktales and Legends, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1995, p. 77.

 

Fischer, Steven Roger, A History of Writing, London, Reaktion Books, 2001, p. 176.

 

Fisher, Mary Pat, Religions Today: An Introduction, Abingdon, Routledge, 2002, p. 119.

 

Freedman, Maurice, The Study of Chinese Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1979, p. 99.

 

Fu, Zhengyuan, Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 109, 188.

 

Gabriel, Richard A., The Great Armies of Antiquity, Westport, Praeger, 2002, p. 147.

 

Gallagher, Louis J. (tr.), China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, 1583–1610, New York, Random House, 1953, p. 86.

 

Gerth, Karl, China  Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation, Cambridge, Harvard University Asia Center, 2003, p. 68.

 

Hansson, Anders, Chinese Outcasts: Discrimination and Emancipation in Late Imperial China, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1996, pp. 19–20.

 

Hessler, Peter, ‘Oracle Bones’, The New Yorker, 16 February 2004,

http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/c.php?g=325241&p=2177430, (accessed 19 June 2016).

 

Ho, Peng Yoke, Li, Qi and Shu: An Introduction to Science and Civilization in China, Mineola, Dover Publications, 2000, (Originally published in Hong Kong by Hong Kong University Press, 1985), p. 34.

 

Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill, London, Andrew Crooke, 1651, pp. 62, 64–66.

 

Hsieh, Bao Hua, Concubinage and Servitude in Late Imperial China, London, Lexington Books, 2014, pp. 97–98.

 

Huang, Yong, Confucius: A Guide for the Perplexed, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2013, pp. 27–28.

 

Hung, Ho-fung, Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty, New York, Columbia University Press, 2011, p. 27.

 

Ivanhoe, Philip J. and Van Norden, Bryan W. (eds.), Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 2nd Edn., Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 2005, p. 364.

 

Jami, Catherine, The Emperor’s New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority During the Kangxi Reign (1662–1722), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 279.

 

Jensen, Lionel M., Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilizations, Durham, Duke University Press, 1997, p. 326.

 

Knoblock, John (tr.), Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, Volume III, Books 17–32, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1994, p. 245.

 

Kangxi Dictionary, Shanghai, Tongwen Shuju Yuanban, 1884(?),

http://www.kangxizidian.com/org/, (accessed 19 June 2016).

 

Katz, Paul R., ‘Banner Worship and Human Sacrifice in Chinese Military History’, in Link, Perry (ed.), The Scholar’s Mind: Essays in Honor of Frederick W. Mote, Hong Kong, The Chinese University Press, 2009, p. 207.

 

Klein, Martin A., Historical Dictionary of Slavery and Abolition, 2nd Edn., Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, p. 161.

 

von Kowallis, Jon Eugene,  ‘Lu Xun – the Sexier Story– A Review Article’, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews  (CLEAR), vol. 27, 2005, pp. 151–166.

 

Lee, Yeounsuk, The Ideology of Kokugo: Nationalizing Language in Modern Japan, Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 1996, p. 32.

 

Legge, James (tr.), The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Confucianism: Part I: The Shu King, The Religious Portion of the Shih King, The Hsiāo King, New Dehli, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, 1990, p. 466.

 

Legge, James (tr.), The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Confucianism: Part IV: The Li Ki, I–X, New Delhi, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, 1990, pp. 137, 156, 448–449.

 

Legge, James (tr.), The Chinese Classics: Vol. I: Containing Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, and The Doctrine of the Mean, London, Trübner & Co, 1861, pp. 61, 97, 99.

 

Legge, James (tr.), The Works of Mencius, 6B6,

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Legge%2C%20James%2C%201815-1897, (accessed 13 July 2016).

 

Lewis, Mark Edward, Sanctioned Violence in Early China, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1990, pp. 26–27.

 

Lewis, Mark Edward, Writing and Authority in Early China, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1999, p. 223.

 

Li, Feng, Early China: A Social and Cultural History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 110.

 


 

Li, Xueqin et al., ‘The earliest writing? Sign use in the seventh millennium BC at Jiahu, Henan Province, China’, Antiquity, vol. 77, issue 295, March 2003, pp. 31–44.

 

Liu, Guoli, Politics and Government in China, Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2011, pp. 4–5.

