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Literary reasons for learning | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| olps Newbie Canada Joined 6689 days ago 24 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Czech | Message 1 of 9 17 January 2007 at 12:13am | IP Logged |
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Hi, I'm currently learning French (although it's unfortunately slowed down
due to work) but I've always been interested in Mandarin Chinese. Among the many facets to this language, the writing system (characters) has always intrigued me. I am contemplating learning Mandarin when I have the time and have progressed much more with my French. But my question is have many of you learned a language for literary reasons? I do not want to learn Mandarin for the sole purpose of reading, but that is a plus- the idea of reading the characters and the challenge of it interests me more so than reading French (although I much prefer to speak it than read or write). Are there great works of Chinese literature that a beginner or intermediate can handle? How is Chinese literature? Any thoughts or pointers? I'd love to know what you all think before I decide. Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6759 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 2 of 9 17 January 2007 at 4:02am | IP Logged |
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Reading and literature is one of the main reasons I like languages in general. There is so much fantastic material, both fiction and non-fiction, published in French, Japanese, Mandarin, and other languages that will never make it into English. Life's too short to restrict yourself to English books, I say. :)
I don't know what's out there in Chinese specifically, but I know there's a lot. :) It's very much a literary culture, and they practically invented writing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6881 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 3 of 9 17 January 2007 at 5:06am | IP Logged |
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Chinese literature does have a few classics that can be tackled by a high intermediate/advanced student : Dream of Red Mansions, The Water Margin, Journey to the West. These are all pre-20th Century so the language used may cause a bit of difficulty.
There's a lot of classical poetry and works you could read but you'd need to learn Classical Chinese to read those. Classical Chinese isn't *too* hard to learn but it is fairly different from modern Chinese and each Chinese character in a classical poem has a lot of meaning. This would be good for anyone who loves analysing literature and meaning. I have to admit I haven't read much contemporary Chinese literature so I'm not sure what the literary scene is like these days. You could always try 'Soul Mountain' ('Lingshan') by Gao Xingjian. The book won a Nobel literature prize a few years ago so I suppose it's something worth reading. Personally, I found it dull and gave up after a few chapters... While I think it's possible to learn written Chinese for the sole purpose of reading Chinese literature, it takes a lot more time to be able to read Chinese literature 'fluently' because of the huge number of characters you'd need to learn. If you tackled any literature with a Buddhist theme, you will end up having to learn a whole set of words and characters which are specific to that topic. I remember having to learn lots of rarer characters and idioms when doing my Chinese literature modules and you will usually only come across those in literature, never in real life or in the newspapers. So if you're still interested in going down this path, good luck! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6573 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 9 17 January 2007 at 1:52pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I guess I'm you in the near future, having recently gotten my French to a pretty fluent level, and now doing Mandarin. As I haven't come that far in Mandarin (neither writing nor speaking), I can't recommend any books, though. Myself, I'm learning it much for the sake of the characters, and the culture. I'm planning to learn Classical Chinese, as I'm very curious to read the old Taoist works and some Tang dynasty poetry. When you do get to picking up Mandarin, I heartily recommend the book Rapid Literacy in Chinese (availible from Amazon, for example). It's a great way to learn characters. I'm doing it together with ZDT (Zhongwen Development Tool), a terrific computer program availible for free. Rapid Literacy will get you to 750 characters in no time. I'm on my merry way, having used it for a couple of days, and I'm hitting 90 characters today (you learn 30 new characters per lesson, with 25 lessons making it a total of 750).
Good luck, and keep up the French! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| olps Newbie Canada Joined 6689 days ago 24 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Czech | Message 5 of 9 17 January 2007 at 3:52pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, thanks alot for the advise, now I'm even more interested in starting.
It's interesting that you mention Taoist texts Ari, because I'm interested in such classic texts (in fact one of my concentrations in university is the religions of Asia). Now I think I'm definitely going to give it a try.... I just need to find the time! Edited by olps on 17 January 2007 at 3:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| therumsgone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6528 days ago 93 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 6 of 9 17 January 2007 at 10:52pm | IP Logged |
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I think it's a great reason to learn a language. In all honesty, I began learning
French because I love haute couture and French cuisine. Now I've fallen in love with the language, and I'm so glad I took it up. I say, it doesn't matter what gets you motivated to learn something, as long as you're willing to learn ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| linguanima Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6709 days ago 114 posts - 123 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Spanish, French Studies: Italian, Latin, German | Message 7 of 9 19 January 2007 at 10:49am | IP Logged |
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Chinese is a highly descriptive and flexible language. Writers like attempting new structures and new combination of characters (forming 'words'). It is a tradition to lavish a writer's flowery language (heaps of the literary words come directly or indirectly from Classical Chinese) in his writing - if you really want to read quality works. I do think that in order to read and enjoy Chinese literature, you really need to have a solide grounding - especially the feeling for the Chinese language - first.
You can certainly focus your energy on reading, Olps, but it is advisable that you also polish your pronunciation and have basic oral proficiency. This can help you get a feeling for the language. Correct pronunciation is important, if you want to appreciate Classical Chinese writing. In the past writers, philosophers wrote and chose words to elaborate their writings according to the 4 tones of Chinese. There were several patterns and rules, made for the writing to sound musical when read out. If you don't know the correct rhythm and pronunciation, you will lose a lot of joy when reading classical poetry and prose. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6573 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 8 of 9 19 January 2007 at 3:07pm | IP Logged |
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I've actually thought a lot about Chinese poetry lately, without ever having read any. It occurs to me that Chinese must be amongst the most suited languages for poetry. I mean, think about it. Take English, a poet can consider a word's sound, meaning, number of syllables and possible etymology, when choosing which word to use in a poem. In Chinese, you can consider all this, but also the tones, the homonyms (four is an unlucky number because it sounds like "death"), and the way the character is built and looks (the character 好 doesn't just mean "good", but it's also a picture of a woman and a child). It seems to me that a skillful Chinese poet could weave in tons of different meanings and depths in a poem. Although this also means that an unskillful Chinese poet will have a lot in the poem left to chance.
This also means, of course, that works like the Dao De Jing are impossible to translate into English without losing some of the meanings, which means one has to read them in the original Chinese. It is a bit sad, though, that you need to be really good at Chinese before getting all this. I don't expect to be able to read Classical Chinese until five years or so from now. That's a long time to wait. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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