Lately I’ve been feeling pretty bogged down by the monotony of studying. Every day I cram my brain full of 100+ new words, every day I have a test on them, and then proceed to forget some of the more useless ones. Sure, there are repeats, which makes things a little easier. But throw Classical Chinese in there, and my life has gotten harder in a different way. You see, Classical and Modern Chinese, although they are related, are grammatically speaking almost like two different languages. In Classical Chinese, a given character can have six different meanings, depending on the context, so really the only way to learn it is to memorize memorize memorize until you start to pick up the rules of which character means what in the context of a given sentence. It’s funny, since Modern Chinese is such a complicated language already (writing traditional vs. simplified characters, remembering tones for each character, characters with different tones in different contexts, I could go on…), but Classical Chinese makes me hail Hu Shi (an early 20th century writer best known for promoting a switch to writing in the vernacular language) for his brilliance in simplifying written language.
The Chinese also have a phrase to describe the kind of studying I do for my Classical Chinese class: 死记硬背 (si2ji4ying4bei4). If I had to come up with my own explanation of this phrase, I would say it means death by memorization (I’m being a little sarcastic here, but 死 means “death,” 记 and 背 both mean “remember” or “memorize,” and 硬 means “strong”…use your strength to memorize to death?). So as you might be able to guess, my poor brain sometimes can’t handle the overload of Chinese characters, especially if they’re classical ones and loaded with six different meanings. As much as I’m complaining here, studying Classical Chinese still has its advantages, since a lot of more formal grammar structures and words in Modern Chinese come directly from the ancient, so when it comes to reading newspapers or important documents, knowing some Classical Chinese really is a big help. Besides, the stories behind each chengyu are loaded with culture and often very entertaining. But sitll, sometimes the monotony of memorization gets to me.
Much to my relief, I have discovered that the teachers who wrote my textbook seem either to have a sense of humor, or are just really curious about whether or not their students are actually paying attention to the grammar notes. Or maybe both. Last week, while prepping one of our chengyu, also known as a 4-character phrase that usually has an origin in classical Chinese and a story behind it, my roommate and I came across a grammar example with an outright hilarious English translation. I laughed out loud. I hope you do too: “Duke Jing of Jin was hurrying to the privy, fell down the hole and died.”* I’m not sure what specifically makes this as funny as it is, but my roommate and I had a good ten-minute long laughing fit about that one. We seemed to be some of the few students who noticed it…maybe those textbook authors had a point? This week’s find was not quite as funny, but still very very strange to come across in one’s textbook: “On New Year’s Eve tonight, my loved ones in my home town must be thinking of me. Tomorrow morning, my sideburns will be growing grayer.”* It is quite possible that I have completely misunderstood some cultural difference in logic when reading these examples and am laughing about them for no reason, but I’d prefer just to think that the Chinese have a good, healthy sense of humor.
* These translations come directly from ACC’s 4th year 古代汉语 textbook.
