我們學漢語 / 我们学汉语 (Chinese Study Group)

An area with study groups for various languages. Group members help each other, share resources and experience. Study groups are permanent but the members rotate and change.
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Axon
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Re: 我們學漢語 / 我们学汉语 (Chinese Study Group)

Postby Axon » Wed Aug 18, 2021 3:58 pm

firewheel wrote:Hi Members,

I have another doubt to ask you.

I have just learnt about the following rule regarding tones:

When a 3rd tone is followed by another 3rd tone in a word or a phrase, the first 3rd tone changes to a 2nd tone.

I am listing a few examples below:

- wǒ hěn hǎo is to be pronounced as wó hén hǎo

- wǒ yě shì zhōngguó rén should be pronounced as wó yě shì zhōngguó rén

- wǒ yě hěn hǎo is to be pronounced as wó yé hén hǎo

- The name Lǐ Xiǎolóng should be pronounced as Lí Xiǎolóng

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Thank you.


Hello Firewheel,

What you've written is correct, but you should also know that some speakers treat strings of third tones as *alternating* instead of *all* subject to tone change. The native speakers I know say wó yě hén hǎo and wǒ hén hǎo.
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Anthony Appleyard
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Learning Classical Chinese

Postby Anthony Appleyard » Wed Oct 06, 2021 11:59 am

Please, do you know of a good textbook, and dictionary (including as many characters as possible in its Chinese to English part) for English-speakers to learn Classical Chinese?

Another useful information source would be, for each character, any differences between its Classical Chinese meaning and its modern Chinese meaning.
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bolaobo
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Re: Learning Classical Chinese

Postby bolaobo » Wed Oct 06, 2021 4:29 pm

Anthony Appleyard wrote:Please, do you know of a good textbook, and dictionary (including as many characters as possible in its Chinese to English part) for English-speakers to learn Classical Chinese?

Another useful information source would be, for each character, any differences between its Classical Chinese meaning and its modern Chinese meaning.


Knowing a modern Chinese language helps a lot, to be honest. My favorite beginner textbook is "Introduction to Literary Chinese“ by Michael Fuller but it has a steep learning curve since there's no answer key (that I know of) and I've had to search for translations online to help understand. Nevertheless, if you put in the effort, you go from reading short sentences from Confucius and by the end you're reading pages out of Zhuangzi and other classics.

Introduction to Classical Chinese by Kai Vogelsang also just came out and it seems to be good from what I can tell.

As for dictionaries, I don't use paper dictionaries, but you can buy the "Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese" in Pleco. 漢語大詞典 and 故漢語大詞典 are also available in Pleco but are only available in Chinese.
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Re: 我們學漢語 / 我们学汉语 (Chinese Study Group)

Postby wheresmycookie » Mon Apr 18, 2022 4:14 am

I'm curious what shows people would recommend for beginners (HSK1-2). There's a Youtube channel called Mandarin Says that has a bunch of Peppa Pig shows with both Mandarin and English subtitles at the same time - this has been really helpful to me. (And something I can watch with my 6 month old son who would have no idea what's being said either way) I'd really like to find some things that are _from_ China so I can learn the language while also picking up some Chinese culture.
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Querneus
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Re: Learning Classical Chinese

Postby Querneus » Tue Apr 19, 2022 3:42 am

Axon wrote:...

I don't know if my memory is failing me, but are you the one who once mentioned a certain oddball Taiwanese professor from like the 1960s who wrote a grammar of Classical Chinese in Classical Chinese, who thought the abandonment of the traditional written language had been basically a historical mistake? I'm trying to find the post, if you did, but I can't find it. Do you know the professor I'm talking about?

Anthony Appleyard wrote:Please, do you know of a good textbook, and dictionary (including as many characters as possible in its Chinese to English part) for English-speakers to learn Classical Chinese?

I've heard good things of Van Norden's Classical Chinese for Everyone as an intro textbook, but I haven't really used it.
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Re: 我們學漢語 / 我们学汉语 (Chinese Study Group)

Postby Gordafarin2 » Tue Apr 19, 2022 8:44 am

wheresmycookie wrote:I'm curious what shows people would recommend for beginners (HSK1-2). There's a Youtube channel called Mandarin Says that has a bunch of Peppa Pig shows with both Mandarin and English subtitles at the same time - this has been really helpful to me. (And something I can watch with my 6 month old son who would have no idea what's being said either way) I'd really like to find some things that are _from_ China so I can learn the language while also picking up some Chinese culture.

It's a jump up from Peppa (I hope other people can give you some easier suggestions because I'd be quite interested too) but I've had a good time with school-themed dramas. There are lots of them, they are cheesy and formulaic, and there is a lot of shared vocabulary that comes with the shared setting. If I'm honest I'd rather be watching Xianxia fantasy shows, but the vocab in those is a good deal less practical :lol:

Meteor Garden is the classic one, Remember My Boy (youtube) is one I particularly liked, and Suddenly Seventeen (youtube) is one I'm currently watching (no EN subs after the first few eps). Ideally you can find ones that have soft subs for both Chinese and English, and watch it with one of the browser extensions that can display both subs and a pop-up dictionary.

