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Beginning Mandarin with the Tao Te Ching | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| JacobTM Groupie United States Joined 5598 days ago 56 posts - 67 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 24 12 December 2011 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Learning Spanish and Portuguese, I've always liked finding music I like, even without
understanding the lyrics, and then figuring out what the lyrics are saying later. I found it very satisfying to learn full songs, starting out learning language in a way that's natural, artful and enjoyable. I'd like to do something similar with Mandarin and the Tao Te Ching. I've read it in English and really enjoyed it. So what better to start with for learning Mandarin? Basically, I'd like to take a passage, like this, and at the end of the day, be able to recite it and also understand what I'm saying: 道 可 道 ， 非 常 道 。 名 可 名 ， 非 常 名 。 无 名 天 地 之 始 ﹔ 有 名 万 物 之 母 。 故 常 无 ， 欲 以 观 其 妙 ﹔ 常 有 ， 欲 以 观 其 徼 。 此 两 者 ， 同 出 而 异 名 ， 同 谓 之 玄 。 玄 之 又 玄 ， 众 妙 之 门 。 Does anyone know of any resources to help in either direction? Thanks, Jacob 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4772 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 2 of 24 12 December 2011 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Tao Te Ching wasn't originally written in Mandarin, it was written in Classical Chinese. The differences in grammar are comparable to those between Classical Latin and modern French, so it's a completely different language. I don't know if there is a modern Chinese translation you could use (a quick google search for 道德经翻译 seems to have turned up mostly pages with the original text with added commentary, rather than actual translations). Edited by vonPeterhof on 12 December 2011 at 8:16pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6584 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese | Message 3 of 24 13 December 2011 at 1:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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Jacob,
vonPeterhof is right. Tao De Jing is written in what is now a dead language. It's like trying to learn French by learning poems in Latin by heart. I was thinking for a moment that it might help you with your pronunciation and that you could learn to recite it like little kids recite short poems, but since it's a different language and the text is so old, it doesn't even rhyme properly in Mandarin. Plus, but I'm not 100% sure about this, if you happen to find a recording of this section online, when readers read texts in Classical Chinese aloud, they preserve all the tones properly and do not change them in combinations like they would in real speech. Most Chinese would not understand this text if you'd read it out loud to them anyway, they'd have to look at the text too (unless they are familiar with this particular section of Dao De jing). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JacobTM Groupie United States Joined 5598 days ago 56 posts - 67 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 24 13 December 2011 at 3:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh. Thanks!
So, then out of curiosity, a speaker of Mandarin could read and understand the text? I was under the impression that, while the spoken languages of China have evolved greatly over time, the written characters were such that anyone literate in Mandarin could easily read ancient texts. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 5 of 24 13 December 2011 at 7:01am | IP Logged | |||||
A well-educated speaker of Mandarin, especially one from Taiwan, could probably make sense of it, but that's because he/she would have studied Classical Chinese, not because it's the same language. I have no problem reading most texts in Mandarin, but while I can read most of those characters, I'm having a hard time understanding what they mean.
Nope. This was true until the baihua movement of the early 1900s. Text before this were generally written in Classical Chinese, while texts after it have generally been written in Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin). This is a bit simplified, as some vernacular sneaked into texts even before that movement (The Journey to the West is largely written in the vernacular as it looked back then) and many texts today write in a formal style influenced by Classical Chinese. But this formal style is still emphatically NOT Classical Chinese; it's Mandarin with a few elements and phrases here and there borrowed from it. And the text of Journey to the West isn't written in a language that's at all natural to the modern Mandarin speaker, either. Again, to be clear, Classical Chinese and modern Mandarin are two completely different languages that differ heavily in both grammar and vocabulary. The same is true of Cantonese and Mandarin, by the way. Many people think that they are written the same way, which is not true; it's just that Cantonese speakers are bilingual (or trilingual if they can read Classical Chinese, too). Edited by Ari on 13 December 2011 at 10:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aabram Pentaglot Senior Member Estonia Joined 5533 days ago 138 posts - 263 votes Speaks: Estonian*, English, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 6 of 24 13 December 2011 at 7:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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Characters are only one thing you need to know. Both words and pronunciation has changed.
Ancient Chinese was monosyllabic while modern Mandarin is not and pronuciation is vastly different. Ancient poetry doesn't work when you try to read it according to modern pronunciation rules. For example ancient 目 has meaning of an "eye", but in modern mandarin "eye" is commonly 眼睛, whereas 目 is used as radical for meanings related to eyes or seeing. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JacobTM Groupie United States Joined 5598 days ago 56 posts - 67 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 24 13 December 2011 at 7:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well thanks for the explanations.
I was wondering about why running google translate on some lines produced such weird results. Reading an English translation, Chapter 2 starts with: 天 下 皆 知 美 之 为 美 ， 斯 恶 已 。 When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. Translating the original characters through google translate, the same lines come out: Known to the world the United States for the United States, Sri Lanka has been evil. Edited by JacobTM on 13 December 2011 at 7:28am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5308 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 8 of 24 13 December 2011 at 8:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm a native Chinese from Hong Kong, and I don't understand the poem at all. You'd think I'd at least understand the individual words, but it's still hit-and-miss, because often usage and meaning have changed. Anyway, this is how I "understand" the first line. I understand the Chinese version just as much as you do the English:
Road can road, very road; name can name, very name. my 2nd try would be: Way can way, not normal way; fame can fame, not normal fame. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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