 

Liu, Yang, ‘A Reexamination of Banpo Pottery Symbols’, Journal of Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication, Vol. 23 No. 1, February 2015, p. 68.

 

Mair, Victor H., ‘Foreword’, in Zhou, Youguang, ‘To Inherit the Ancient Teachings of Confucius and Mencius and Establish Modern Confucianism’, Sino-Platonic Papers, no. 226, 2012, p. iv,

http://www.sino-platonic.org/, (accessed 19 June 2012).

 

Mair, Victor H. (tr.), ‘Lu Xun, An Outsider’s Chats About Written Language’ in Mair, Victor H. et al. (eds.), Hawai‘i Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture, Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005,

http://pinyin.info/readings/lu_xun/writing.html, (accessed 19 June 2016).

 

Man, John, The Terracotta Army: China’s First Emperor and the Birth of a Nation, London, Random House, 2008, p. 279.

 

Mann, Susan, ‘Ideals of Marriage and Family’, in Brownell, Susan (ed.), Chinese Femininities/Chinese Masculinities: A Reader, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002, p. 114.

Mazumdar, Sucheta,  Sugar and Society in China:  Peasants, Technology and the World Market, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 202.

 

McLeod, Alexus, Understanding Asian Philosophy: Ethics in the Analects, Zhuangzi, Dhammapada and the Bhavagad Gita, London, Bloomsbury, 2014, p. 50.

 

Melville, Herman, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1851, pp. 307–308.

 

Moser, David, ‘Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard’, in ‘Schriftfestschrift: Essays on Writing and Language in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday’, Sino-Platonic Papers, no. 27, August 1991, p. 66,

http://www.sino-platonic.org, (accessed 19 June 2016).

 

Mühlhahn, Klaus, Criminal Justice in China: A History, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2009, p. 161.

 

Nienhauser, William H. Jr. (ed.), The Grand Scribe’s Records: The Basic Annals of Pre-Han China by Ssu-ma Ch’'en, Volume I, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1994, p. 78.

 

Norman, Jerry, Chinese, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 67, 69.

 

Pankenier, David W., Astrology and Cosmology in Early China: Conforming Earth to Heaven, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 234.

 

Peterson, Barbara Bennett (ed.), Notable Women of China: Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century, Armonk, M. E. Sharpe, 2000, p. 6.

 

Petrinovich, Lewis, The Cannibal Within, New York, Aldine de Gruyter, 2000, p. 3.

 

Plutschow, Herbert, ‘Archaic Chinese Sacrificial Practices in the Light of Generative Anthropology’, Anthropoetics, vol. I, no. 2, December 1995, 

http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0102/china.htm, (accessed 19 June 2016).

 

Plutschow, Herbert, ‘Xunzi and the Ancient Chinese Philosophical Debate on Human Nature’, Anthropoetics, vol. 8, no. 1, Spring / Summer 2002,

http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0801/xunzi.htm, (accessed 19 June 2016).

 

Pound, Ezra, Confucius: The Unwobbling Pivot / The Great Digest / The Analects, New York, New Directions Publishing, 1969, title page.

 

Qian, Suoqiao, Liberal Cosmopolitan: Lin Yutang and Middling Chinese Modernity, Leiden, Brill, 2011, p. 118.

 

Rainey, Lee Dian, Confucius and Confucianism: The Essentials, Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, pp. 57, 153.

 

Rambo, Lewis R. and Farhadian, Charles E. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 543.

 


 

Ramsey, S. Robert, The Languages of China, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1987, p. 3.

 

Rojas, Carlos, The Great Wall: A Cultural History, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2010, pp. 56–57.

 

Ross, Heidi, ‘China Country Study’, Paper commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2006, Literacy for Life, p. 3,

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001461/146108e.pdf, (accessed 19 June 2016).

 

Saussy, Huan, ‘Classical Exegesis’, in Mair, Victor H. (ed.), The Columbia History of Chinese Literature, New York, Columbia University Press, 2001, pp. 909–910.

 

Schottenhammer, Angela, ‘Slaves and Forms of Slavery in Late Imperial China (Seventeenth to Early Twentieth Centuries)’, in Campbell, Gwyn (ed.), The Structure of Slavery in Indian Africa and Asia, London, Frank Cass, 2005, p. 143.

