Відео

@@polyky “Man” is the English word for human being, “person” comes from Etruscan through Latin. They mean the same, but to paraphrase Mr Orwell, Saxon words should be chosen over outlandish ones when one can. The homegrown English word for a grown spear human is “wer/were”(as in “were and wife) “fellow” “gome” “health” "rink" "seg/segge" "meg/megge", "bern" and "man". The fact that man means both "human" and "were" is actually very alike to how Chinese uses 人, since 人 is always assumed to be male unless otherwise specified. All things considered, I think "man" is the closest English equivalent to 人.

@@ninjamonkkaze5696 I’m happy you liked the video! I try to keep all the information correct but occasionally mistakes slip through. My Vietnamese level is sadly very low still so I apologise in advance for any future mistakes D; Currently I’m planning on following Van Norden’s example and bring up new readings/meanings as they appear, tho I am a bit distraught to learn Vietnamese readings differ depending on word class as well, gotta keep that in mind! Very good translation! 性相近習相遠 is commonly interpreted as people’s natures being very close (similar) at their birth but through their habits their natures become more and more distant (unalike).

Thank you! I'm not sure how that even happened, since I'm pretty much copy pasting from the standardized Viet version I recieved from Nguyen, could be they looked the same in the font I use for my script so I didn't think to change them. Either way, thanks for catching that, I'll add a note about it in the next episode!

I also missed it but 杼 should be trữ.

Also thank you for the unexpected mention! If you do that again my comment will eat up the whole screen. Feel free to cut it off XD

nice translation

A good attempt! Keep in mind that context is important when making translations of CC, Mencius was an only child (at least no siblings are ever mentioned), so "(when) her child/son didn't study" would be closer to the intended meaning. 名俱揚 lit. reads "name - all - elevate", "name" is commonly thought to refer to Mr dou's five sons, 俱 "all" reinforces this interpretation, so this part can be read as "all (their) names soared high" or more freely "they all attained great fame". That said, there is nothing (apart from tradition that is) preventing us from interpreting the last three characters as referring to Mencius mother, her son, Mr Dou, as well as his five sons - "they all reached everlasting fame". Over all a very solid attempt, I'd give it a B for sure ^^

@@SwedishSinologyNerd Ooooh I see, thank you so much for the correction, now that makes more sense! hehe. ^^

Glad you liked it, make sure to watch episode 2 as well! ^^

君子知過必改 "The Gentleman when realizing his mistake is sure to make amends" =) Good translations, though I think "what they learnt brought them apart" might be a better translation, as 遠 here should be understood as a verb, otherwise great work!

I'm loving that pretty much everyone is chosing Jiangshi-chan over the Mommy drawing xD

@@SwedishSinologyNerd Well of course man, who wouldn't love a good wil-o-the-wisp anyways.... (In reality tho 粦 is actually a picture of a man (大 > 十) with their feet emphasized (舛) surrounded by ghostly light (丶丶丶丶), but I'll give the illustration a pass though since damn that Jiangshi is hot haha)

I gave myself artistic license, though the jiangshi isn't that far from the original meaning, seeing as the man is supposed to be a corpse, the corpse-lights that surround him caused by decomposition. But I prefer drawing cute monster girls over rotting corpses lol

Once you've re-assembled your brain, make sure to check out episode 2! ^^

​@@SwedishSinologyNerd Frankly i'm a Japanese learner. Thank's to 60% of imported Chinese vocab plus more time and effort that i put into writing 漢字 on paper, it was so much fun like i can't think of any other worldly language that came close as Chinese that will bash your head while admiring the majesty of it, But anyway i prefer starting with Japanese because i like the way of the language sound also known as a "Pronounciation" We may be differ in term of communication, but the Character is what Unite us together! I'm looking forward your path, Sensei!

Japanese is a very interesting language and at the top of my bucket list (I try to divvy my time 'tween Japanese, Manchu and Vietnamese atm, it's no easy feat, like having three high-maintainance and very clingy mistresses at the same time!). It's my firm belief that anyone who wants to deepen their understanding of Japanese, Korean and/or Vietnamese must learn some Classical Chinese, just for how heavy its influence was on those languages. There was also a very beautiful time when introverted nerds from all over the sinosphere would "text" each other in CC, even in real time! There was once a Japanese monk who backpacked through Tang China and got by entirely by writing characters in the sand. Many early modern intellectuals also conversed with each other across borders through CC, sometimes they even sat in the same room and held lively discussions by passing each other notes. Like an analog chat forum! Crazy to think about.

Additionally, nice video! Also, thank you very much for the lessons freely distributed. It's due to you, that I've gained interest in Classical Chinese. I'm grateful for your continued UA-cam presence.

Not bad! I like the usage of "wherein" and "wherewith", as well as the slight ambiguity of whether the "name" that was elevated was Dou Yanshan's or his sons. The CC text is unambiguous, because 俱 "all" makes it pretty clear that it is at the very least "all their names", however a son's success is always a reflection of his father's character (in Chinese culture) so implying in English that the sons success elevated their father's name is not a wrong interpretation at all!

I believe knowledge should be freely shared (tho I do appreciate donations, as ideals make for poor dining lol), and I'm chuffed to see how many people are becoming interested in Classical Chinese due to my shoddy vids. I do believe CC is not only a viable international language (esp in the texting age, since it has always been a writing only means of communication), but also offers a very unique way of thinking far removed from any other Classical Language (the majority of which are all Indo-European; Latin, Greek, Sanskrit...).

