Content words in classical Chinese include nouns, verbs, adjectives, numerals and quantifiers. In classical Chinese, the number of notional words far exceeds that of function words. Learning classical Chinese, the most important thing is to master the meaning of content words in classical Chinese. Only by mastering the meaning of a certain number of classical Chinese words and accumulating knowledge about classical Chinese words can we read classical Chinese smoothly. When learning the notional words in classical Chinese, we should pay special attention to the following points:
1, pay attention to distinguish the similarities and differences between ancient and modern meanings.
From the right generation to today, the meaning of Chinese is constantly evolving. The meanings of some basic words and general words are few, and the meanings of ancient and modern words have not changed. Such words will not cause us any difficulties in learning classical Chinese. However, there are still some words commonly used in classical Chinese, but they disappear with the disappearance of old things and old ideas, and the meanings of ancient and modern words have changed. This change is mainly manifested in the following four aspects:
(1), the extension of meaning.
The expansion of word meaning refers to the expansion of the scope of objective things reflected by word meaning, that is, from part to whole, from individual to general, from narrow sense to broad sense, so that the original meaning becomes a part of the extension of new meaning. For example, "autumn" refers to extending from one season to the whole year; "Sleep" refers to the extension from sitting and dozing to sleeping.
(2) The narrowing of meaning.
The narrowing of word meaning refers to the narrowing of the scope of objective things reflected by word meaning, that is, from the whole to the part, from the broad sense to the narrow sense, so that the new meaning becomes a part of the extension of the original meaning. For example, "husband" generally refers to men in ancient times, such as "does husband also love his youngest son?" Now, "husband" refers to a woman's spouse. "Smell" refers to all smells, especially malodorous gases. "Soup" generally refers to hot water and boiled water, especially vegetable soup and broth.
(3), the transfer of meaning.
The transfer of word meaning refers to the change of word meaning from nail to object B. For example, "scholar" in ancient times refers to "scholar", for example, "so a scholar can't be cautious without thinking deeply" (You Shan Wang), and now refers to people who have certain academic achievements. "Miss", in ancient times, refers to unmarried women or unmarried women in powerful families. Now, under the background of reform and opening up, its meaning has basically changed, referring to the woman who has improper behavior. If you call a beautiful young lady, the lady will stare at you angrily to show that she is not a lady.
(4) The color of the word meaning has changed. For example, "slander" in ancient times refers to publicly accusing others of their faults, which is a neutral word. For example, "those who can slander the city and listen to me will be rewarded." Zou Ji satirized the King of Qi. Now using "slander" is slander, which means to speak ill of others out of thin air. It is a derogatory term.
The above four situations are the main types of semantic changes in ancient and modern times. The existence of a large number of words with both ancient and modern meanings is the main obstacle to the study of classical Chinese. When we study classical Chinese, we must combine the study of classical Chinese works to master the common meaning of a group of commonly used words purposefully, planned and required.
2. Pay attention to the distinction between monosyllabic words and disyllabic words in ancient and modern Chinese.
In modern Chinese, disyllabic words account for the vast majority, while in classical Chinese, monosyllabic words are dominant. Therefore, when reading classical Chinese, don't mistake disyllabic words in classical Chinese for disyllabic words in modern Chinese. For example, the ancient meaning of "extraordinary" in "Extraordinary View" (You Bao Chan Shan) is two words: different. It means adverb of degree. In addition, don't explain the disyllabic words in classical Chinese alone. For example, the word "worry-free" in Sunset Killing a Hundred Careless People (Feng Wanzhen) is a couplet meaning "probably" and "roughly", which has nothing to do with "nothing" and "worry" and cannot be separated.
