Talk:Classical Chinese

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It would be great to see this book take off. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the subject to really contribute. On-line resources seem to be scarce as well. I found this snippet when looking through the history, it's not much but at least it contains some info on grammar. Perhaps it could be molded into something for a lesson 2?

Grammar/sentence structure

Statements

1. "......者......也" or permutations of such:

   "...... ......也" eg. 夫战勇气也 (《曹刿论战》)

   "......者......" or

   "...... ......者也" eg. 城北徐公齐国之美丽者也 (《邹忌讽齐王》)

   This is the archetypal Classical Chinese sentence.

2. "......x......" where x is any one of 乃、则、即、为、诚、非、是 etc:

   use of 是 became increasingly common after the Han Dynasty

3. Nothing. eg. 刘备天下枭雄 (by 鲁肃)

It's not so hard to find sources of classical Chinese texts on-line, but I haven't seen many grammatical explanations. Links are welcome. Arne Brasseur (talk) 15:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Doubts

In "......者......也", 者 is actually either a marker of nominalisation or a or a particle to emphasise what comes before it.

As far as I understand, in usual sentences it is not required to use 者 unless before it a verbal phrase comes or unless it's necessary to underline the subject (sometimes not a subject at all, as in 今者).

"......者......" -- are there really many of these? I guess it's not a nominal sentence (A is B), but a sentence where B is used in the function of verb 'to behave like ...'. Am I mistaken?

Demetrius. 93.84.192.163 (talk) 16:36, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese characters should be used

Traditional Chinese character was the only form of classical Chinese language, and there is no reason to use simplified Chinese character. --Obonggi (discuss • contribs) 17:35, 17 September 2016 (UTC) Obonggi (discuss • contribs) 17:35, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

• OPPOSE.

language is language, not writing system.

NO MATTER using Traditional Chinese or Simplified Chinese (even if PINYIN), Classical Chinese is Classical Chinese.

besides, current Traditional Chinese is NOT the very form the ancients used, then would you use clerical script(lishu), seal script (zhuanshu), or oracle bone script(jiaguwen)

in a word, Traditional Chinese character IS NOT the only form of classical Chinese language,

--Араси (discuss • contribs) 05:14, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

• AGREE.

The logic that language is language, and not the writing system is usually valid, but in the case of a language that many strongly believe was never spoken, but only written and recited this logic doesn't hold true.

Arguing that complex/traditional characters aren't the exact characters used in Classical Chinese writing is somewhat more valid and actually raises interesting question (although Seal and Oracle Bone scripts wouldn't make much sense either as they were not typically used to write texts).

However, when one considers that most volumes of Classical Chinese texts will use traditional characters in their reproductions, I don't think a good argument can be made for using PRC simplifications to teach Classical Chinese at all. The only simplifications that one could argue would be calligraphic based, and this makes up only a small number of PRC standard simplifications.

SuperNinKenDo (discuss • contribs) 19:41, 9 February 2020 (UTC)