The Duality Code

[WKC]

Demonic_Duck, Angelina, & friends,

 

Chinese blood was spilled to get rid of Confucianism.  You dishonour all who paid the ultimate sacrifice by bringing back Confucianism.

 

Tell your master that if you want Confucianism, the people must be able to read and understand Confucian doctrine.

 

But I will stop posting as you wish.

[耳耳语语]

Hello,
Sort of related to this thread : I would like to know if they are studies, or threads in Chinese forums, about the influences of chinese language (its arbitrary particularities) on the Chinese mind.

 

I'm not talking about the parallel evolution of Chinese philosophy and Chinese writing system (ideas like : characters needs to be learned, so it induces a scholar mind; Chinese people use both hemispheres when reading ; characters reflects the Chinese philosophy : graphical, analogical, nonlinear, concrete, holistic, intuitive, in harmony with nature...)

I'm rather thinking about some non-wanted, non-conscious mind automatisms due to chinese language. (It's sort of related because one the OP ideas seems to be "chinese characters develop an unconscious tendency to submit to a hierarchical system"). (Personaly, I guess I feel like a traditional farmer when I read chinese, with all these pigs, ploughs and fields... ).

 

After a very quick internet search, these are the kind of ideas that I would like to find out more about :  Spatial vizualisation : chinese speaking people tend to seen things better in "vertical order" (ok nothing to do with characters in this one). http://wittgensteinrepository.org/agora-ontos/article/viewFile/2031/2230 (p310)

[michaelS]

Try An Anatomy of Chinese by Perry Link.

 

There is a thread here discussing the book, easily findable by searching I'm sure (but I don't have my VPN on at the minute)

[耳耳语语]

Thanks, it's here http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/41416-perry-links-an-anatomy-of-chinese/

And also here http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/50666-are-the-tones-of-some-characters-actually-linked-to-their-meaning/

 

I've recently read this article by Perry Link http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/06/30/the-mind-less-puzzling-in-chinese/

The idea : chinese language statistically prefers to use verbs rather that nouns. "In Western languages, especially in their modern versions, do we sometimes use nouns to conceive things when we don’t really need to?"

 

Sorry for my clumsy english ! In short, i'm interested in cases like these, where the form of chinese langage itself drive the thoughts in certain ways.

[li3wei1]

You might be interested in this TED talk. He divides languages into two groups: those that have a future tense that is different from the present (such as English), and those that don't (such as Chinese and German). He then does a huge statistical analysis to show that speakers of the latter group are more likely to save money and do other behaviors that are more future-oriented (like not smoking), i.e. for these speakers, the future is more important, and perhaps closer, than for speakers of languages in which the future is another tense. The problem is, German and English (as I understand it) are very similar in this respect. In both languages, there are ways of talking about the future using the present tense ("I'm taking the train tomorrow") and with a future tense ("I will take the train tomorrow"). So the theory sort of falls apart at the first hurdle. I'm sure there are other languages where it is difficult to say one way or another which group it belongs to.

[lips]

Chinese not smoking?????

[li3wei1]

There were, of course, complicating factors, so he tried to find pairs of people who were demographically similar - same country, income, etc - but who had native languages from the different groups, and compared them. I don't know what he did with China. Probably looked at Singapore, Malaysia, the Phiippines, etc.

[iand]

English doesn't have a future tense, any more than Chinese does. Tense is when the form of a verb changes. Take the old standby, "to eat." Present tense is "eat" and the simple past tense is "ate." How do we express the act of eating in the future? We use the present tense with an auxillary verb: "will eat." This is like how you sometimes say 會吃 or 要吃 in Chinese. It's not done with tenses. Realizing this got me over a mental block about "how can the Chinese refer to the past and future without past and future tenses?"

[imron]

Probably looked at Singapore, Malaysia, the Phiippines, etc.

i.e. ignored data that didn't support his hypothesis?

[WKC]

I started a thread called ‘Chinese Language, Chinese Mind?’ but that thread has been locked and I was told that I could come back here to play.  I will not repeat all my comments made in that thread and will assume that people who are interested will have read my comments there.  Some of the things I say may not make sense unless you have read the other thread.

