{"id":7500,"date":"2019-10-19T15:38:30","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T15:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/frog\/?p=7500"},"modified":"2019-11-17T13:45:20","modified_gmt":"2019-11-17T13:45:20","slug":"classical-chinese-for-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2019\/10\/classical-chinese-for-everyone\/","title":{"rendered":"Classical Chinese for Everyone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Looking for a fun book? Look no further! Bryan Van Norden&#8217;s <br><em>Classical Chinese for Everyone: A Guide for Absolute Beginners <\/em>is it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-amazon\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"700\" height=\"550\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen style=\"max-width:100%\" src=\"https:\/\/read.amazon.com\/kp\/card?preview=inline&#038;linkCode=kpd&#038;ref_=k4w_oembed_vgFS3LuGaihRes&#038;asin=B07YQHKXGL&#038;tag=kpembed-20\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a book for anyone who would like to learn a bit of Classical Chinese. Although the standard assumption is that if you are studying Classical Chinese you already have a few years of Modern Chinese this is not really necessary. If you look at the reviews of classical Chinese textbooks on Amazon you will see that there is a sizable group of people who are not planning on careers as Sinologists but would like to learn some Classical Chinese. This book is for them.<sup id=\"rf1-7500\"><a href=\"#fn1-7500\" title=\" Van Norden uses Rouzer&#8217;s textbook for his students with some background in Modern Chinese. I have used that as well, on the few occasions I have taught classical, but this seems a better introductory book. \" rel=\"footnote\">1<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One nice thing about the book is that it does not exist in a vacuum. He gives you references to all the other books out there and electronic resources like Pleco and C-text. He even admits that if you want a quick but good explanation of Kanbun the place to go is <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kanbun\">Wikipedia<\/a>. While this is a book for beginners, it gives you all the tools you need to keep going. You don&#8217;t need to know about reading pronunciations \u8b80\u97f3, or the sexagenary cycle \u516d\u5341\u5e72\u652f, but Van Norden explains these and leaves you hungry to learn more. He is a philosophy teacher, and he is teaching Classical Chinese as a way of getting students into philosophy, so there is a good deal of philosophical content in here.<sup id=\"rf2-7500\"><a href=\"#fn2-7500\" title=\" That is probably unavoidable, since so many of the early texts are &#8220;philosophy&#8221;, but he frequently steps away from the language lessons to specifically explain the ideas in the text. \" rel=\"footnote\">2<\/a><\/sup> Have you really been introduced to <em>Analects<\/em> if you have never read one of Zhu Xi&#8217;s commentaries? Not for Van Norden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other nice thing about the book is that it is a lot of fun. Van Norden has actually printed a lot of his classroom jokes here, and they are pretty good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>James R. Ware was the first person to receive a PhD in &#8220;Chinese Studies&#8221; from Harvard University (1932), but today he is best known for his translation of <em>Analects <\/em>2.12: &#8220;The Gentleman is not a robot.&#8221; I would give you the original Chinese text of that passage, but it wouldn&#8217;t help.<sup id=\"rf3-7500\"><a href=\"#fn3-7500\" title=\" I will give it to you though,  \u5b50\u66f0\u541b\u5b50\u4e0d\u5668 \" rel=\"footnote\">3<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>He also includes a few bits where he gives you various English translations of things so you can try to work out how different people tried to work out a translation. Or you can just gaze in wonder at Boodberg&#8217;s translation of \u9053\u5fb7\u7d93\u30001 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you, or one of your students, or someone on your holiday gift list are interested in a career as a Sinologist, or would like to learn just enough Classical Chinese to say you know a bit, or just like learning interesting things from a good teacher you should get this book. It is by far the most fun language textbook I have ever read. <\/p>\n<hr class=\"footnotes\"><ol class=\"footnotes\" style=\"list-style-type:decimal\"><li id=\"fn1-7500\"><p > Van Norden uses Rouzer&#8217;s textbook for his students with some background in Modern Chinese. I have used that as well, on the few occasions I have taught classical, but this seems a better introductory book. &nbsp;<a href=\"#rf1-7500\" class=\"backlink\" title=\"Return to footnote 1.\">&#8617;<\/a><\/p><\/li><li id=\"fn2-7500\"><p > That is probably unavoidable, since so many of the early texts are &#8220;philosophy&#8221;, but he frequently steps away from the language lessons to specifically explain the ideas in the text. &nbsp;<a href=\"#rf2-7500\" class=\"backlink\" title=\"Return to footnote 2.\">&#8617;<\/a><\/p><\/li><li id=\"fn3-7500\"><p > I will give it to you though,  \u5b50\u66f0\u541b\u5b50\u4e0d\u5668 &nbsp;<a href=\"#rf3-7500\" class=\"backlink\" title=\"Return to footnote 3.\">&#8617;<\/a><\/p><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looking for a fun book? Look no further! Bryan Van Norden&#8217;s Classical Chinese for Everyone: A Guide for Absolute Beginners is it. This is a book for anyone who would like to learn a bit of Classical Chinese. Although the standard assumption is that if you are studying Classical Chinese you already have a few&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[105,137,163],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-language","category-teaching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-1WY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7500"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7511,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7500\/revisions\/7511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}