Classical Chinese Textbooks I've Used
Apr. 17th, 2024 09:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forestofgloryI thought it would be fun and possibly helpful to talk about the various Classical Chinese textbooks that I have some experience with. These are all books for English speakers that don't assume any familiarity with any Chinese languages. I know there are also textbooks for Mandarin speakers but because I don't speak Mandarin, I'm not familiar with them. All of these textbooks use traditional character and pinyin transliterations.
Classical Chinese for Everyone: A Guide for Absolute Beginners by Bryan W. Van Norden
I love this book and thought it was great. This is what I started with when I started learning Classical Chinese. It's a trade paperback size book about 130 pages including the glossary and whatnot I got it for about $15 new. There is an introduction and 13 lessons. I found it extremely accessible and easy to understand. I also liked that it started you right away reading actual historical texts. The first lesson is only 10 characters long, but I felt so accomplished to read a bit of Analects. I highly recommend this if you are curious about Classical Chinese!
A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese by Paul Rouzer
Having completed all the lessons in Classical Chinese for Everyone I moved on to this book which was recommended as a further resource inClassical Chinese for Everyone. This is more of a traditional textbook. It’s textbook size I with a total of 40 lessons. It's not that expensive for a textbook, about $40.
This is a lot more overwhelming than Classical Chinese for Everyone so I'm glad I didn't start here. The vocabulary for the first lesson is 27 characters. I do find this book approachable, and I appreciate that each lesson comes with a lot of cultural commentary. The book also uses historic texts for the lessons.
An Introduction to Literary Chinese by Michael A. Fuller
After I finished the first unit of A New Practical Primer, I was struggling with the second unit, and I wanted to go back over the basics so I got this textbook. It's another full-sized textbook that also cost around $40. There's a total of 35 lessons.
This book has a lot of technical linguistic jargon and I found it hard to follow. I ended up working through the first seven lessons and then getting kind of frustrated and giving up on it. (I see that there’s now a second edition of this, but I’ve only seen the first edition)
Chinese Through Poetry: An Introduction to the Language and Imagery of Traditional Verse by Archie Barnes
I don't remember why I started working with this book. It's mass-market paperback size but a lot heftier then Classical Chinese for Everyone at around 330 pages. My copy was a gift, but it looks like you can buy this for around $30. There are 40 lessons. As you might guess from the title this book is much more focused on poetry as opposed to the other three books which were more focused on prose. I've only poked around in this book and worked to the middle of lesson 5. Also unlike the other books which all use historical text right away, the first several lessons of this book consist of constructed exercises. I find them helpful good understanding how classical Chinese sentences are constructed and I've worked on these exercises when I wanted to practice something a little easier.
So that's all the textbooks I've used. I did eventually get to a point where I was struggling on my own and decided to hire a tutor which has been great. We haven't been using a textbook for our lessons, instead we pick texts of interests and work on translating them together. But I still refer to some of these textbooks to remind me about various grammatical principles if I get stuck.
I hope you found this useful or at least interesting. If you have any questions please ask.
Classical Chinese for Everyone: A Guide for Absolute Beginners by Bryan W. Van Norden
I love this book and thought it was great. This is what I started with when I started learning Classical Chinese. It's a trade paperback size book about 130 pages including the glossary and whatnot I got it for about $15 new. There is an introduction and 13 lessons. I found it extremely accessible and easy to understand. I also liked that it started you right away reading actual historical texts. The first lesson is only 10 characters long, but I felt so accomplished to read a bit of Analects. I highly recommend this if you are curious about Classical Chinese!
A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese by Paul Rouzer
Having completed all the lessons in Classical Chinese for Everyone I moved on to this book which was recommended as a further resource inClassical Chinese for Everyone. This is more of a traditional textbook. It’s textbook size I with a total of 40 lessons. It's not that expensive for a textbook, about $40.
This is a lot more overwhelming than Classical Chinese for Everyone so I'm glad I didn't start here. The vocabulary for the first lesson is 27 characters. I do find this book approachable, and I appreciate that each lesson comes with a lot of cultural commentary. The book also uses historic texts for the lessons.
An Introduction to Literary Chinese by Michael A. Fuller
After I finished the first unit of A New Practical Primer, I was struggling with the second unit, and I wanted to go back over the basics so I got this textbook. It's another full-sized textbook that also cost around $40. There's a total of 35 lessons.
This book has a lot of technical linguistic jargon and I found it hard to follow. I ended up working through the first seven lessons and then getting kind of frustrated and giving up on it. (I see that there’s now a second edition of this, but I’ve only seen the first edition)
Chinese Through Poetry: An Introduction to the Language and Imagery of Traditional Verse by Archie Barnes
I don't remember why I started working with this book. It's mass-market paperback size but a lot heftier then Classical Chinese for Everyone at around 330 pages. My copy was a gift, but it looks like you can buy this for around $30. There are 40 lessons. As you might guess from the title this book is much more focused on poetry as opposed to the other three books which were more focused on prose. I've only poked around in this book and worked to the middle of lesson 5. Also unlike the other books which all use historical text right away, the first several lessons of this book consist of constructed exercises. I find them helpful good understanding how classical Chinese sentences are constructed and I've worked on these exercises when I wanted to practice something a little easier.
So that's all the textbooks I've used. I did eventually get to a point where I was struggling on my own and decided to hire a tutor which has been great. We haven't been using a textbook for our lessons, instead we pick texts of interests and work on translating them together. But I still refer to some of these textbooks to remind me about various grammatical principles if I get stuck.
I hope you found this useful or at least interesting. If you have any questions please ask.