 

My comments on the Chinese language relate to written Chinese.  Lets just say that I have a different view of what 漢字 is, so I find it a little difficult to agree with sinologists.  I believe most people here will be familiar with 六書.  It is difficult to comprehend the character 凰 in terms of 六書 when there is the character ⺇ is undefined.  As ⺇ is undefined, 凰 cannot be comprehended as a semantic-phonetic compound because you do not know what one part of the semantic-phonetic compound means.  The character 凰 prompts those with an inquiring mind to try and figure out why it was written that way.  Those with less inquiring minds just accept it and will never learn classical Chinese.

 

In order to understand 凰, you have to be able to find the meaning of ⺇.  The meaning is found in the Kangxi Dictionary entry on p. 363 # 3 (following page and number of the Kangxi Dictionary on Chinese Text Project).  Just search 彡 in the Kangxi Dictionary and it is the next character.  You will be able to see that the character in question has 《說文》本作 X, which is the 古文 or 異體.  This provides equivalents that are shown in the attached jpg.  Mathematicians solve equations by cancelling off the common factors.  漢字 uses the same logic.  Just cancel off the common symbol 彡 and deduce that ⺇ means 乃 (then).  You can now read 凰 to say 皇 (ruler) 乃 (then) 凰 (female phoenix).  Your next task is to try and figure out what this means.

 

The empress in imperiial China wore the phoenix crown.  Classical Chinese is primarily about Hou Yi.  When Hou Yi shoots his bow and becomes the ruler, his wife Chang E wears the phoenix crown.  Therefore皇 (ruler) 乃 (then) 凰 (female phoenix).  Classical Chinese takes a little time to get used to but it gets easier as you read more characters.

 

說 (speak) 文(literature, culture, writing) 解(untie; explain) 字(character).  The Shuowen explains how to arrive at classical Chinese.  Untie the character and explain what it means just as I did for 凰.  If you cannot explain it, then you have not used a classical Chinese meaning for one or more of the characters.  Your task is then to logically deduce the classical Chinese meaning of those characters.  Lots of logical deduction is required.  To me classical Chinese is entirely logical.  You need to find classical Chinese meanings that make characters logical as associative compounds.  漢字 can be viewed as a gigantic game of logical deduction.  

 

When you are able to read enough classical Chinese, you will understand why Qian Xuantong said that Confucian doctrine was recorded in Chinese characters.  That is why Qian Xuantong, Lu Xun and Mao all wanted to get rid of 漢字.  They wanted to get rid of Confucianism.

 

Zhou Youguang (the Father of Pinyin) said, “The mission of Confucianism in history was to defend the legitimacy of monarchs and maintain the social and political order of a feudal state.” [Zhou Youguang, ‘To Inherit the Ancient Teachings of Confucius and Mencius and Establish Modern Confucianism’, Sino-Platonic Papers, no. 226, 2012, p. 11.] 

 

In the hierarchical Chinese feudal state, the Confucian scholars were a class above the common man and slaves and the emperor was their leader.  Classical Chinese was the language of Confucian scholars who oppressed the common man and slaves in imperial China for as long as imperial China existed.  The Chinese Civil War was fought by Chinese revolutionaries to get rid of Confucianism in order to liberate the common man and slaves from oppression by the Confucian elites.

 

I am not pro-Communism.  I am anti-Confucianism.  Remember that the symbols ‘fin’ means different things in English and French.  A character in 漢字 can have different meanings in vernacular Chinese and classical Chinese.  Confucianism maintains a virtuous public face with their talk of the Five Virtues.  You have to understand classical Chinese in order to understand what the Five Virtues really say. 

 

“Who but a madman, Lu Xun taunted his readers, would dare read between the lines of the Confucian classics?  Who but a madman would dare to discover the awful truth on each page where in between the words ‘virtue’ and ‘benevolence’ is the hidden message: ‘Eat people!’”  [Gloria Davies, Lu Xun’s Revolution, p. 268.]

