Refilling the pipeline

[Publius]

On 11/29/2021 at 6:40 PM, phills said:

I might pick off a chapter or 2 in between other stuff, and slowly work my through them

I wouldn't recommend you doing that. It may hurt your confidence and you may never want to return to them again.

 

To be honest I'm not sure you're ready. By my estimation you need to know at least 4000 characters to feel it's not a slog reading the 4 classics (yes I'm not talking about words, words mean nothing to me). 三国 and 红楼 are on the recommended reading list for Chinese high school students. And I'm pretty sure they won't find reading 金庸 or the 文言 part of 异兽志 challenging.

 

The language used in 红楼 is closer to modern standard Mandarin therefore easier, except for the poems and couplets, which are anything but easy. 三国 is written in vernacular of the time, when written vernacular Chinese was in its formative years, so it's more like half-classical half-vernacular. But you already know the stories, which is a plus.

 

Ctext.org has both texts: here & here. Pick some random paragraphs and see for yourself which is easier.

[phills]

Yea I actually tried a few chapters of 三国 before, and it wasn't too bad, since I already knew the stories, plus I was reading it together with the English translation next to it.  I was using ctext site (sadly the translation only goes up to chap 60 -- sometime around the Battle of Red Cliffs).  All I needed to do there is decipher the text and match the characters with the meaning.

 

I do know 4.1k characters, and it's still not quite enough for 三国.  Mainly the names of the secondary characters / locales were tripping me up (and there are a lot of names in there).  I was thinking of pre-compliing all of them in a big file and memorizing them before I dipped back in. 

 

红楼 is more out of the blue.  I never read it before, and I always thought of 红楼 as something too complicated for now.  But I saw the chengyu list posted, and so I wanted to get a reality check on it.

[Publius]

Well then go for it.  Language-wise 红楼 is easier, especially the dialogues, no harder than Lao She's Beijing-flavored Mandarin.  But the author was a proud intellectual who might feel the need to show his literary prowess now and then. ?

[Publius]

My biggest beef with ctext is their underlying source is Simplified. The Traditional texts are machine converted. That seems highly unprofessional to me, as we all know it's much easier and less error-prone to go the other way around.

For 紅樓夢 I think the best online source is https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/脂硯齋重評石頭記 with commentaries.

EDIT: Sorry this text is also converted from simplified source. How disappointing! 匾上寫著鬥斗大的三個大字, 兩邊設一對梅花式洋漆小幾几...

 

Don't get discouraged by the first couple of chapters. They're just the introduction and are not representative of the style of the book as a whole.

 

That being said, a little knowledge of Classical Chinese certainly won't hurt. I recommend An Introduction to Literary Chinese by Michael A. Fuller. You don't need to be an expert on pre-Qin philosophy and such. Just grab a pirated copy, quickly go through the introduction and the basic grammar part and you're set.

[phills]

Thanks for the guidance @Publius.  红楼 is still quite a ways down the list for me.  But now I have a strategy to ladder my way up to it with Lao She and the Fuller book.  I'll probably try 三国 before it, just because I know the story well which makes it easier.

[phills]

On 11/29/2021 at 10:15 PM, Publius said:

三国 and 红楼 are on the recommended reading list for Chinese high school students. And I'm pretty sure they won't find reading 金庸 or the 文言 part of 异兽志 challenging.

 

Speaking of humbling, I've just read a quarter of the way through 雪山飞狐, and it's like pushing through a mental wall.  It's harder than 异兽志 so far.  With a modern setting, 异兽志 was readable although it left me 莫名其妙 as to what was going on. 

 

雪山飞狐 makes my brain feel old and stiff.  It's like every word is a struggle, although what's being described seems quite pedestrian.  The number of characters, the number of factions + 金庸's less common word choices make it a slog.  I had to make a character chart, that I refer back to while reading. 

 

I'm reading 雪山飞狐 so far at about 136cpm, which was the slowest I've read a book in a while, and with spotty understanding.  My average is about 180cpm, so -25% below the norm.

 

I thought my language ability must be degrading, and so I tried to compare by reading a chapter of 古龙, the book 圆月弯刀 as suggested by @markhavemann.  I read that at 241pcm (+33% above norm), and almost twice as fast as 雪山飞狐, and no problems with understanding at all.  It's almost like they're different languages ?

 

So for other people picking books, the reputation of difficulty of 金庸 is well deserved.  I had saved it for quite a ways into my reading journey and I'm still finding it a challenge.  I'll continue with it though -- now that I know the characters & the setting, it should get smoother.  We'll see how much speed I pick up along the way.  Then onto 圆月弯刀, for the sake of a full comparison.

 

Edit: Turns out not to be as bad as I thought, once I got further in, see the Extensive Reading thread for final stats.  https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/60492-extensive-reading-and-reading-speed/?do=findComment&comment=483711

[Publius]

I think you'll like 天龙八部 better now that you're familiar with some of the jargons and genre elements.

 

But if you feel like some more warming up, try 鸳鸯刀. It's very short, in fact the shortest, @ 35k chars. I finished it yesterday during lunch time. There's some funny tropes, e.g., the 总镖头 with his infinite wisdom of 江湖上有言道, or the ridiculously long nickname of one of the highwaymen. And of course the big secret revealed at the very end.?

 

EDIT: Just for your future reference, out of the 15 Jin Yong books (飞雪连天射白鹿、笑书神侠倚碧鸳 + 越女剑), I only consider 5 to be must-reads: 天龙八部（北宋）、射雕英雄传（南宋）、神雕侠侣（南宋）、倚天屠龙记（元末）、笑傲江湖（明）.

[phills]

On 12/8/2021 at 7:57 PM, Publius said:

I think you'll like 天龙八部 better now that you're familiar with some of the jargons and genre elements.

 

天龙八部 is still very long, over a million chars.  Anything over 2-300k chars is a big commitment   I'll get to it at some point, but I'll try some shorter stuff first.

 

鸳鸯刀 looks interesting, and easy to fit in.  Thanks for the suggestion!