Warring States Project
Classical Chinese Primer
If classical Latin were taught like classical Chinese, no undergraduate would ever make contact with Horace in the original. Nowhere in the world (repeat, world) is classical Chinese taught as such, without a long prerequisite in the modern language. We here demonstrate an alternative. It uses a frequency-based approach to maximize the value of each character memorized, characters being the chief limiting factor. It also uses reality to maximize the value of each minute spent: every word of the lesson passage, and every word of the practice examples, is taken from a real text.
The long-ago course on which these lessons are remotely based required a lot of energy from both its teacher and its students. What can be done on these pages to make things plain for the self-student has been done. But all the rest of the energy must now come from the student. In its complete form, as presently envisioned, the course would cover about a year of work at a lesson a week; a proved practical rate of character assimilation. Completing it would take the student to the point of being able to use annotated texts as further material for self-study, or to enter, and survive in, a regular "Readings" course in traditional Chinese literature, if one should be offered in the vicinity.
- Prefatory
- Introduction (Please Do Not Skip)
- Pronunciation
- Romanization
- Characters
- Calligraphy
- Background (Please Do Not Skip Either)
- Lessons
- Lesson List
- Lesson 1 (LY 4:1)
- Aids
- Ameliorations
- Apparatus
- Subject Index
The Project lacks the resources to complete the course here outlined, but it seems useful to offer these sample pages anyway, to show what would be possible if it were also felt to be desirable.
And last, as our most general outreach effort, we ask the Ultimate Question of Classical Sinology:
17 Jan 2004 / Contact The Project / Exit to Home Page