3. Pay attention to the polysemy in ancient Chinese.
Like modern Chinese, classical Chinese has ambiguity. If we only know one or two meanings of a polysemous word, it is easy to interpret one or two meanings when reading classical Chinese, and we may make mistakes in understanding. In order to avoid mistakes, we should consciously accumulate and sort out knowledge. In our textbooks, there is this convenient exercise at the back of every classical Chinese to help us accumulate and organize our works. It must be done seriously and cannot be ignored. With the accumulation of meaning, we can choose the meaning more accurately when we encounter polysemous words. In addition, we also need to know the original meaning and extended meaning of words. Every word has its original meaning, which is the original meaning. Later, with the development and change of society, the new meaning is its extended meaning. For example, "wife" means to catch a woman by hand in ancient times, but it is a man's spouse in modern times. "Sun" means that my son's son has been passed down from generation to generation, but now it means his son.
4. Pay attention to the phenomenon of interchangeable words.
It is a common phenomenon in classical Chinese that ancient Chinese characters are falsified. In ancient times, due to the phonetic similarity, some words were often used together with other words, and the phenomenon that these words replaced each other in use was called "Tong Jia" words. "Tong" is universal; "Fake" is a loan. Identifying interchangeable words is not an easy task. The earlier the classical Chinese is, the harder it is to read the interchangeable words. For beginners, the way to master interchangeable words is to read more classical Chinese, look up dictionaries and accumulate knowledge.
Second, several problems that should be paid attention to when studying function words in classical Chinese.
Function words in classical Chinese include adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary words, exclamations and pronouns. The lexical meaning of function words is abstract, but it has many grammatical functions such as expressing mood and organizing content words. Function words in classical Chinese, especially commonly used function words, appear frequently in classical Chinese and have flexible usage. When reading classical Chinese, we should be good at distinguishing the meaning and function of function words in order to fully understand the meaning of the article. If function words are misunderstood, it will affect the understanding of the whole sentence and even the whole article. In learning, we should pay attention to the following convenient questions.
1, distinguish between real words and function words.
Function words in classical Chinese are mostly grammaticalized from real words. For example, the basic meaning of "suo" is "place", and later it is extended to "place" or "person" as a structural auxiliary word. For another example, the basic meaning of "zhi" is "Xiang", which was later blurred into pronouns, auxiliary words, modal particles and so on, becoming the most used function words. It is equivalent to "it" in modern Chinese and used as a pronoun. It is equivalent to "de" in modern Chinese. Used between subject and predicate to cancel the independence of subject and predicate. Play the role of piecing together timbre. From the above examples, we can know that whether a word is a real word or a function word can only be determined in a specific language environment. Its basic principle is that words cannot be separated from words, and words cannot be separated from sentences.
2. Understand the difference between ancient and modern function words.
There are completely different function words from ancient times to modern times, so we only need to master their meanings and usages in ancient times, such as stories in the Six Kingdoms, but some function words are used in ancient times and modern times, such as subversion in the Six Kingdoms. This requires us to pay special attention to the differences between them and review word by word with an analytical eye, instead of studying from now on.
3. Distinguish the different usages of the same function word.
Classical Chinese function words are frequently used, and their usage is flexible and changeable. A function word often has multiple parts of speech, expressing various grammatical relations, such as "er", which can be used as a conjunction. It can also be used in contemporary words. When used as a conjunction, it can express coordinate relationship, partial affirmation relationship, inheritance relationship, progressive relationship and turning relationship.
4. Observe the different tones of function words.
The ancients called function words "ci", "ci" and "language help", which shows the importance of function words in expressing mood convenience. A passage of classical Chinese, without function words, will lose its "temperament" and vitality. If you don't use function words, you can't express the complaints and smugness implied in the superficial self-modesty. When learning classical Chinese, we should recite it repeatedly, observe the tone expressed by function words, and sum up some rules from it. For example, "Fu" and "Gai" usually mean spoken words, "Zhe" usually means Teton, and "Wu De" and "Nothing is" usually mean guessing and rhetorical questions. There are only dozens of function words in classical Chinese. The more commonly used function words, the more flexible their usage. If we really master their meaning and usage, we can clear a big obstacle for the convenience of function words when reading.