 

Schuman, Michael, ‘The Chinese President’s Love Affair With Confucius Could Backfire on Him’, Time, 30 October 2014,

http://time.com/3547467/china-beijing-xi-jinping-confucius-communism/, (accessed 19 June 2016).

 

Schwarcz, Vera, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1986, pp. 13–14.

Seijas, Tatiana, Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indians, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 54.

 

Shelke, Christopher, and Demichele, Mariella (eds.), Matteo Ricci in China, Rome, Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2010, p. 130.

 

Snow, Edgar, Red Star Over China, 1st Revised and Enlarged Edn., New York, Grove Press, 1968, p. 446.

 

Sterckx, Roel, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China, Albany, State University of New York, 2002, pp. 157–158.

 

Sterckx, Roel, Of Tripod and Palate: Food, Politics, and Religion in Traditional China, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 38.

 

Sterckx, Roel, Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 26–27.

 

Tamura, Eileen H. et al., China: Understanding Its Past, Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997, p. 30.

 

Tan, Chee Beng (ed.), Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora, Abingdon, Routledge, 2013, pp. 78–80.

 

Taylor, Rodney L., The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Confucianism: Volume One A–M, New York, The Rosen Publishing Group, 2005, p. 129.

 

Thern, Kenneth, Postface of the Shuo-wen Chieh-tsu, Madison, University of Wisconsin, 1966, p. 17.

 

Thornton, Thomas, A History of China, from the Earliest Records to the Treaty with Great Britain in 1842, Vol. I, London, W. H. Allen, 1842, p. 464.

 

Tolendano, Ehud R., Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East, Washington, University of Washington Press, 1998, p. 48.

 

Tsai, Shih-shan Henry, The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1996, pp. 28, 34.

 

Unger, J. Marshall, Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading Between the Lines, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 5.

 

Van Norden, Bryan W., An Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy, Indiana, Hackett Publishing, 2011, p. 114.

 

Wang, Ping, ‘Methods of Killing Human Sacrifice in Shang-dynasty Oracle-bone Inscriptions’, minima sinica, vol. 1, 2008,

http://international.uiowa.edu/files/ip.uiowa.edu/files/ozarchive/wangpingMethodsofHumanSacrificeinShangNEWEDITION.doc, (accessed 31 July 2016).

 

Wang, Rui, The Chinese Imperial Examination System: An Annotated Bibliography, Lanhan, The Scarecrow Press, 2013, p. 100.

 


 

Watson, James L. (ed.), Asian and African Systems of Slavery, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980, p. 224.

 

Wieger, L., Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification, 2nd Edn. Enlarged and Revised According to the 4th French Edn., New York, Dover Publications, 2000, p. 11.

 

Wilkinson, Endymion, Chinese History: A Manual, Revised and Enlarged, Cambridge, Harvard University Asia Centre, 2000, p. 222.

 

Wohl, Ellen E. (ed.), Inland Flood Hazards: Human, Riparian, and Aquatic Communities, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 22.

 

Wu, Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1989, p. 247.

 

Wu, Hung, ‘Han sarcophagi’, Res: 61/62: Sarcophagi, Cambridge, The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and the Harvard Art Museum, 2012, p. 203.

 

Xu, Shen, Shuowen Dictionary,

http://www.zdic.net/z/swjz/, (accessed 19 June 2016).

 

Xu, Shen, Shuowen Dictionary,

http://www.shuowenjiezi.com/, (accessed 19 June 2016).

 


 

Yampolsky, Philip, ‘Ch'an’, in Yoshinori, Takeuchi et al. (eds.), Buddhist Spirituality, Vol. II, 1st Indian Edn., Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2003, p. 15.

 

Yang, Hsien-yi and Yang, Gladys (trs.), Selected Works of Lu Hsun: Volume Four, Peking, Foreign Language Press, 1960, p. 109.

 

Yang, Lihui et al., Handbook of Chinese Mythology, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 32.

 

Yang, Xianyi and Yang, Gladys (trs.), ‘Kong Yiji’, in Lau, Joseph S. M. (ed.), The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature, 2nd Edn., New York, Columbia University Press, 2007, pp. 17–18.

