Hi, folks of the Chinese Tipitaka discussion,
I am not at all into Chinese at this point of time
though I cant say that such a "tanha" wont arise in
the future. However, "we" (Sikhs and the Sikh
scriptures) have a perfectly similiar situation. I
was English educated and got into learning the
Gurmukhi SCRIPT for the purpose of pursuing my
(former) religion much later in life.
But being born a Punjabi I was in a constant state of
cofusion between the language used in the scriptures
and the Punjabi language [which I have not been using
for deeper matters anyway, though the situation may
change, surprisingly, on account of wanting to learn
Pali].
UNTIL I came across the "Sikh Warder". However, this
"Sikh Warder" was produced for the consumption of
Punjabi Sikhs (nowadays there non-Punjabi Sikhs too,
including westerners), or more accurately, perhaps,
Punjabi conversant Sikhs ( so I find it a little
difficult to follow).
In the scriptural language we have nouns that turn
into verbs at the addition of a vowel sign, singular
that turns into plural at the addition of a vowel
sign, masculine nouns turning into feminine nouns at
the addition of a vowel sign and a few more others,
and all this happens without change in the way the
word is pronounced. The vowel signs all play silent
roles in the grammar of the scriptural language which
is about a million miles away from the grammar of the
modern Punjabi language.
The Punjabi language does NOT have a script of its
own. It used to be written in the Arabic Jawi script.
It was only perhaps as little as a 100 years ago that
the Gurmukhi script was adapted for Punjabi language
use. As a matter of fact if you got into scriptural
language before getting into modern Punjabi language
like I did, you would want to say that the modern
Punjabi language felt so ugly and that it actually
"defiled" the use of the Gurmukhi script which was
created (or rather compiled ) especially for
scriptural use just about 400 years ago.
So I guess that in some way the above would also apply
to Chinese language for Dhamma use. And the other
common factor would be the use of the romanised script
(with diacritics) would probably add some measure of
distaste for the native script user, well until one
got used to it anyway.
regards
your non-expert (non-specialist) language learner
Sukhdev
ps. I once did have go at modern Mandrin, characters
included. Original scripts are always fascinating to
"SCRIBE". I know that I would never want to learn
Chinese using the widely used romaised script c/w
diacritis. It would NEVER satisfy my "tanha".
--- Ong Teng Kee <
ongtkee@...> wrote:
> Yes,there are books and theses from China and Taiwan
> deal with the grammar in buddhist texts.I can't
> remember the name.A canadian scholar like Pulleybank
> often deal with shang gu yin in buddhist texts for
> the
> translation of special words.
> I haven' met anyone saying old chinese grammar is
> simpler than modern chinese.nouns can turn into
> verbs
> which is not easy to understand.
> Pali grammar texts are enormous only for those who
> can
> read different scrpits or Burmese languages because
> they are so many nissaya from there.For people we
> can
> only read english ,there are only a few books to
> read
> about pali grammar.
>
>
> --- Stephen Hodge
> <s.hodge@...> wrote:
> >
> > Dear Teng Kee,
> >
> > > We already have so many,many books on learning
> old
> > > chinese grammar in chinese and english.
> > But I have never seen one for Buddhist style
> texts.
> > The problem is that
> > Buddhist Chinese is quite different to the
> Classical
> > Chinese that became
> > standardized for the literati. Buddhist texts use
> a
> > lot of elements, both
> > vocabulary and grammar, from the early medieval
> > colloqual language and this
> > is almost never covered in books dealing with
> > Classical Chinese. For
> > non-Chinese speakers /readers, it would be best to
> > get an overview of
> > Classical / Literary Chinese and then try working
> > directly with the easier
> > Buddhist material. Modern Chinese would not be
> any
> > help but a definite
> > hindrance as the language is so different.
> >
> > > It is easier for anyone to learn any kind of
> > modern chinese
> > > languages without having to suffer much in basic
> > > level.
> > It depends where one starts from. Personally, I
> > have always found Classical
> > Chinese or even Buddhist Chinese, much simpler
> that
> > modern Chinese --
> > especially if the ugly simplified characters are
> not
> > used.
> >
> > > However,old chinese is just too hard to learn to
> > > write or read them.I can't write old chinese but
> I
> > can
> > > only read them slowly with dictionary behind me.
> > Given that the grammar of pre-modern classical /
> > literary Chinese is musch
> > simpler that modern Chinese, the main difficulty
> for
> > anybody would be the
> > vocabulary. In my view, it should be possible for
> > somebody starting from
> > scratch to learn the basics of classical /
> Buddhist
> > Chinese grammar in 3 - 6
> > months or even less if they have a good memory.
> > Indeed, the absolute
> > minimum could be summarized on a postcard -- the
> > volume of grammar for Pali,
> > let alone Sanskrit, is enormous in comparison.
> > Chuck Muller's on-line
> > dictionary of Buddhist and Literary Chinese is a
> > vital resource for anybody
> > trying to read Buddhist Chinese texts.
> >
> > > Chinese translation of pali tipitaka done a few
> > years
> > > ago in 70 volumes are in old chinese which is a
> > big
> > > trouble for common layman to read them.They need
> > to
> > > have good chinese language level first
> > Yes, I can understand this. The situation in
> Japan
> > used to be similar with
> > "translations " from Chinese but now things have
> > changed. For modern
> > non-specialist readers, it is important to have
> > proper modern translations.
> >
> > Best wishes,
> > Stephen Hodge
> >
> >
> >
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