Third, master the flexible use of parts of speech.
Some notional words in classical Chinese have temporarily changed their grammatical functions and changed their meanings to a certain extent, which is called flexible words. If a word is used flexibly as another word, it is meaningless if we interpret it according to its original usage. Therefore, it is very important for us to master the basic rules of flexible use of parts of speech, analyze its usage and understand its meaning in combination with specific language images. The flexible use of parts of speech mainly includes the following situations:
1, causative usage of verbs, adjectives and nouns.
Verbs, adjectives and nouns, as verbs, have the meaning of "make" and "make the object how", which is the causative usage. In ancient Chinese, the causative usage of verbs was generally limited to intransitive verbs. Intransitive verbs originally have no object, and when they are used as verbs, they are followed by objects, but this is rare. The causative usage of the transitive verb changed its pronunciation after the Middle Ages, such as "Drinking Zhao Dun wine in Jinhou", which is different from other usages of the transitive verb, but it cannot be generalized.
2. Verb usage of adjectives and nouns.
This means that adjectives and nouns are used as verbs, which have the meanings of "thinking" and "thinking", indicating the subject's view of the object or what the subject regards the object as.
3. nouns are used as verbs.
When a noun is used flexibly as a verb, it has the grammatical characteristics of a verb, and it no longer represents people or things, but actions and behaviors related to the noun. For example: "officials and people, seal the library, wait for the generals" (registration. Hongmen banquet). The causative usage and intentional usage of nouns belong to noun verb usage. In ancient Chinese, nouns were rarely causative and intentional, but the use of general verbs was quite common. In ancient Chinese, locative nouns were often used as verbs.
4. Nouns are adverbials.
In ancient Chinese, nouns were often used as adverbials, which directly modified and restricted verb predicates, indicating the state, manner, place and tools of actions and behaviors.
In addition, we should pay attention to three issues:
First of all, we should pay attention to the difference between conation and causing action. Here we provide two ways to distinguish: first, the causative usage is how the subject makes the object, which is objective, and the conative usage is how the subject thinks or thinks the object, which is subjective, not necessarily objective. 2. Verbs and nouns are used flexibly as verbs, but generally not in conation (verbs themselves have no conation, and adjectives used flexibly as verbs are common in causative and conation).
Second, we should pay attention to the conditions of flexible use of parts of speech. To distinguish whether a word is flexibly used in another kind of words depends mainly on its position in the sentence, what part of speech it is combined with, what syntactic relationship it constitutes and what grammatical features it has. Nouns and adjectives are used flexibly as verbs, which can be seen from the changes of their grammatical conditions. The following are some important grammatical conditions, and nouns and adjectives can be used flexibly as verbs.
1, two nouns used together. If it is neither a coordinate structure nor a partial structure, the former noun is often used as a verb, the latter noun as an object, and the two nouns are used together, sometimes it can be a subject-predicate structure. The former noun is the subject and the latter noun is the predicate.
2. Nouns and adjectives are used flexibly as verbs after the word "suo". For example, "Chen Wangsheng, put it in the stomach of a fish."
3. Nouns and adjectives are placed behind modal verbs such as neng, ke and desire, and used flexibly as verbs. For example: "A son is a male and a long one:' A wife can be ……'".
4. Nouns are used flexibly as verbs after adverbs (adverbs are generally only used as modifiers of verbs or adjectives in sentences). For example: "Qin Shi Sui Dong".
5. Nouns and adjectives are placed before pronouns such as "zhi" and "I" and used flexibly as verbs. take for example
"Come down, little ... it's nothing more than easy.
6. Noun is followed by prepositional structure as a complement, and this noun can be used flexibly as a verb. For example: "Jin Yu"
7. When nouns are connected with "er", they can be used flexibly as verbs. For example, "Longli respects the sages as kings".