 

Yao, Xinzhong and Zhao, Yanxia, Chinese Religion: a Contextual Approach, London, Continuum, 2010, p. 51.

 

Yu, Jimmy, Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500–1700, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 64–65.

 

Yuan, Haiwang (ed.), This is China: The First 5,000 Years, Great Barrington, Berkshire Publishing, 2010, p. 72.

 

Zhang, Jinfang, The Tradition and Modern Transition of Chinese Law, Heidelberg, Springer, 2014, p. 199.

 


 

Zhang, Qizhi, An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture, Heidelberg, Springer, 2015, p. 27.

 

Zhao, Dingxin, The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 171.

 

Zhou, Youguang, ‘To Inherit the Ancient Teachings of Confucius and Mencius and Establish Modern Confucianism’, Sino-Platonic Papers, no. 226, 2012, pp. 1, 2, 11, 

http://www.sino-platonic.org/, (accessed 19 June 2016).

Posted

Is this just a library? Or are these books you actually used to write your book?

 

Have you read all these or just referred to one thing in each?

 

Presenting a list like this feels a bit like here take this, see what you think now.

Posted

Well, at least it isn't relying too heavily on just one or two books. Mind you, it is missing Scientific Progress Goes "Boink". :P

Posted

I think we all know this is going to be rejected outright by academia as a serious academic work. It might be more marketable/readable if the premise was stated as a fictionalised conspiracy theory type of thing à la Dan Brown. People like to read that type of thing, even if they know it's completely fictional.

Posted

WKC, thanks. I still think that if you want to say something about Lu Xun and the Chinese language, it might have been useful to have read a lot of Lu Xun in Chinese, and not just a small selection in passable English translation. His writing might have told you everything you need to know about his thinking, seeing that he wrote quite a lot.

Posted
Roddy: Never seen anyone claim to find hidden meaning in the letter f.

 

Guess what? Everything is possible  :lol:

 

In particular, "F (...) represents love in all its’ forms."  Hm... I see... And  also: "F’s are warm-hearted, compassionate and easy going individuals who enjoy the company of others. When F is the first initial in a name it carries the vibration of a natural ‘nurturer’ " (copy/pasted from here). 

 

People will go to all sorts of lengths to attach hidden meanings to anything, including the F thing.

 

 

Posted

This is the definition of Esperanto, as it is based on European languages, I am not sure it would have been that easy for chinese people to learn. The only reason its grammar is simple is because Europeans are already familiar with it as with the pronunciation and structure.

 

Personally I think that would have have been a disaster to change.

 

I am glad characters have survived.

*is summoned* As a beginning Esperanto learner, I want to address this. The reason its grammar is simple is because it has no exceptions and a fairly short number of rules. China has one of the largest Esperanto communities (though the entire Esperanto world is pretty small), and it's fairly popular in other Asian countries as well. There is even at least one school that teaches it to kids--I can't find the video now, but there's one showing the teachers drilling their kids, Chinese-style, on vocabulary, all of them chorusing "simio" (monkey) together, etc.

 

There are definitely some grammar things that are going to be unfamiliar to Chinese speakers: past, present, and future tense, subordinate clauses ("the man who lives in the house"). I won't say acquiring it would be effortless, just that the hard parts would be balanced by how easy it is in general. I don't think Chinese should be or should have been replaced with Esperanto, but it's not as far-fetched as someone might think. If you're interested in the history, Bakin was another Chinese writer who played a part in the Esperanto movement in China. Like many intellectual movements from the era, there were a lot of ties to Esperantists in Japan as well.

  • Like 1
Posted

@iand

 

Yes this is what I would have expected, mostly the tenses would be different but also some other grammar structures but as you say not impossible.

 

I just didn't think it would have been any easier than any other European or indeed any western language to learn.

Posted

Unlike most European languages, the tenses are completely regular (no exceptions, even for "to be"--estis, estas, estos) and verbs only incorporate tense, not person, number, and aspect, which are separate particles which also work completely regularly without any exception. Since it's supposedly easier for a European to learn than any European language, it's not surprising that it would be easier for a Chinese person to learn than any European language.

Posted

I've been reading with interest trying to remember what this all reminds me of.

 

Finally I have remembered - Peep Show: Mark Corrigan, "Business Secrets of the Pharaohs". 

