Ancient Chinese

Author: Gao Xiaofang, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: "Ancient Chinese" is a language tool course, its teaching objective is to cultivate students' ability to read ancient books, improve language literacy, and lay a solid language foundation for the critical inheritance of ancient cultural heritage. Ancient Chinese is a relatively broad concept, roughly speaking, it has two systems: one is the written language of ancient Chinese formed based on the spoken language of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, as well as the works written in this written language in later generations, which is commonly known as classical Chinese; the other is the ancient vernacular that emerged after the Northern and Southern Dynasties, based on the Northern dialect. Classical Chinese is the basic written language form used in ancient Chinese literature and documents, and is the object of study in this course. The structure of the "Ancient Chinese" course is divided into two parts: selected readings and general discussions. The selected readings primarily consist of prose, with carefully selected works from the Spring and Autumn period to the Han Dynasty. The selected readings are categorized into three types: modern annotations, ancient annotations, and plain text. Modern annotated readings are thoroughly explained, ancient annotated readings involve a mix of explanation and practice, and plain text is used for practice. The general discussions cover phonology, vocabulary, characters, grammar, ancient annotations, etc., and are the universally significant basic knowledge for mastering ancient Chinese. The arrangement and teaching of the general discussions do not aim for completeness or systematicity, but rather focus on enhancing students' ability to read ancient books.