Third, we should pay attention to a problem: flexible use of parts of speech means that a word originally belongs to one part of speech, but only temporarily has the nature of another part of speech after entering a sentence, rather than saying that the word belongs to two parts of speech. For example, we can't say that "Jun" in Jin Shi Yu Jun Liu Qing is both a noun and a verb.
Fourth, pay attention to several common sentence patterns.
The common sentence patterns in classical Chinese are basically relative to modern Chinese. We should master five sentence patterns: judgment sentence, interrogative sentence, passive sentence, ellipsis sentence and variant sentence.
1, sentence.
A judgment sentence is a sentence that makes a positive or negative judgment on the nature, situation and relationship of things. In modern Chinese, the judgment word "yes" is generally used to express judgment, while in classical Chinese, judgment sentences generally use nouns or noun phrases as predicates to express judgment directly, and some auxiliary words, modal particles and adverbs are often used to express or strengthen judgment mood. The main forms are:
(1) The auxiliary word "zhe" is used after the subject and the modal particle "ye" is used after the predicate.
(2) Teton is only represented by the "zhe" after the subject.
(3) Only use "ye" after the predicate.
(4), "zhe" and "ye" are unnecessary.
Adverbs such as "nai", "namely", "must" and "then" are used before predicates to emphasize mood.
[6], using "yes" to express a positive judgment.
Once, the adverb "Fei" is used to express negative judgment.
The use of "yes" as a judgment verb is also found in classical Chinese.
2. passive sentences.
The subject of the passive sentence is not the sender of the behavior indicated by the predicate verb, but the receiver of the behavior. In classical Chinese, some prepositions and auxiliary words are often used to express passivity, mainly in the following forms:
(1), introduce the initiative of behavior with the preposition "for".
(2) Introduce the initiative of behavior with the preposition "Yu".
(3) Use the auxiliary word "see" to express passivity.
(4) Use the preposition "Bei" to express passivity.
5], the format of "for ..." means passive.
[6], using "see ... in ..." means passive.
3, ellipsis.
Some elements in classical Chinese sentences are often omitted and need to be supplemented when translated into modern Chinese. The following situations are common:
(1) Omit the subject. Including the province that links the past with the future, the province of Mongolia, the province of self-reporting or dialogue.
② Omit the predicate verb. For example: "One puff of gas will lead to (drum) decline, and three (drums) will be exhausted."
③ Omit the object.
④ Omit the prepositions "Yu" and "Yi".
4. Interrogative questions.
In classical Chinese, interrogative pronouns or interrogative modal particles are generally used to ask questions. There are mainly the following two situations:
(1) Ask questions with interrogative pronouns.
(2) Ask questions with interrogative modal particles.
5. Variant sentences.
In classical Chinese, the word order of some sentences is different from that of modern Chinese. There are four common situations: (1) subject-predicate inversion.
(2) Preposition object.
Preposition objects have the following situations:
① Ask pronouns as objects and prepositions as objects.
(2) Pronouns are used as objects and prepositions as objects in negative sentences.
③ Use "Zhi" or "Shi" to push the object before the verb to emphasize the mood.
(3) attributive postposition. In classical Chinese, some modified attributes are often placed after the head language.
(4) Preposition structure is postpositioned. In modern Chinese, prepositional structures are often used as adverbials before verbs, while in ancient Chinese, some are used as complements after verbs.
Master the basic methods of classical Chinese translation.
The basic methods of classical Chinese translation can be summarized as four words: increase, tune, stay and change.
First, give. Ancient Chinese, like modern Chinese, is more common than modern Chinese in that it is also omitted in order to make the language concise. From the way of ellipsis, there are inheritance provinces, Mongolia provinces and dialogue provinces; From the omitted content, it can be subject, predicate, object and preposition root. When we read classical Chinese, we should make up the omitted elements in order to understand the meaning correctly.
In ancient Chinese, quantifiers are a very underdeveloped part of speech compared with adjacent numerals. There were no momentum words and few substance quantifiers in pre-Qin. Modern Chinese is also a language rich in quantifiers. Therefore, when translating classical Chinese, we should find out the corresponding quantifiers to supplement them.
