Questions tagged [literary-chinese]
Literary Chinese (文言文 wényán wén, "text of written language"), a traditional style of written Chinese modelled on the classical language, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese.
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Why is there 之 in 夫不觀之⋯乎?
Problem
I stumbled upon this pattern
夫不觀之X乎？
It seems to be an injunction to consider X, which I would try to phrase as:
何故不觀X？
But, how does it come to mean this - if it does? The question ...
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Which 魏 did 蘇軾 mean in 上神宗皇帝書?
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In his 上神宗皇帝書 Su Shi opines on a permanent problem of Chinese governmental philosophy: the power distribution between centre and periphery or intra-capital and extra-capital officials. He comes ...
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Who do 五尺童子 and 而屠戮 refer to here?
Background
《中国积弱溯源论》 is a text by Liang Qichao, wherein he laments the social structure in China. After a couple of paragraphs, he makes the point that the perception of each social stratum’s duty is ...
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Can 之 refer to an object not previously mentioned?
When I got this question, I immediately answered „yes“, based on a passage in Mencius. But, apparently, people online confidently dismiss my interpretation, hence I find it incumbent upon myself to ...
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Can anyone give me an idea of how to understand [這-言+(血/(豕-一))]?
This archaic character is described in CBETA as [這-言+(血/(豕-一))]
It does not seem to be in Unicode yet. I don't care about pronunciation, what would it mean?
The context is 由斯經歷，保爾行途。取經早[這-言+(血/(豕-一))]，...
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Difference between 且... 且... and 一面… 一面
The structures 且+verb 且+verb and 一面… 一面... (or 一边... 一边...) are used to describe two actions taking place at the same time.
But I've only seen us 且... 且... used with monosyllabic verbs and no ...
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Can we replace 此生或彼生 in 文言文 with something less ambiguous but not longer?
TLDR Background
In his text 此生或彼生 Lu Xun takes apart a proponent of literary Chinese (named, I think, Wang Maozu). Wang had attempted to argue the superiority of Literary Chinese by pointing out that
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千百亿 Is it literal or just a figurative form of a "Very Large Number"
What happens is that I have been reading a Chinese novel. It mentions that the galaxy contains 346 million planets approximately, however, the author later mentions that there are "千百亿的星球" (&...
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Has anyone seen the word or the characters in the word "𠄑𠄍" used before?
According to Wiktionary, 𠄑𠄍 is an adjective pronounced "juéjié" in Mandarin and means "moving"(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/𠄑𠄍#Chinese). Somebody on the page has hypothesized ...
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What are the usages of 甫 and 氏 after names for a single person?
I am reading some county document from Qing Dynasty. Most of the prefaces were signed by 年號+（年）+干支紀年+（月）+籍貫+姓+名+（字）. For example, 康熙(年號)丙寅(干支紀年)會稽(籍貫)徐(姓)世法(名)序, 道光(年號)二十九年（年）歲次巳酉(干支紀年)十月上浣（月）皖江(籍貫)劉(...
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Why put a comma in 告纣之罪于天,及殷民?
"(衅社，)告纣之罪于天,及殷民" This is from 《史记·鲁周公世家》.
There's a comma in this sentence in 中华书局点校本二十四史修订本. I also googled "告纣之罪于天及殷民", most of the results come back with a comma.
What is the ...
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Purpose of 者 in (noun)者，所(verb)也 structure
I've recently learned that 者 is used to nominalize an action, whereas I used to think its purpose was just to assign an action to an actor and reference the actor. But I'm going through Fuller's book, ...
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Meaning of 不之禁也 in context
Background and Question
I am again translating Dai Hongci‘s diary from a visit in Vienna during the year 1906 into German. It contains the characters 不之禁也 in relation to indulging the students pastime ...
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Translation of 織草為茵 in context
I am translating Dai Hongci‘s diary. He is describing an Austrian school for young nobles (貴冑學堂）. The above has a slightly unexpected word order. I am wondering, whether I understand it correctly (as ...
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Timeframe for Learning Ancient Chinese
As a complete newbie to the Chinese language, I would like to ask the following questions.
What is an approximate time for learning enough of the Chinese language to be able to read something like ...
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