 

I started this thread to introduce my book The Duality Code.  I was attacked left, right, and center by certain parties and I think you guys will understand who they are and why they attacked me.  Angelina and Demonic_Duck played good cop and bad cop with me all the way until they cracked.  They had a number of supporting actors.  This thread would be a great case study on how state sponsored spin doctors work.  Hmmm..  Angelina and Demonic_Duck.  Sounds like a Dan Brown novel.

 

I’m quite happy whether you wish to purchase my book or otherwise.  If I have not convinced you that my book is worth reading, I will never be able to convince you.  All I will say is that if I have indeed discovered how to read classical Chinese, there will be a paradigm shift in the world of sinology.

 

Thank you all for taking time off from your busy lives to read my pitch for The Duality Code.  I hope this thread has been an interesting, thought provoking, and enjoyable read.

[iand]

耳耳语语, in re the "Chinese mind," you might want to look at the argument against this line of thought too. My impression is that the anti-Sapir-Whorf camp is the majority in the linguistics community. Every time I hear an expert give reasons against the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I'm convinced they're right, but then later, when I think about it, I'm always tempted to believe that there's something to it after all. There's a linguist named John McWhorter who delivered a general-audience lecture called "Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language."

[WKC]

I am not trained in linguistics so I have little ability to discuss things like Sapir-Whorf.  With my limited knowledge, I do think linguists will have an interest in studying classical Chinese.

 

[bit removed by admin - no need to post people's contact details and names, they can do that themselves if they want to]

 

Please disregard anything in this post as an endorsement by someone who is qualified in linguistics.

[Gharial]

Endorsing a book isn't a copy editor's job (especially if they are not specialists regarding the content - Chinese as opposed to [English] linguistics and TEFL), and they'd hardly appear less than positive about what they were being paid to generally improve (" ~ "?), would they!

[WKC]

Gharial,

 

You are absolutely correct.  It is not the job of an editor to endorse a book.  I think I may have made an error in my previous post when I refer to her as a trained linguist.  There may be a difference between a linguist and someone trained in linguistics.  I think I should have said that Lyn was a trained in linguistics instead.  I will edit my previous post accordingly.

 

I have no training in linguistics and I don’t consider myself a linguist.  However, being old and having led a nomadic life I can hold a conversation in three different languages and am literate to various degrees in four.  I suppose this is why I know that some phonetic symbols are pronounced differently and mean different things in English and French: pin, fin, dent, coin, mode, pour, pain.

 

Let us be clear on what I am saying.   I am asserting that Quan Xuantong, a professor of Chinese, says Confucian doctrine is recorded in Chinese characters.  If you wish to assert that Confucian doctrine is not recorded in Chinese characters, you are disagreeing with Quan Xuantong.

 

I am asserting that I have found out how to read Chinese characters to see the Confucian doctrine recorded in Chinese characters.  You can, of course, assert that I am mistaken.  You are entitled to your view and professionals will be able to make an assessment shortly.  If there are any professional linguists and sinologists who is reading this and would like a complementary copy of my book, please send me a message and I would be most happy to extend a copy of the book to you.

 

It is my contention that classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese share the same writing script but classical Chinese is read differently from vernacular Chinese.  In vernacular Chinese, you only read the entire word such as弌(one).  In classical Chinese, you read the ‘entire equation’ 一 plus 弋 equals 弌.  This says 一(one) who 弋(shoots with bow) is number 弌(one).  You then have to apply logic to understand what this means.  In China, there is a legendary archer 后羿(Hou Yi).  You need to make the logical deduction 一弋弌 is telling you that the character 一 can be read to mean一(Hou Yi).

 

As another example, in vernacular Chinese you read 明(understand), but in classical Chinese it says 月(moon) 日(day) 明(understand).  The moon’s day is the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the moon is at its brightest and the Chinese eat moon cakes.  It is a celebration of Chang E who lives on the moon and Chang E is the wife of legendary archer Hou Yi.  You have to understand the legend of Hou Yi if you are to understand classical Chinese.  Hou Yi is one of the key elements for reading classical Chinese.

 

The Kangxi Dictionary provides the definition 袞(ceremonial dress worn by the emperor) for the character 丨.  So we can read it as丨(imperial gown) for brevity.  You can now start to read other characters that will show you how 漢字 generates meaning.