Second, tune. There are some special rules in ancient Chinese word order, such as preposition object, attributive and adverbial postposition, subject inversion and so on. When translating these sentences, if you still follow the word order of the original text, it will easily lead to confusion, ambiguity and misunderstanding. Therefore, we must adjust the original text according to the law of word order change in ancient and modern Chinese to make it conform to the characteristics of modern Chinese word order, which is called "tune".
In classical Chinese, especially in verse, the language phenomenon of "upside down" often appears. This kind of inversion is either "the language is urgent and the text falls down" or "the inversion rhymes". When we read ancient Chinese, we should translate it backwards according to the content.
Third, stay. "Stay" means to keep the original text untranslated, such as country names, place names, personal names, official names, dynasty names, emperor names, and the names and weights and measures of some laws and regulations.
Some basic words, such as "man", "hand", "mountain", "water" and "cow", reflect common things in nature and have the same meanings in ancient and modern times, so they are reserved for translation. Some words that are still used today need not be translated if they are not basic words.
In addition, in order to enhance the artistic effect of the works, the ancients often quoted poems, folk songs, aphorisms and proverbs in their works. For example: "The Wuxia Gorge in the Three Gorges of Badong is long, the apes sing three times, and tears touch the clothes" ("Three Gorges"), this folk song must be kept untranslated, otherwise it will lose its unique charm.
Fourth, change. Chinese has experienced thousands of years of evolution, and many monosyllabic words in classical Chinese can not be used flexibly in modern Chinese, but can only be used as a morpheme of disyllabic words. When translating, words with the same or equivalent meanings in modern Chinese should be used instead of classical Chinese words, which is called "change". For example, "I learned from the meeting between the prince and the prince" (Lian Po Lin Xiangru biography). Except for the emperor's name "Rebecca" and the locative word "Shang", all words with the same or equivalent meanings in modern Chinese should be replaced and translated into "I once met someone (with you) at the border".
The translation methods of "increase", "tune", "stay" and "change" mentioned above are not independent. In the specific translation process, they are interrelated and combined, and cannot be completely separated.
Master the translation skills of classical Chinese.
In translation, in addition to mastering the above four methods, we should also master some skills.
First, fully imagine the words, words and sentences in the sentence. This kind of imagination is to mobilize the usual accumulation. One is the imagination of different uses of words. For example, before translating the word "Yan" in the sentence "wujun has words", we can compare the various usages of "Yan" at the end of the sentence and eliminate them one by one, and then determine a usage that conforms to the original intention after translation. Generally speaking, the word "Yan" at the end of a sentence is an interrogative modal particle in a question, but this sentence is not a question, so there is no one; Second, it is used as an adjective suffix, but "you" means "blame" and is a verb, so it is not the same; Third, the end of the sentence is a part-time word, but this sentence does not need to be used as a preposition after the part-time word to lead to nouns or pronouns, so there are no three; The fourth is to be a pronoun. If the word "Yan" in this sentence is translated into the pronoun "they", it will have the same meaning as the whole sentence. The second is to fully imagine various sentence patterns. Take "Mo's death" as an example. The sentence begins with indefinite pronouns's "Mo" and the object is the pronoun "Zhi". So this sentence is a sentence that denies the prepositional object of pronouns, so this sentence should be translated into "Mo died" first. Let's go to the second step. This "death" is an automatic word, which cannot dominate the object "zhi". Think about it, whether it is causative usage or intentional usage, passive usage or passive usage, one by one. It is passive, so this sentence can be translated as "no one died for them" In this way, the translated meaning is unified with the full text.