Two starting points for finding dramas to watch: Graded Watching and this Google doc which lists a few different kids shows that might be of interest.
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Re: Learning Classical Chinese

Postby księżycowy » Tue Apr 19, 2022 2:40 pm

Querneus wrote:
Anthony Appleyard wrote:Please, do you know of a good textbook, and dictionary (including as many characters as possible in its Chinese to English part) for English-speakers to learn Classical Chinese?

I've heard good things of Van Norden's Classical Chinese for Everyone as an intro textbook, but I haven't really used it.

I find Van Borden's textbook great for people (like myself) who know zero Chinese at all, but it largely depends on where you are in learning Chinese in general. It doesn't give extensive readings or anything of that sort. If you already know some Chinese you're probably better off with other textbooks.

I'm not sure where you fall into things, Anthony.
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Axon
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Re: Learning Classical Chinese

Postby Axon » Tue Apr 19, 2022 9:33 pm

Querneus wrote:
Axon wrote:...

I don't know if my memory is failing me, but are you the one who once mentioned a certain oddball Taiwanese professor from like the 1960s who wrote a grammar of Classical Chinese in Classical Chinese, who thought the abandonment of the traditional written language had been basically a historical mistake? I'm trying to find the post, if you did, but I can't find it. Do you know the professor I'm talking about?


I'm afraid not, though I hope you find it!

I can second the recommendation for Kai Vogelsang's book on Classical Chinese. It draws on the most up-to-date information we have about pre-Han writing, which is a field that evolves much faster than I had imagined.

Without taking up too much air here, as my literacy in Chinese is eternally weaker than I would like it to be, I want to clarify a couple of things that certainly confused me for a while.

When speaking of written Chinese, there is a spectrum of literariness and classicalness with several dimensions. Written Chinese before the Han dynasty is considered to be "Classical Chinese," while some people refer to later non-vernacular materials as "Literary Chinese." The first may have been fairly close to the way people spoke on a day-to-day basis, while Literary Chinese stayed more static over time. So the language style used in, say, a Ming nonfiction work would not be the same as the language style used in the Analects or in Tang poetry, though I certainly started out thinking of them all as falling under the sphere of "Classical Chinese."

I bring this up because there are actually several very nice resources for learning later-period Literary Chinese that were published in the 19th and early 20th century. For those authors, Literary Chinese was not an object of curiosity or of historical importance; it was the language in which they were required to conduct all written correspondence with any literate Chinese person. I'm thinking specifically of James Summers' Handbook, F. W. Baller's Mandarin Primer, an anonymous Lexilogus of the English, Malay, and Chinese, and T. L. Bullock's Progressive Exercises in English. There are similar works in French, German, and Latin, all on Google Books.

My enjoyment of Literary and Classical Chinese comes from these books as well as from carefully reading the East Asia Student blog to get a sense of the words and structures found in poetry. I also highly recommend reading multiple translations of the same poems or prose pieces once you can parse the meaning of each character.
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wheresmycookie
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Re: 我們學漢語 / 我们学汉语 (Chinese Study Group)

Postby wheresmycookie » Thu Apr 21, 2022 3:32 am

Gordafarin2 wrote:
wheresmycookie wrote:I'm curious what shows people would recommend for beginners (HSK1-2). There's a Youtube channel called Mandarin Says that has a bunch of Peppa Pig shows with both Mandarin and English subtitles at the same time - this has been really helpful to me. (And something I can watch with my 6 month old son who would have no idea what's being said either way) I'd really like to find some things that are _from_ China so I can learn the language while also picking up some Chinese culture.

It's a jump up from Peppa (I hope other people can give you some easier suggestions because I'd be quite interested too) but I've had a good time with school-themed dramas. There are lots of them, they are cheesy and formulaic, and there is a lot of shared vocabulary that comes with the shared setting. If I'm honest I'd rather be watching Xianxia fantasy shows, but the vocab in those is a good deal less practical :lol:

Meteor Garden is the classic one, Remember My Boy (youtube) is one I particularly liked, and Suddenly Seventeen (youtube) is one I'm currently watching (no EN subs after the first few eps). Ideally you can find ones that have soft subs for both Chinese and English, and watch it with one of the browser extensions that can display both subs and a pop-up dictionary.

Two starting points for finding dramas to watch: Graded Watching and this Google doc which lists a few different kids shows that might be of interest.


This is great, thanks so much! Probably many of these still above my level but some good resources to bookmark for later.
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lichtrausch
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Re: 我們學漢語 / 我们学汉语 (Chinese Study Group)

Postby lichtrausch » Wed Jul 13, 2022 10:21 pm

Test your Chinese food vocabulary with this vlog. She goes through 20 days of meals from her quarantines in Shanghai and Taiwan.

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