 

一(Hou Yi) 丨(imperial gown)

[WKC]

Apologies.  My previous post was truncated because this website does not support some of the characters I use.

 

Classicsal Chinese is also known as 文言文.  This is a palindrome – a word, sentence, or verse that reads the same forward or backward.  This gives you a clue.  Chinese can be read backwards.  When you read forwards, the Shuowen says 說 (speak) 文(literature, culture, writing) 解(untie; explain) 字(character).  When read backwards it says 字(character) 解(untie; explain), 文(literature, culture, writing) 說 (speaks).  古文 speaks when you untie characters and read them.

 

Classical Chinese is a system of deductive logic.  Understanding classical Chinese begins with learning to read 漢字 as  associative compounds instead of semantic-phonetic compounds.  There was a poster earlier in the thread that insisted 漢字 was read as semantic-phonetic compounds.  I see this as spin to keep people away from reading 漢字 as associative compounds.  As long as you can only read 字(character), you will only understand vernacular Chinese.  When you can read 子(child) 冖(cover) 丶(master) 字(character) AND understand what it means, you will have begun your journey towards understanding classical Chinese.

 

I was explaining how to read子(child) 冖(cover) 丶(master) 字(character) to someone and he said, “If I can read字(character), why would I want to read子(child) 冖(cover) 丶(master) 字(character)?”  The answer is that it depends on whether you want to be semi-literate or literate.  If you only understand how to read vernacular Chinese, you are only semi-literate.  You will only become literate when you can read classical Chinese.  At that point you will be able to read the 白(pure) 馬(military)論(discourse), instead of being stuck wondering what the 白(white) 馬(horse) 論(discourse) is all about. 

 

The sinologist James Legge looked at the characters 中(middle) 庸(ordinary, mediocre) and decided that it means 中庸(Doctrine of the Mean).  The poet Ezra Pound added poetic licence or hermeneutics and came up with 中庸(Unwobbling Pivot).  Even more recent scholarship has come up with 中庸(Focusing the Familiar).  I will remind you that the sinologist David Moser has said that sinologists do not understand classical Chinese.  If you claim that sinologists can understand classical Chinese, you are disagreeing with the sinologist David Moser.

I say that you cannot understand classical Chinese based solely on knowledge of only vernacular Chinese.  I think hermeneutics does not help in any way.  The Kangxi Dictionary provides a chain of equivalents as follows: 庸 is 用 is 可施行也.  The next step is to understand the classical Chinese meaning for the character 中.  Only then can you understand what 中庸 represents.  It is one of the canonical books in Confucianism but sinologists do not have the tools that will enable them to read it.  That is why there are such different interpretations of just two Chinese characters中庸.

 

There is a duality in 漢字.  You can read字(character), or you can learn to read and understand子(child) 冖(cover) 丶(master) 字(character).  It is only when you understand all of what a character says that you become fully literate in漢字.  As long as you do not understand classical Chinese you may believe in 中庸(Unwobbling Pivot) as Ezra Pound did, or 中庸(Doctrine of the Mean) as James Legge did and you will not understand what the 文士 are saying. 

 

Of course, anyone who disagrees with me would have to justify why 中庸 can validly be translated as Doctrine of the Mean, Unwobbling Pivot, as well as Focusing the Familiar.

 

I am attaching a thumbnail that provides additional thoughts on how to read classical Chinese.  As another hint, you will have to look at the Eight Principals of Young and derive classical Chinese meanings for all eight single stroke characters.  In my opinion, all eight single stroke characters are polysemes.  You are, of course, at liberty to disagree.

 

I would be delighted to take questions from anyone who wishes for clarification.  I do not claim to know everything there is to know about classical Chinese, but I will endeavor to answer questions to the best of my ability. 

 

 

Edit:

Apologies if the last two post are a little disjointed.  This website does not support some 漢字 that I use and keeps truncating my posts.  Please refer to thumbnails in my posts.

[WKC]

If I may be permitted to add, go to http://www.zdic.net/z/zxjs/?zxjg=%E4%B8%8A%E4%B8%8B%E7%BB%93%E6%9E%84

 

Search for 构件.  You have to be able to find classical Chinese meanings for these in order to be able to read classical Chinese.

