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Vermillon 文言文 / Deutsch / Ænglisc | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4620 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes  Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 33 of 35 30 May 2012 at 4:33pm | IP Logged |
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Hi viedums, thanks a lot for your message, it's really useful for me!
I naturally have a few questions about it. First of all, your comment about the dictionaries is very useful and I'll try to get a look into each of them when I have the time to go to SOAS library. The “Chinese History: A Manual” seems indeed to be a very valuable tool, and reasonably priced with that. However, one concern I have is that I don't have an easy access to a university library: I'm not a student anymore (nor working in the academia) and SOAS charges quite highly to access to its library, even simply for consultation, and as I'm accumulating more and more books, I'm now wondering which ones are "necessary". What value would you say that Manual brings, apart from being a huge bibliography? Can you get some general knowledge about Chinese history from it? Also, of course getting Le Grand Ricci would be fantastic, but I'll guess that will wait until I live in a large house in the countryside and not an exiguous flat in London. What's unfortunate is that apparently their electronic version is of poor quality, not running on my OS of choice and not being easy to use even for its original intent. That space problem would also exclude the 漢語大辭典 for now, even in a 3 volume edition. That's mostly why I suggested Ciyuan, because it is (from the edition I've found) in one big volume rather than taking a full shelf of more. I already own 古漢語常用字字典 that you suggested, and it's quite convenient to read from the bed (it may seem strange for a scholarly activity such as reading Classical Chinese, but I still do that to enjoy myself..). I'm intrigued by your comment about the Ciyuan being outdated? In which way would you say that 王力古漢語字典 is better than it? If I'm correct, the Ciyuan has several advantages such as having multi-character words (as opposed to my 古漢語常用字字典) and indicating the meaning of those words according to the period a text was written in. Does the 王力 offer that as well? Now I have some more general questions and comments related to your post: -First, for how long have you studied Classical Chinese in university? What is part of a more general Chinese degree? Or a degree in Classics? (as you mention Greek and Latin) What other texts did you tackle during these studies? By the same editor of this reader is a reader of Mencius which I've just bought, have you used that as well? That question is interesting for me as it may be a hint of things I could look at first to get further used to Classical Chinese. Earlier in my log I mentioned the other books I've used before: "Classical Chinese: A Basic Reader in Three Volumes" (Princeton Language Program), "Chinese Through Poetry" and "A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese" (Harvard East Asian Monographs). These ones act as textbooks and I've therefore had the opportunity to touch with 列女傳 (which I actually hope to read very soon indeed), and my motivation for tackling the Han Shu biography of Huo Guang was because it claims to be a bridge from textbooks to real texts, and I believe it is indeed the case, though obviously there is still a lot of work to do left. -Second, a small note to say I don't ignore comments, but I perhaps didn't read all of them, as sometimes the text was quite limpid in itself and indeed for a few comments I actually wondered why one would bother adding a comment, especially considering some other much more complex passages left uncommented. Also, unfortunately, most comments haven't helped me much in understanding the text, perhaps the most useful to me where the ones indicating the pronunciation of a character and therefore which meaning to choose for that character. However, I haven't looked looked at the un-punctuated version yet - I'll try that when I'm more confident - but perhaps the commentary is different in this one. -Finally, thanks for your reading suggestions. For now, I don't think I'll try the bilingual editions because I'd like to try myself on the texts themselves, but I may soon realise that I was too confident for such a task to handle. One thing that I will definitely follow however is the choice of the texts: for now I would really prefer to stick texts from the Han period and before than venture into later texts ("Literary Chinese"?). There's already enough there to play for several years anyway :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4608 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 34 of 35 03 June 2012 at 11:47am | IP Logged |
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It’s too bad you don’t have easy access to the SOAS library, as I’m sure you could find everything I’ve mentioned there. “Chinese History: a Manual” explains some useful things, like how the Shang-era writing on oracle bones was discovered in the early 20th century (traditional healers were grinding up the “dragon bones” for medicine, eventually someone noticed and started collecting them.) It’s basically a reference work, but reading it gives you a good sense of the massive scope of Chinese history and of writing in Chinese.
