|
 |
Dictionary of cursive hanzi + competition | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 1 of 7 07 November 2011 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I found this pretty awesome resource the other day: Dictionnaire des Formes
Cursives des Caractères Chinois. It's from 1986, a dictionary of cursive (草書) characters and their standard forms. It's beautifully handwritten (!) in French with all Chinese names (of which there are many) in traditional characters. Even if you don't know French, it's still quite useful, as the bulk is just lists of characters. It's just amazingly enjoyable to look through and appreciate the beautiful forms and the brush movements of the characters. Now, I'm not sure how one can use it as a language learning tool, but I'm open to suggestions, which is where the "competition" part comes in. It's difficult to look up a squiggly line you find on an old painting, so tell me: how should we best make use of this fantastic resource to better our understanding of Chinese calligraphy? Give me ideas! Creative and useful ideas will be awarded with usefulness votes. This isn't really a real competition, as there's no actual winner, but give some cool ideas and take the opportunity to earn some votes, as well as help learners understand Chinese calligraphy! And … go! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5309 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 2 of 7 07 November 2011 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Not really answering your question, but just wanted to mention that you can find these books easily in bookshops in HK and I believe also in China and Taiwan. They're near the dictionaries. I think they're called 書法字典 (calligraphy dictionary). Some are like yours, all in the one and same script (font) and therefore show just 1 picture of each word in most cases. Others contain several scripts (fonts) such as the squarish script, the skinny script, etc, so you have several pictures for each word.
I don't know how you could use them as a language-learning tool. Ordinary native people can't read 草書 well so I think it's kind of a C2+ level thing. (I mean native Hongkongers, maybe the mainlanders can read them? I don't know). Edited by smallwhite on 07 November 2011 at 6:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 7 07 November 2011 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | ||
In my experience, mainlanders can't read them, either, without training. But surely that's not standing in the way of an HTLAL language nerd? What better way to impress your Chinese, Taiwanese or Hongkonger pals than by writing them a note in cursive and then go "Oh, sorry, you can't read grass script? Here, let me print that for you."? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 7 09 November 2011 at 7:22am | IP Logged | ||
|
Okay, you guys are boring. Far from deterred, I'll do it myself.
Flashcards. That's one way to use this. The pages of the dictionary are all image files, so they should be easy to cut up into pieces. Grass script on front, standard script on back. Strategically pick characters, starting with simple shapes and build up to compound characters. Or maybe you import a few pages into Photoshop and dim them, then paint/draw over them as writing practice? Or hey, parts L and M of the dictionary actually describes how to use it to look these squiggly lines up, so maybe the best way is to simple google for some grass script calligraphy and use the dictionary to decipher it? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5309 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 5 of 7 09 November 2011 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | ||
|
> Okay, you guys are boring.
LOL~ Hey, your original question was how to use this book as a language learning tool. I read that to mean how to use this book to learn the Chinese language. What you're saying now is just how to use language learning tools to learn the contents of this book. What are you actually looking for? If you just want to learn the font, you can maybe install it as a font onto your computer, then display/print texts that you're familiar with in this font, and read them to get used to them. Maybe in a parallel format - normal font on the left, grass font on the right. Depends on how foreign you find them, I guess. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6660 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 6 of 7 14 November 2011 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Well, literacy in running script, would that not be really cool? Then it’s only Classical Chinese standing in your way
into the ancient literature of the land in the middle! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 7 of 7 14 November 2011 at 7:31pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Oh, I'm totally going to learn at least a little Classical Chinese. But that's still a bit into the future.
1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
