1. What is the best reference book to help learn ancient Chinese and ancient characters?
Answer in two steps, as follows.
Introduction to auxiliary materials for learning ancient Chinese:
Compared with vernacular Chinese, classical Chinese is just clumsy and obscure. If you want to devote yourself to learning ancient Chinese well, you cannot limit your horizons
to Chinese books. Recommended auxiliary materials: "Gu Wen Guan Zhi", "Zi Zhi Tong Jian", "Historical Records", "The Analects of Confucius", "Mencius", "Han Feizi", etc.
Introduction to auxiliary materials for learning ancient characters:
The term "ancient characters" is not correct. It should be called "Chinese characters". Reforms after 1952 It is called "simplified Chinese characters". Recommended auxiliary materials: calligraphy copybooks, traditional Chinese dictionary, Taiwan News Today website, word conversion from simplified to traditional, etc. 2. What books should you learn first to learn classical Chinese? What reference books are there? How many books do you recommend?
In the study of classical Chinese, there are often mistakes and it is difficult to get high scores. Some beginners feel that they are confused. Wanxu, I don’t know where to start. This article combines my own learning experience to give a general overview of the study of ancient Chinese.
First of all, what needs to be realized is that what we call classical Chinese is just the daily conversation of ancient people, just like our current Mandarin. Therefore, it is not difficult to learn classical Chinese well, but the difficulty lies in having literary talent. Based on my own learning experience, if you have a weak foundation in ancient Chinese, it is recommended to study in the following order:
1. Read aloud "Three Character Classic", "Thousand Character Classic", "Enlightenment of Rhythm", "Li Weng Dui" "Rhyme" and "The Book of Songs (Excerpts)", and can achieve the level of fluent recitation (the above are all three-character and four-character short sentences, which are both melodic and catchy, and can be combined with historical stories)
2. "100 Classical Essays for Primary School Students" (a very classic collection of short essays that you can translate by yourself first, then read and imitate).
3. The text of the eleven books mentioned above, including "San Yan Er Pai", "Historical Records", "Warring States Policy" and "Zi Zhi Tong Jian", are relatively good. The above series are mainly history books and literary novels, which are easy to understand and highly interesting. They are also highly literary and highly readable. It can be read as an extracurricular book. It only needs to be understood and does not need to be memorized (Sanyan Erpai is not recommended for primary school students to read, and it is not suitable for children).
4. "Shishuoxinyu", "Yan Family Instructions", "Cai Gen Tan", "Dongpo Xiaolin", "Xiaolin Guangji", "Little Window Youji", "Six Notes of a Floating Life" ", "Youmengying", "Zeng Guofan Family Letters", the above nine books mainly deal with ancient people's self-cultivation and character development. They are short, easy to understand, and rich in philosophy. You can excerpt and recite classic passages.
5. "Guan Zhi", "Miscellaneous Notes on Classics and History", "Compilation of Ancient Chinese Ci", "Collected Works of Tongcheng School Famous Writers", "Shui Jing Zhu", "Luoyang Jialan Ji", " Xunzi", "Mencius", "Zhuangzi", "Han Feizi".
The development of prose has generally gone through five relatively important stages, namely the pre-Qin and Han Dynasties, the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Tang and Song Dynasties, and the turn of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The ten books mentioned above all occupy a very important position in these five stages, and they can be said to have their own merits:
"Guwen Guanzhi", "Miscellaneous Notes on Classics and History", and "Compilation of Ancient Chinese Ci" It is a grand collection of famous works by ancient and modern famous writers, but each of the three has its own merits. "Guwen Guanzhi" is more basic and less difficult; the latter two are more difficult and suitable for learners with certain accumulation. Most of the representative works from the Han Dynasty and the Tang and Song Dynasties are included in these three books, so they are not listed separately.
"Mencius" has incisive reasoning, fluent writing, and vivid language; "Zhuangzi" often uses allegories and metaphors, which are unrestrained and extremely expressive; "Xunzi" is good at reasoning, full of clever arguments, profound thoughts, and thorough logic. , "Han Feizi" uses fables and historical materials to make in-depth and simple arguments, and the philosophy can be seen in plain language. These four books are the pinnacle works of the pre-Qin period.
"Luoyang Jialan Ji" and "Shui Jing Zhu" have more complicated records, covering both mountains, rivers, geography, customs and secular affairs. These two books are representative works of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties
"Tongcheng" "Collected Works of Pai" and "Gu Wen Guan Zhi" are in the same vein and can be regarded as their continuation. The Tongcheng School occupies a relatively important position among the Restoration School, Tang-Song School, Gong'an School and other schools of thought in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Influenced by the Eight-Partu Scholar Recruitment, most of the articles in the Ming and Qing Dynasties lacked momentum and aura, but there were also some famous scholars such as Yao Nai, there are people like Guang.
We might as well learn from multiple aspects and confirm each other, so that an overall view can be formed.
You can carry out thematic reading of the above articles, and you can select some of the articles and chapters and copy and recite them.
6. In addition, when learning ancient Chinese, you need to prepare a reference book, just one. It is the "Old Chinese Dictionary" edited by Wang Li.
Notes:
a. It should be noted that "Gu Wen Guan Zhi" is the most famous and widely circulated. Students who want to learn ancient Chinese often want to take a shortcut and think that "Gu Wen Guan Zhi" is the most famous and widely circulated book. By memorizing the articles of "Guan Zhi", you can achieve mastery of ancient literature. "Gu Wen Guan Zhi" is only one of the ancient prose anthologies. Although it is representative to a certain extent, the original intention of compiling this book was to make policy decisions during the imperial examinations, so some articles with a strong eight-legged flavor were selected. What's more, Chinese traditional culture is vast and profound, and it takes more exposure to broaden your horizons and reach the state of "not afraid of the clouds covering your eyes, just because you are at the top".
b. In terms of learning methods, there are four magic weapons for language learning: listening, speaking, reading and writing. For ancient Chinese, the most important thing is to read and memorize it. It is recommended to memorize more classics of ancient Chinese and then do thematic reading. Gradually, you will be able to find the rules and feelings of ancient people in using language, or in other words, the sense of language. Once you have found a sense of language, it will not be difficult for you to do daily study.
c. Finally, if you are not very interested in ancient Chinese and just focus on solving questions, then my suggestion is to use some common words in the textbook, such as the meaning and usage of real and functional words, and the false words. There are also some special sentence patterns such as Dingzhen, predicate preposition, etc. to be clear, and some classic passages must be recited proficiently.
If you want to get a higher score in the ancient Chinese part of the exam, you must read both the ancient Chinese and vernacular versions of "Historical Records" and "Zizhi Tongjian". If you can do it, you can The degree of self-translation.
In daily examinations, the questions are often about selecting a person's deeds and then examining them in connection with the ancient Chinese knowledge that has been learned. These two books are one in the form of a biography and the other in a chronological form. They are very representative. Most of the short essays in the examination also choose similar articles for examination. It is very necessary to read through these two books.