Western Sinologists are experts in reading vernacular Chinese, yet they fail spectacularly when they are faced with classical Chinese. Take the Classical Chinese text called 中庸 as an example. Just the simple two character title has been translated into English as:
- Doctrine of the Mean
- Middle Way
- Middle Use
-‘Focusing the Familiar
- Unwobbling Pivot
Google’Why Chinese Is So Damm Hard’ by Sinologist David Moser. In it, he says, “Whereas modern Mandarin is merely perversely hard, classical Chinese is deliberately impossible.” The translations of 中庸 quoted above bears witness to this.
Why do Sinologists find classical Chinese impossible? Because Classical Chinese is not read the same way as vernacular Chinese. Anyone who tries to read classical Chinese the way he reads vernacular Chinese will fail.
One key to classical Chinese is found in the title of Xu Shen’s 說文解字 that you quoted earlier. It was written c. 200CE and is still in print today. Do you understand 解? It is polysemic and means both ‘untie’ and ‘explain’. So the title says 說（speak) 文(culture, writing) 解(untie, explain) 字(characters). When you speak about Chinese culture and writing, you have to be able to untie and explain what the character means and why it was written that way. In classical Chinese, you have tobe able to read the components of characters as well as the entire character itself. In vernacular Chinese, you only read the entire character as a word.
Traditional script looks similar to classical script, but has some elements that are slightly altered. The slight alteration to the components within characters makes it impossible for use in classical Chinese. You have no understanding of this, so I can say definitively that you are illiterate in classical Chinese.
In the book that I referenced, the first sub title is ‘The Logic Of Chinese Characters.’ 漢字 was developed over thousands of years when written Chinese was classical Chinese. When you understand the logic of Chinese characters and how to until and explain them, you will naturally understand classical Chinese.
Now go away and read the book that I referenced earlier and you will find out exactly how ignorant of classical Chinese you are currently.
www.taipeitimes.com
