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Classical Chinese for Everyone: A Guide for Absolute Beginners by [Bryan W. Van Norden]

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Bryan W. Van Norden

Classical Chinese for Everyone: A Guide for Absolute Beginners Bilingual Edition, Kindle Edition

by Bryan W. Van Norden (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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In just thirteen brief, accessible chapters, this engaging little book takes "absolute beginners" from the most basic questions about the language (e.g., what does a classical Chinese character look like?) to reading and understanding selections from classical Chinese philosophical texts and Tang dynasty poetry.

"An outstanding introduction to reading classical Chinese. Van Norden does a wonderful job of clearly explaining the basics of classical Chinese, and he carefully takes the reader through beautifully chosen examples from the textual tradition. An invaluable work." —Michael Puett, Harvard University

ISBN-13

978-1624668210
Edition

Bilingual
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Publication date

November 15, 2019
Language

English
File size

10097 KB
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Read with the free Kindle apps (available on iOS, Android, PC & Mac), Kindle E-readers and on Fire Tablet devices. See all supported devices

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Van Norden has pulled off the seemingly impossible. With his direction, a serious student could make real headway in learning classical Chinese—while learning a great deal about early Chinese thought as well."
—Robert E. Hegel, Washington University in St. Louis

"For most people, learning Classical Chinese is a daunting task, but for those who are fortunate enough to begin with Van Norden's intelligently written and wittily designed Guide, it is far easier and, dare I say, much more fun than one might have thought."
—Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania

"Classical Chinese for Everyone is great! Even if you don't want to learn classical Chinese, it is very philosophically interesting on the topic of how language affects thought. It is a corrective to Orientalist errors, and it is entertaining!"
—Eric Kaplan, Emmy-winning writer and producer of Futurama, The Simpsons, and The Big Bang Theory

"This is a book for anyone who would like to learn a bit of Classical Chinese. . . . If you, or one of your students, or someone on your holiday gift list are interested in a career as a Sinologist, or would like to learn just enough Classical Chinese to say you know a bit, or just like learning interesting things from a good teacher you should get this book. It is by far the most fun language textbook I have ever read."
—Alan Baulmer, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, from a review on the Frog in a Well blog

"I truly believe Van Norden’s textbook on classical Chinese is one of the best! Pros:
1) It’s very affordable and can be taught in a term.
2) It offers short lessons across a diverse scope of genres and readings, including poetry.
3) It’s self-contained and does not need to be supplemented with additional readings or glosses.
4) By adding related texts in classical Chinese or even in translation, instructors can enhance this textbook to make it more advanced.
5) The introductory section is a perfect introduction to the Chinese writing system.
This is the textbook most of us have been waiting for!"
—Chiu-Mi Lai, The University of Texas at Austin

"[T]his book provides an excellent pedagogical tool for either teaching or self-study. The chapters are very short with very clear learning points presented in concise natural language so the reader never feels overwhelmed and gains a sense of mastery over each point. The size of the book is very manageable. Someone with (even very little) background in Chinese (either classical or modern) could easily work through the book in a couple of weeks. . . . Interested teenagers and adults without a formal background in philosophy, foreign languages, or grammar will be able to read and enjoy playing with translating the passages. It would be an ideal addition to any Introduction to Chinese Philosophy course."
—Mog Stapleton, East China Normal University, in Teaching Philosophy

"[A] terrific little book, one that fills a niche. Van Norden is a gifted writer when it comes to material geared to students, and the book is very lucid, engaging, and funny all at once. It is a pleasure to read."
–Hagop Sarkissian, The City University of New York, Graduate Center, and Baruch College

"Classical Chinese for Everyone: A Guide for Absolute Beginners is a unique and valuable introduction for novice learners of Classical Chinese. Its uniqueness lies in the author’s extraordinarily detailed and thorough explanations of the selected texts that serve to significantly minimize the intimidation factor that beginning Classical Chinese learners may anticipate. Learners are provided with easily accessible, step-by-step guidance through clear and concise explanations of the readings, as well as through the detailed commentaries that expound upon the circumstances in which they were written. This book should also stimulate language learner interest in furthering their understanding of Classical Chinese and Chinese literature, as well as motivate them to become serious students of Chinese language, culture, and history."
—Haning Z. Hughes, Professor of Chinese, United States Air Force Academy, in the NECTFL Review --This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Bryan W. Van Norden is Chair Professor in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University (China) and James Monroe Taylor Chair of Philosophy at Vassar College (USA). He is author, editor, or translator of ten books on Chinese and comparative philosophy. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07YQHKXGL
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.; Bilingual edition (November 15, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 15, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 10097 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 163 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #708,461 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #93 in Asian Poetry (Kindle Store)
- #113 in Chinese Poetry (Books)
- #150 in Chinese Language Instruction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
118 ratings

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Bryan W. Van Norden

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Bryan Van Norden is Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor at Yale-NUS College, Chair Professor in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University, and James Monroe Taylor Chair in Philosophy at Vassar College. He has published ten books, including Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (2017), Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy (2011), Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries (2008), Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy (2014, co-edited with Justin Tiwald), and most recently Classical Chinese for Everyone: A Guide for Absolute Beginners (2019).

