Classical Chinese (古文, Pinyin: gǔ wén, "ancient text") is the language of the classic literature from the Spring and Autumn period through to the end of the Han Dynasty, a written form of Old Chinese. The term is also used for Literary Chinese (文言文 wényán wén, "text of written language"), a ...
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2answers
130 views
Specifics of the idiom “四海一家”
There are several sayings and idioms similar to 四海一家 which reference "四海".
Does the 四海 actually refer to 4 specific oceans such as the Indian, Pacific etc. or is it more of a metaphor for all of the ...
7
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4answers
302 views
Classical Chinese Literature - What languages could be written with it? And why?
I understand that classical Chinese (see Wikipedia) was very different from spoken Chinese (at least in the last centuries of its usage). Nevertheless, despite or maybe even because of this, it was ...
5
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1answer
46 views
黃中 = being employed as an imperial government official/having a career in the imperial government?
Many Chinese clans have a "昭穆", a kind of poem from which each generation of the clan picks a successive character as a prefix to given names, so we can easily identify people from one generation to ...
4
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2answers
217 views
What is the classical Chinese meaning of 或?
I am reading a text that uses the following phrase:
或謂鄭相曰
I understand it generally to mean that
someone told to the prime minister of Zheng saying
However, I don't understand exactly ...
4
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1answer
129 views
What does the classical construction X 何由 Y mean?
I almost never see this construction in classical prose. (In fact, I'll venture I've never seen it.) However, it's in two of my favorite poems.
In this one, it's from the poem "晨詣超師院讀禪經" by 柳宗元:
...
4
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1answer
134 views
Resources for learning classical Chinese
I have a very strong interest in classical Chinese (文言文), but I am unable to find ressources for learning it that don't assume Chinese is your mother language. Can anybody give me some pointers?
3
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2answers
143 views
How to explain the structure of “将在外，军令有所不受。”
In my own opinion, this sentence should be "将在外，军令不受".
I can hardly imagine any use of "有" and "所" here. Could someone explain the structure of this sentence?
1
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1answer
74 views
Using 變音 when reading Classical Chinese poetry in Cantonese
The poem 《登鸛雀樓》 (Climbing Stork Tower) has the final line 更上一層樓.
If I were to read this in Cantonese, would I pronounce the final character as lau4 (without 變音), or lau2 (with 變音)?
My guess would be ...
1
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1answer
183 views
Poetic two-character words of the form: Verb + Natural Noun?
I was looking for examples in Mandarin of poetic two-character words. What words have the following form...
Verb + Noun
...where the noun is something that occurs in nature?
The first examples ...
0
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1answer
54 views
Included or Not Included As In “以後” “以來”, etc
Check out the references below, we see that Japanese has the same problem as Chinese: Does "以X" include the word itself, eg. is 1 included in "1以上"?
As what I have seen, in old Chinese books, there ...
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2answers
121 views
What written language is more commonly used for video games in China? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
What are the relative literacy rates in for simplified and traditional characters?
Just wondering what language to use in game menus, buttons, and settings.