You could use the Ciyuan if you like – I had in mind what Wilkinson says about it though: “The only reason for using this rather old-fashioned, classical dictionary rather than plunge straight into the riches of the Hanyu dacidian, Jitsu or Morohashi is that it is cheaper.” The Wangli dictionary is not bulky at all, but it isn’t really an encyclopedic work, so some character combinations may not appear in it. Pulleyblank’s “Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar” is also worth having. Schuessler’s “ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese” is a lot of fun if your interest is the relationship of Chinese to mainland Southeast Asian languages, however it’s not very useful for just reading texts. I was doing an MA in Asian Studies when I took the course I referred to. (Before that I had studied on my own using “Classical Chinese: A Basic Reader,” I liked this text a lot.) This was in the first semester of doing the degree, and subsequently I focused on Southeast Asia (I also took courses in Khmer and Burmese) so didn’t really have a chance to further develop my interests in Classical Chinese. There was a course in Tang poetry offered at one point which I would have liked to take, but it didn’t work out. So I really don’t have much more to suggest. Of course you could spend an eternity just on the 史記. One book I really enjoyed reading was the 聊齋 by 蒲松齡, classic bizarre stories about fox ghosts etc. I read it in a baihua version though, the original wenyan text is supposed to be quite difficult. Edited by viedums on 03 June 2012 at 11:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4620 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 35 of 35 25 June 2012 at 6:16pm | IP Logged |
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Von jetzt an möchte ich dieses Logbuch auf Deutsch schreiben. In letzer Zeit habe ich an der 6WC teilnehmen, und ich freue mich, dass der Fortschritt ist riesig gewesen, denn vor zwei Monaten konnte ich einfach nicht Deutsch sprecehn. Denn ich habe vor zehn Jahre ein paar Deutsch gelern, konnte ich selbstverständlich einigen sehr einfachen Sätze machen, aber ich hätte nicht öffentlich auf Deutsch schreiben wagen worden. Heute bin ich bereit! Ich hoffe, dass ich nicht zu viel Fehler machen werde, und, dass Sie sehr geduldig sind!
Lass uns anfangen: Deutsch: von Anfang Mai bis jetzt habe ich mich auf die Vokabel konzentriert. Mit der B1-Vokabelliste des Goethe-Institut, habe ich ungefähr zwei tausend zwei hundert Wörter gelernt, und nur nütze ich das Häufigkeitworterbuch von Routledge, das enthalt etwa vier tausend Wörter. Ich lese täglich vereinfachten Romane, die sind eine ausgezeichnete Methode um seine Vokabel zu vergrößern, und auch um vielen Ausdrücke zu lernen. Ich habe leider wenige Zeit auf Deutsch zu hören, aber nun lerne ich lieber Vokabel... Filme und mündlich Kommunikation kommen später, es eilt überhaupt nicht! Altenglische Sprache: In den zwei letzten Wochen interessiere ich mich für die altenglische Sprache. In Wirklichkeit interessieren mich die meisten Sprachen, aber ich mag das Sprachennetz, das die Sprachen einer Sprachfamilie formen: als ich bin immer ein Fan von Etymologie gewesen, die Germanischen Sprachen sind für mich ein total Spaß. Insbesondere freut mich die Entdeckung (für mich) der Verbindung zwischen englischen und deutschen Wörtern, ich entdecke, dass zwei Wörter verwandten sind und plötzlich kann ich mich die errinern. Zurzeit studiere ich mit dem Buch, das heißt "Teach Yourself Old English", ich empfehle es, es ist ein sehr gutes Buch und das erklärt nicht nur die Sprache, aber die Kultur der Angelsächsichen. Okay, es ist genug für heute. Auf Deutsch schreiben ist noch sehr anstrengend für mich. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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