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5

118 global ratings

5 star		75%
4 star		16%
3 star		7%
2 star		2%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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Amazon Customer

Delightful initiation

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 26, 2022

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A great way to be initiated into the mysteries of classical Chinese literature. Having studied modern Chinese before, I've used it as a stepping stone on my way to Rouzer. It was a quick and highly enjoyable read. If you are completely new to Chinese, you should still be able to make your way through the book without too much trouble -- and that is its unique appeal. Afterwards, when you read one of those bilingual editions of Chinese philosophical classics where every character is glossed, the sentence structure, if not always clear, will no longer read like word salad. That said, I'm not convinced that it's possible to really learn classical Chinese without studying modern Chinese first. Snippets of classic texts are fine for illustrating grammar, but I doubt anyone would be willing to memorize thousands of characters using word lists and flash cards alone, without the aid of graded readers with tons of artificial text, which -- as far as I know -- exist only for modern Chinese. There is just not enough repetition in the classics to suffice for that purpose.

One person found this helpful

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Kenyon Coats

Enjoy this very interesting introduction to Classical Chinese writing and thinking.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 23, 2021

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Even though I have studied modern Chinese I found the grammatical descriptions very useful and the philosophical descriptions fantastic for getting insight to the Chinese way of thinking. I have always regarded languages a window into a given culture so these insights are very meaningful.

5 people found this helpful

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MadMan2

Handy Reference

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 10, 2021

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This is a very handy reference for learning Classical Chinese (literary Chinese) The author uses writings attributed to Confucius as the basis for vocabulary and grammar points, and makes it more interesting with explanatory notes. I recommend it for anyone who has a genuine interest in learning.

2 people found this helpful

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Carlos Alberto

I'm gonna start dreaming of Van Norden

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 1, 2020

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Funny writing. Very hard if you don't have the translations though - at least for me. It might not be as intuitive, but Van Norden sure likes to make you think hard on things. A great start.

5 people found this helpful

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Thomas L.

Awesome

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 27, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book is awesome. Well suited for those interested in Classical Chinese at any level.

3 people found this helpful

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Holly

Less user-friendly than advertised

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 2, 2020

I'm always interested in new Chinese textbooks, so even though I've been studying Classical Chinese for about 4 years now I had to go borrow this one and give it a thorough examination. Though I was excited about the concept, having looked through the book, I have to admit I have mixed feelings.

First, some pros:
1. He seems to have a fairly good grasp of what people with absolutely no familiarity with Chinese will know about the language. Other textbooks which claim to be suitable for this audience overestimate this knowledge. In particular, his discussion of the development and structure of characters is one of the clearest I've encountered. (I haven't been an absolute beginner at Chinese in over a decade, though, so YMMV.)
2. Making practice materials available online is a welcome addition, especially for self-learners. Unfortunately, as of this review there are only quizzes available for the first few lessons; I'm not certain if the author intends to expand them.
3. The texts seem generally well-selected; not only do they demonstrate grammatical concepts in an orderly fashion, they are also part of the canon of works that would be known to any educated Chinese person. Familiarity with the canon is as essential to understanding Classical Chinese as is grammatical knowledge. In particular, I appreciate his choice to include some later poetry, which is a serious omission from other beginning textbooks.