 

"As the critics and the nay sayers and the tall-poppy-chopper-downers ask with their probing questions and their knowing sneers and unfriendly voices: "Why use the Pharaohs as the basis for a business manual?" "Well," I would answer, "I think any 'business' that lasted for more than three thousand years, as did that of ancient Egypt, is probably worth studying!" (Even if in a strict, or indeed even vague sense, it wasn't really a business at all but a civilization, with no comparable notion of "business".)"

Posted

I think Chinese and all other languages should be replaced with Klingon.

 

It was good enough for Shakespeare after all.

  • Like 1
Posted

Lu,

It is not correct to say that I have not read Lu Xun in Chinese.  My book offers new translations of selections from 門外文談

 

To everyone else,

 

There is something in Chinese characters that has caused Qian Xuantong, Lu Xun and Mao to want to get rid of Chinese characters.  The desire to replace 漢字 happened not just in China, but also in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.  Qian Xuantong has told us what that something is.  “Confucian doctrines and Daoist fallacies” are recorded in 漢字.

 

There is a difference between vernacular Chinese and classical Chinese.  According to the sinologist Benjamin A. Elman,

 

Premised on a system of inclusion and exclusion based on tests of classical literacy that restricted the access of those in the lower classes (whose literacy was too vernacular to master the classical frames of language and writing tested in the local licensing examinations), the civil examinations concealed the resulting process of social selection. [benjamin A. Elman, ‘Preface’, in A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China, pp. xxx–xxxi.]

 

People who are experts in vernacular Chinese may be unable to understand classical Chinese.  I have already quoted Moser who has said that sinologists do not understand classical Chinese.  Sinologists are experts in vernacular Chinese but may not fully understand classical Chinese.  The two simple characters 中庸 has been translated as, ‘Doctrine of the Mean’, ‘The Unwobbling Pivot’, and ‘Focusing the Familiar’.  Experts in vernacular Chinese cannot penetrate the two simple characters 中庸.  The Kangxi and Shuowen dictionaries provide with a definition of .  In the definition of 用, these dictionaries say, 可施行也, which can be read to mean 可 (can, possible) 施 (grant, bestow, give) 行也.  There is, in effect, a chain of substitution ciphers and can be read as .  The中庸 is not about unwobbling pivots, it is about 五行.

 

It is  possible to read the 白馬論 as the ‘white horse discourse’ or the ‘pure military discourse’.  When your minds are sufficiently open to reading it as ‘pure military discourse’ then you will be able to comprehend the “Confucian doctrines and Daoist fallacies” that are recorded in Chinese characters. 

 

The Duality Code is about the duality between vernacular Chinese and classical Chinese.  It is not about reading the Bible, it is about reading Confucian doctrine.  It is about classical exegesis.  You can choose to read what I say in the book and understand how to read Confucian doctrines recorded in Chinese characters.  The choice is yours.

Posted
It is not correct to say that I have not read Lu Xun in Chinese

 

 

Have you read it?

In chinese from cover to cover and understood it all?

Posted

I don't see the point in continuing to question what the OP has or hasn't read. Shelley even if he had read all of "it" that won't make any difference to anyone's opinion of what his book is or isn't like.

Posted

I suppose I was reacting to the way he said it, - it is not correct to say I have not read it - a simple yes or no would have been sufficient.

 

In fact I had pretty much given up with this topic but this way of answering was annoying.

 

I am not going to spend any more time with it.

Posted

realmayo,

 

Thank you.

 

 

I have been questioned on my academic credentials for writing a book on Chinese.  I have told you that I have had training in philosophy and applied mathematics.  There have been brilliant philosophers who have also been brilliant mathematicians at the same time.  Mathematics uses symbols to represent meaning, therefore mathematicians are good at symbolic logic.  Philosophy uses words to represent meaning, and philosophers are good at semantic logic.  In both cases, they are logicians.

 

漢字 is a logographic script.  It is a script that uses symbols to represent meaning.  It is a script that uses symbols to represent words.  It is a script that combines symbolic and semantic logic.  My academic training prepared me  to examine the symbolic and semantic logic of 漢字.