[Gharial]

I'm trying not to assign any alternative meaning to "Master's forearm", "working out", and Hou Yi's "receptacle".

[Lumbering Ox]

"I'm trying not to assign any alternative meaning to "Master's forearm", "working out", and Hou Yi's "receptacle"."

 

Challenge accepted!. Done and done. Actually pretty easily turned it into a Hesieg style memory story.

[WKC]

Gharial,

 

Apologies for my late response to your post #177.  You have edited the post but I will respond to the original post which I have attached as a thumbnail.

 

Your original message said,

“I’m shocked by the proximity of the “master’s forearm” to “working out” Hou Yi’s “receptacle”(icon_eek gif)  There’s definitely a message in English there.(eusa_naughty gif)

 

The Master’s Forearm – The meaning of the masters forearm can be ascertained when one has obtained the classical Chinese meaning of the two single stroke characters that combine to form it.  The message says, “lift sword forearm’.

 

Hou Yi’s Receptacle – The meaning of Hou Yi’s receptacle is deduced through logic.  The legendary archer Hou Yi is dead.  He is resting in his receptacle, which is his home.  Hou Yi’s receptacle is a coffin. 

 

 elsa_naughty gif – The emoticon “eusa_naughty” that is waving goodbye is not a Chinese character, but it can be read using classical Chinese methods.  It says, “à Dieu adieu”.

 

In order to extract Gharial’s message in English, you will have to translate the emoticon’s message from French to English.  Yes, as Gharial says, “There’s definitely a message in English there.”

 

Lu Xun and Qian Xuantong viewed Confucianism as being oppressive and fought to rid China of it.  This raises the question of why Confucianism was viewed to be oppressive since it talks of virtue and benevolence.  The Chinese view Mencius as the most important philosopher after Confucius.  Mencius said,

 

“Great men have their proper business, and little men have their proper business. ... Hence, there is the saying, ‘Some labour with their minds, and some labour with their strength. Those who labour with their minds govern others; those who labour with their strength are governed by others. Those who are governed by others support them; those who govern others are supported by them.’ This is a principle universally recognised. [James Legge (tr), The Works of Mencius, http://ctext.org/mengzi/teng-wen-gong-i]

 

In Confucianism, the 文士(literati) thought of themselves as the great people and the semi-literate of illiterate common man as the little men who were in effect the servants and slaves of the Confucian literati.  This is the oppression of Confucianism.

 

“The civil examination is also the bridge between Confucius worship and officially recognized Confucians.  In Sages and Saints, Chin-shing Huang makes the important point that, unlike Christian churches where everyone is welcome to enter, Confucian temples in imperial China were a sacred space reserved for imperial courtiers, scholar-officials, and Confucian students ...” [Lewis R. Rambo and Charles E. Farhadian (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, OUP 2014, p. 543]

 

Confucian temples were sacred spaces for the Confucian 文士(literati).  The common people were their servants and slaves and were excluded from Confucian temples.  Confucianism was a religion that oppressed the common people.

 

“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.]

 

In essence, classical Chinese was the private language of the Confucian scholars who were the 士大夫 (scholar officials) or 文士(literati), who ran the imperial bureaucracies that governed China.  The common people were only taught to read vernacular Chinese, if they were taught to read at all.  The imperial examination was not a true meritocratic test because the common people were not taught to read classial Chinese.  This is the oppression that Lu Xun and Qian Xuantong fought against.  They wanted a level playing field.  They thought that the best way to achieve a level playing field was to do away with Confucianism and classical Chinese.  The other way of achieving a level playing field is to teach everyone classical Chinese.  This is the intent of my book.  To teach people to read classical Chinese.

 

Thank you all for taking time to read my pitch for The Duality Code.  Thanks are also extended to Angelina, Demonic_Duck, Gharial and other supporting actors for bringing the topic of The Duality Code to life.

 

Edit:

 

Apologies.  I don't use emoticons so I don't know how to insert it in the post.  See the thumbnail for the emoticons.

[WKC]

By the way.  This entire thread has already been copied and saved.  There is no point altering or deleting posts.