And the cons:
1. For a book published in 2019, it's remarkable how little the author seems to be aware of technological advances in language learning. I do commend him for mentioning Pleco, probably the most important app for Chinese learning. But I was surprised to see that he wasted space, both in the introduction and within lessons. on the tedious process of looking characters up in a paper dictionary. Further, I was *shocked* to find that his advice on learning characters is to "write each new character fifty times." This is a great way to learn--if you want to hate Chinese and quit after the first lesson! Cognitive science has produced a large body of research on how memorization works, and if we don't make use of its findings we are doing our students a great disservice.
2. I understand that the original texts did not include punctuation and that a true scholar should not rely on this crutch, but it's a crutch that comes standard in the modern Chinese editions of these texts. Chinese scholars I know consider working without punctuation to be an advanced level skill. There's no need to subject students to this sink-or-swim approach; give them their commas and colons and let them focus on the words.
3. I find it counterproductive that the first lesson is a terse saying whose meaning requires a not inconsiderable grasp of Chinese culture and philosophy to unpack. Without this, the sentence remains as opaque as it was before you learned all the new vocabulary, and it's impossible to feel the satisfaction that "I can read Chinese on my own." The author appears to have chosen this sentence precisely for its inaccessibility, and expects the student to intuit its meaning simply by reading it several times. (As a middle school teacher, I have ample evidence demonstrating the futility of this strategy!) Providing students with opportunities to experience a sense of accomplishment is essential to maintaining their motivation. Any one of the numerous sayings with equally simple grammar and far more accessible meaning should have been chosen instead.
4. There's a bit too much extraneous information attached to the chapters (even if you skip the "nerd notes" section at the end), which is likely to overwhelm less confident students. It is not essential for absolute novices to be thinking about why Being is an important philosophical concept in Western philosophy and not in Chinese; let them get used to working without a "to be" verb first, and bring up the nuances once it's no longer a cognitive strain. (Or don't. I'm sure a number of potential readers don't care about philosophy and are only here because they want to read Du Fu and Li Bai.)
5. A brief note on different genres of Chinese literature and why it is best to start by reading philosophy would have been appropriate, as this is pedagogically sound but counterintuitive to most novices.

Overall, it's not terrible, but I can't say I would recommend it. The author is a typical specimen of academics relegated to teaching beginning language: plenty of subject knowledge, not a whit of pedagogy, and decades past remembering what it was like to be a novice. Beginning students of Chinese face numerous barriers, both internal and external, and this book does more to build those up than to break them down. At best, it may be useful as a supplement to another textbook.

39 people found this helpful

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Colin McLarty

A breakthrough in two ways

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 19, 2020

For philosophers: If you have taken the time to read Confucius' Analects more that two or three times, then you owe it to yourself to read the first 70 pages of this book. You will learn, better than any number of translations can teach you, how concise, direct, and yet often-ambiguous the Analects are.

Then, as a language learning tool: Van Norden has made it radically easier to begin studying Chinese. He finds amazingly simple starting points so that you can read genuinely interesting passages from Classical originals with astonishing ease. By the end of the book it is not entirely easy, but it is doable. The editorial reviews above by experts assure you this treatment is accurate. But me, I am an expert on being a non-expert Chinese learner. I assure you this book can work for you, if you work with it.

18 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Accessible, fun, and effective lessons for Classical Chinese

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 14, 2019

This book is incredible! Within an hour, I began to develop confidence about being able to think about meaning in Classical Chinese. It's clear, accessible, fun (and funny), and scaffolded for quick progress. Van Norden offers great advice for developing real mastery, which takes dedication and time, while simultaneously giving the reader satisfying accomplishments in each short lesson. I have a little modern Chinese, which makes it easier and faster for me, but the promise of the cover holds; even an absolute beginner in Chinese could make progress with this book.

16 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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Wen

A must-read for any Classical Chinese student

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 2, 2021

Verified Purchase

I see some reviews complaining about the lack of English translations for the exercises, but I find it very refreshing and illuminating to find a book that admits that translating is not only hard but also often very biased, and to illustrate that by showing us more than one way certain passages have been interpreted. It also allows us as students to fully appreciate the nuances of Classical Chinese in translation, especially when there might be many different 'correct' answers to the puzzle.

Amazon Customer

Excellent intro to difficult language

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 6, 2021

Verified Purchase

Excellent and essential for any beginner to classical chinese. I'd give it 5 stars except it is not self-contained, but refers to books in the notes that the reader probably does not own. It also does not supply a translation of its texts. To check on your own translation, the reader is referred again to books they do not own. And they should check on their translations. The book is dense in terms of grammar. Those who have studied a foreign language would find it less taxing. Still a very useful little work. Thank you.

Usuario Prime

Una nueva aproximación al estudio del chino clásico

Reviewed in Spain 🇪🇸 on December 17, 2019

Verified Purchase

Este fantástico libro ofrece al aprendiz de chino clásico un estilo de estudio novedoso, ágil, que nos permite iniciarnos en el complejo estudio del chino clásico desde sus inicios. Van Norden ha realizado un trabajo estupendo, apto para amantes de la sinología.

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Cliente Amazon

Indispensável

Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on September 21, 2021

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Indispensável para quem deseja aprender mandarim, começando por um título que desenvolva as bases gerais de tal idioma.

One person found this helpful

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Ross Colquhoun

Connecting the ideasq and interpretations of Chinese philosophy

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on July 4, 2020

Verified Purchase

I enjoyed reading this book . While I did not agree on some points of interpretation and analysis, It was clearly written and filled a lot of gaps and made many connections in my scattered and disjointed Knowledge of Chinese Philosophy. Well worth reading even for those who have a good grounding in philosophy.

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