| I'm saying Classical Chinese and modern Chinese are to an extent inseparable and that this is reflected in every Chinese teaching program domestic or foreign. Can you show me a sentence that is both Latin and English or both Latin and French? There are plenty of such examples for Classical Chinese and modern Chinese. At times there's a blurry line between Classical Chinese and modern Chinese. It's a false dichotomy to say that you can train in advanced modern Chinese without training in some Classical Chinese. Here's a non-exhaustive list of things in Classical Chinese you'll be exposed to because they're still widely used in modern Mandarin. Its most common pronouns (especially first and third person): 我、其、之 etc. Its connectives: 为、于、乃、因、与etc. Its lack of 是 as "to be" and instead leaving "to be" implicit between verbs and nouns: take e.g. the PRC's constitution. Many paragraphs use 是 as "to be" zero times. Few use it more than once or twice. On a similar note its demonstratives: 此、彼、兹、indeed even 是 again. And when it comes to standard vocabulary, most of the time a classical meaning of a character remains productive in modern Chinese. There's certain Classical Chinese works I'd be comfortable using to assess a foreign speaker's modern Mandarin comprehension. For example if a speaker cannot read the 2nd century poem 凤求凰 (especially the first part), they almost certainly cannot read a modern newspaper article. It reads almost exactly like how a modern angsty teenager might try to write a modern Mandarin love poem. Just about the only category of things you won't see in modern Chinese from classical Chinese are its interjective particles (兮、也、矣、etc) which have no semantic meaning. What makes Classical Chinese difficult to read for a modern Chinese reader is its extreme concision and its grammatical flexibility. Its vocabulary is only a secondary concern. I would say if you know modern Mandarin, you know probably around 70% to 80% (depending on the text) of the words you'll see in a classical Chinese text, especially for texts after the Warring States period. You're definitely not going to totally understand the text and it's going to be feel laborious picking over each paragraph, but you will understand the gist of what's going on, just based on your modern Mandarin knowledge. |