Classical Chinese introduction

Classical Chinese is very different form modern spoken Chinese. Even if you have learned modern Chinese, and might be able to recognize all the characters in a classical Chinese essay, you might still have no idea of what they mean.

Why? Here are some reasons:

1. Words in classical Chinese usually have different meaning from modern Chinese. For example,

「是shì」 in modern Chinese usually means “to be”, but in classical Chinese often means “this”.

「走zǒu 」in modern Chinese means “to walk”, but in classical Chinese means “to run”.

2. Classical Chinese doesn’t have many grammatical marks. In modern Chinese, there are grammatical marks like「的de 」and 「了le 」.

3. Many words can be used as verbs and nouns as well. This phenomenon also exists in modern Chinese, but it is more common in classical Chinese. For instance,

「父fù 不bú 父fù 」. 


There are two 「父fù 」 (father) in this sentence, the first one is a noun, the second one is a verb. How can “father” be used as a verb? It is not easy to translate into English. Actually, it is not easy to translate into modern Chinese, either. Maybe it can be translated as: “a father doesn’t act like a father.”

Therefore, if you know modern Chinese already, it is helpful for your classical Chinese learning, because you already know how to read most of those words. But try to consider classical Chinese as a new language. Sometimes you might have to get rid of the knowledge of modern Chinese.

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This introduction is for classical Chinese learners. I wrote it to help people to read classical Chinese. Therefore, sometimes I might choose unorthodox explanations which might not be accepted by linguists. But I think to explain it in this way can help learners to understand this language more easily.

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