Second, we should learn to use some grammatical knowledge of ancient Chinese and modern Chinese for analysis. Only through grammatical analysis can we correctly understand some sentences and achieve the purpose of accurate translation. For example, the word "illness" means "hate" in the sentence. If the word "disease" is put together and translated into "hate to see", it obviously doesn't make sense. Then, we should take the whole structure after illness as the object of illness, that is, the object of hate, and then dissect this object, that is, the object of illness is "to die without saving", but it should be noted that the object of "seeing" is only "to die when it grows", and here we will look at the object of "teacher" and "to die for a long time" After such a word-for-word analysis, this sentence can be translated into "I hate (them) watching their officers die without rescuing them." If you put this translation into the full text, the meaning will be unified with the full text, so you can be sure of your translation at this time.
From the above point of view, whether it is imaginary words, words, sentence patterns or grammatical analysis of sentence structure, it must be based on the accumulation of basic knowledge of classical Chinese and translation skills. Therefore, we should try our best to remember some classical Chinese knowledge and translation skills, otherwise the source will be exhausted, and no matter how we find the "trick", we can't translate it. In ancient times, a learned scholar was ordered to finish a propositional composition in three days, but he was too anxious to eat and sleep well. When his wife saw this, she said disapprovingly, "Is it harder for you to write this article than for me to have a baby?" The scholar sighed: "Although it is difficult for you to have children, you still have children in your stomach. I wrote this article, and you have nothing in your stomach. A clever woman can't cook without rice! " This story further proves the correctness of my point of view.
So, how to work hard? Let's talk about some experiences in the process of study and practice.
First, we should pay attention to reading when studying classical Chinese.
Cheng said in Zhu Reading Law: "If you read well and think well, you will not forget your natural mind and truth." I can't remember some old words, but I just looked at them later. Those who remember them today are all successful in reading. "This statement is really empirical and worth learning. When learning classical Chinese, we should read more classical Chinese poems with beautiful quality and moderate depth, and store more classical Chinese information in our minds, which is of great benefit to cognitive transfer and reading comprehension.
Reading aloud is a learning method based on preliminary understanding, that is, learning the text repeatedly through reading aloud, gradually strengthening understanding until reciting. It is different from general rote learning. It controls micro with macro, enriches macro with micro, and reads step by step, from reading to understanding to use. This is a good way to learn classical Chinese.
Second, always consult reference books.
Reference books are books specially designed for browsing, with specific arrangement methods, so that readers can obtain the knowledge or materials they want to know in the shortest time. To learn classical Chinese, we should make full use of classical Chinese reference books and regard them as teachers who are tireless in asking questions and solving doubts. There are many kinds of reference books, which we can refer to when studying classical Chinese, including: Dictionary of Commonly Used Ancient Chinese, Dictionary of Commonly Used Function Words in Classical Chinese, Kangxi Dictionary, Exegesis, Cihai, Ciyuan and so on. Among them, The Dictionary of Common Ancient Chinese and the Dictionary of Common Classical Chinese Function Words are small in size and rich in content, which are not only cheap, but also easy to carry. They are essential reference books for us to learn classical Chinese.
Third, do more exercises.
"The purpose of learning knowledge is to keep knowledge in the brain for a long time, but just memorizing new knowledge can't guarantee the realization of this goal." If you want to master knowledge firmly, you must also consolidate and practice what you have learned, so as to accumulate knowledge and further improve your ability to read simple and easy classical Chinese.
Fourth, we should be good at accumulating information.
The book says, to quote classics, to solicit quotations from others, and to use a lot of information, these often depend on the usual accumulation. There are different ways to accumulate data. Some people like to mark books they have read, while others are good at making knowledge cards. These are all good methods. Hegel had no special talent and talent when he was young, but he was good at accumulating, summarizing what he had read in detail on loose-leaf cards, sorting them out, arranging them and labeling them one by one. This accumulation, repeated thinking and application finally made him a learned philosopher. We pay attention to accumulating information in our study, which will certainly benefit us a lot. It can not only cultivate and improve your reading and analytical skills, but also reduce the burden on your brain. When these materials become your second brain, you can use them freely, others will "wear iron shoes and find a place", and you will "get them as easy as blowing off dust"