Do you mean the drawings or the radicals? If the latter, they are derived from multiple sources, the traditional source is Shuowen or Shuowen Jiezi Zhu, other sources are the Chinese Character database on University of HK's webpage, the wiktionary entry, as well as a few Chinese etymology books. Keep in mind they're not always "up to date" with current research because the main objective with the vocab section is to make each character as memorable and readily understandable to a new learner as possible - going into a twenty minute explanation of character development might derail that quite a bit lol (it also gives me an excuse to create more content correcting myself).

Oh, spending the holidays in the Middle Kingdom? Or are you there for a longer stay?

@@SwedishSinologyNerd If all goes well, I plan to stay here for a long time, yes. Fingers crossed!

望君學業順利、萬事如意！

Here you go! docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RYmGEqHREAtsoghWWLUp64Y2y7URXgXrkMi4FZEg4tE/edit?gid=0#gid=0

@@SwedishSinologyNerd Thank you so much !

Thank you for your hard work!

Wow thank you

君子！ Certified Princely behaviour! =)

Now imma need someone to do this for Hokkien 😅

@@ryanpangilinan5803 Your wish is my command (I think I got it correct, but I can't be sure)

@@dragonapop oop forgot to reply to this, but looks you out Hakka^. But all good! In any case, is the website you’re using a dictionary of the Literary readings?

@@ryanpangilinan5803 I believe they are Zhao An Hakka readings. I checked Wiktionary to see if the readings where correct, and these do seem to be some type of Hakka. The website places the Romanization next to the character, (which makes it convenient for me). If this is some less spoken type of Hakka, could you point me something better?

Awesome! The 山海經 is very interesting, but I feel the video would be more of a summary, maybe with some text examples to scratch the CC itch? It reads a lot like the Theogony by Hesiod, a lot of boring info with some interesting myths and legends sprinkled among it. Also the fact that it used to have illustrations, which then became lost only to get re-illustrated in the Ming dynasty. It's a super cool text but I need to put some thought into how I want to structure the video(s?). Might do a Summary video and a Textual study (using choice sections since a lot of the text is very samey) video...

@scurly0792 I guess that is to be blamed on the artist lol (me, I’m the artist) xD

I love the full drawings you do for the characters, it makes them come to life without reusing existing drawings that you often see

@scurly0792 Thank you! As for the phonetic component in 竇, the top half is an ancient form of 睦 (itself from 目 and 圥 "mushroom", and 圥 is a grass radical over 六 (pictogram of a small hut) used for its sound) used phonetically, and 貝 is the signific (cowrie = money = wandering trader). It's a real Russian Nesting doll-ahh character lol

You'd be surprised to find out how much effort it takes just to draw a component with multiple parts within lmao (I know this for myself because I did a few illustrations before for some of my glyph origin explanations lol)

Very good!

Not stupid or selfish at all! I'll be adding closed captions for Cantonese, Hakka, and Min to the vids already published and all future videos, that way I can have "support" for the other Chinese languages without cluttering up the vocab section too much.

@SwedishSinologyNerd Thank you :]

And Cantonese pronunciation would be closer to the older pronunciations.

and Sino-Vietnamese.

A scholar is, per definition, a Gentleman of Culture (I also spend enough time online to know what you animals want lol). I'm not super fussy about names (The Name that can be Named is not the True Name, after all!), you can call me SSN, WormWood, WW, teacher, sensei, master, buddy, pal, or bro lol. I'm just glad to help make more people interested in CC ^^

Thank YOU for watching and have a Merry Xmas!

多夢點贊！ 彜文甚美且有趣，不過我懂得很皮毛，也許將來有時間可以做一篇介紹視頻，但不敢保證何時能發表。

i think the manzhourian text at 37:07 is to be said as 'isus ingekg urga okhni'

@ *Isus inenggi urgun okini in classic Manchu, dunno about Xibe or dialectal Manchu lol

@@hevconsume2504 in my defence, I have a cold, worked all week and just finished editing after I came back to my parents house (6hr train ride) after pulling an all nighter so I could upload in time for Xmas. I’ll fix the title later

God jul, brorsan. Setter pris på innsatsen din. (:

Tackar tackar, å God Jul te dej med!

@@OmegaTaishu sorry, just wanted to have it over and done with so I can celebrate Xmas xD

Unfortunately I don’t think I can add more Chinese languages, for the two simple reasons of clutter and sensory overload to non-Chinese speakers.I settled on Mandarin because it is currently the dictionary standard in ROC and PRC (this has historical precedence, as the Standard was always decided by where the capital was). This is already going to cause contention since I am purposefully going with the 文讀 readings found in KangXi which favours the more conservative Taiwanese readings. I am aware that this marginalises the other Chinese languages (akin to choosing French, the worst Romance language, as the standard for Latin pronunciation), I am currently looking into compromises, either putting a larger emphasis on the phonetic development in future Etymology vids, or a video (series?) exclusively devoted to them. As I’m not fluent in any other Sinitic language the latter may prove difficult at least for the time being. I hope this unfortunate compromise in favour of CC’s international use (as opposed to Pan-Chinese) does not hamper your enjoyment of the series too much.

it'dbe also cool if he gave pronouncation in Zhuang, Liao, Tangut, Geba, and other languages which have 漢字.

@ Great idea! Please send a Zhuang, Liao, Tangut and/or Geba language version of the TCC to my email and I’ll add them =)

​@@SwedishSinologyNerdI understand. Thanks for replying :) yeah a series on the evolution from old chinese to middle and current dialects/putonghua would be interesting, at least for me personally. I regret not paying more attention to my family's hakka dialect when i was young, only to find out it's a link to middle Chinese and also japanese/korean. At least with your japanese notation, i can see whether the word had a checked/entering tone