 

What do I see when I see the character 國?  As someone trained in mathematics, I see an equation a+b=c.  This equation can be described as a duality.  One part of the duality, c, represents the sum of the parts in the other half of the duality, a+b.  Therefore I see 囗或=.  In order to read the equation a+b=c, you have to read both parts of the duality.  So I read囗或國.  To me, this says is possibly .  So I refer to the entry for 國 in the Kangxi Dictionary.  It says 古文囗.  囗 has a classical Chinese meaning of .  Doubters may say that this is pure chance.  They are free to do so.  I say that Chinese characters can be read in the manner that I have showed you.

 

Classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese share the same script, but classical Chinese is a slightly different language.  It uses the same symbols (characters) but the meanings are slightly different.  People who are experts in vernacular Chinese cannot understand classical Chinese because of this.  One step towards learning classical Chinese is to learn 古文 meanings from the dictionaries.

 

I have said that Kai Script is the 楷書(Kai Book).  Characters contain little sentences such as 囗或國.  When you start reading the sentences you start reading the Kai Book.  A synonym for (book) is (book, volume).  The character contains the message (book) (to assemble) 侖(logical reasons, logical order).  The Kai Book is assembled using logic.  To me, classical Chinese is very logician.  But you first have to understand the logic of 漢字.

 

What do I see when I see the character 凰?  As a mathematician, I see an equation with an unknown symbol .  A mathematician is trained to solve equations.  The solution for ⺇ is in the Kangxi Dictionary.  A mathematician would recognise the equation that provides the solution for ⺇.  The solution is in my book.

 

Sinologists do not understand the Shuowen.  They think 說文解字 means “explanations of simple graphs and analyses of composite graphs”. [Jerry Norman, Chinese, p. 67].  There are some sinologists such as Françoise Bottéro who disagrees.

 

“But it should be recalled that traditional theories on Chinese writing (such as the liu shu 六書 theory, the distinction between wén and ) are still far from being satisfactorily understood.  Scholars typically refer to such theories without knowing really what they represented at the time they were introduced, and without asking themselves whether they provide an exact understanding of the Chinese writing system. .... Today, most scholars agree that the distinction between wén and is a graphological distinction between ‘non-compound characters’ (wén) and ‘compound characters’ (). ... Neither wén nor are defined as ‘character’, and there is no talk of any distinction between ‘non-compound’ and ‘compound character’ to be found in Xu Shen’s definitions of these  words.”  [Françoise Bottéro, ‘Revisiting the Wén 文 and the  字’, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Vol. 74, pp. 14–22.]

 

I have absolutely no idea why sinologists cannot understand 說 (speak) (culture) (loosen, unfasten, untie; explain) (character).  When you speak about culture (古文) you untie the components in characters and read them.  Seems logical to me.

 

Qian Xuantong has told us that Confucian doctrine is recorded in Chinese characters.  I say that I have found the logic of 漢字.  My book provides you with tools to read Confucian doctrine that is recorded in Chinese characters.

Posted

I keep checking back in to see if anyone with a reasonably sure grounding in classical Chinese has taken on that 庸 = 用 = 可施行也 = 行 = 五行, or is there no point fighting the tenacious Klingons for quite possibly empty space sectors?

Posted

I said it in post #112, he is looking for data to support a conclusion he has made already. Otherwise, it could have been a great book. 

Posted

In the gloss for the character, the Kangxi Dictionary says 从彳,左步。从亍,右步也.  Therefore 亍 (step with right foot) 彳(step with left foot) (go; walk; move, travel; circulate).  Quite logical.

 

Mathematics is a language that uses symbols to represent meaning.  Give a mathematician an equation with an unknown X, and the first thing he will do is solve for X.  漢字is also a language that uses symbols to represent meaning.  You guys see 皇+⺇=but you don’t query what represents.   You see the coded symbol ⺇ but you deny that there is a code in Chinese.  Qian Xuantong tells you that Confucian doctrines are recorded in Chinese characters.  Is it so difficult to figure out why your cannot read the Confucian doctrines recorded in 漢字?

Posted

There is nothing mysterious about the composition of the character 行, hell, even modern dictionaries like the Xinhua explain it.

 

@Angelina: there are only so many meanings that can be supported in the language (well, in its everyday communicative uses, at least). That is, it's not like language (semantics, pragmatics) can support too open-ended theorizing.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...