4 ms·

Classical are refined Chinese used in official communication/literary record in imperial China/Korea/Japan. The grammar etc haven't really changed over 2 millen

Classical are refined Chinese used in official communication/literary record in imperial China/Korea/Japan. The grammar etc haven't really changed over 2 millenia, it is much like how Latin is to Italian/French/Spanish. Historically, they are all obviously written in traditional Chinese characters, However, you can write it in Simplified Chinese since there's usually a 1-1 mapping between Simplified Chinese / Traditional Chinese characters.

auvi 7y ago
Many thanks. So the characters shown in the IEEE Spectrum article, are they in Traditional Chinese? I wonder whether the implementation of the programming language covers both characters or not.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  Those are traditional Chinese characters, I have no idea if simplified characters are also supported (shouldn't be hard as it would be another symbol set, so probably) but if you're going to write classical Chinese, might as well have the full immersion.
colorincorrect 7y ago
your last sentence is inaccurate: an english reader cannot read any latin at all naively, but a modern chinese reader can interpret little/some/most of classical chinese, depending on the specific text in question
- sansnomme 7y ago
  English is a weird Romantic-Germanic hybrid (Germanic by linguistic classification but with a tremendous/predominant vocabulary of Romantic origin). A more apt comparison would be with respect to a French/Italian/Spanish reader. See: Interlingua
  - colorincorrect 7y ago
    misread, my bad; but i remain suspicious because from what i've heard the latin grammar is something quite alien, but then again i heard it from an english speaker....
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      I am a native English speaker, though one with much more interest in the structure of language than average. Latin grammar isn't all that different from English grammar. It's usually possible to translate a sentence from Latin into English in a way that simultaneously preserves both the meaning and the grammatical structure of the original. Attempting to do that between unrelated languages is vastly more difficult; in such cases, a translation that tries to preserve the source grammar will usually end up being hopelessly ungrammatical in the target language. I think you're overestimating, or at least overselling, the degree to which modern Chinese people can read classical text without training.
      - dwohnitmok 7y ago
        I'm actually with colorincorrect here. There's a nontrivial overlap between formal modern Chinese and Classical Chinese. This is especially evident if you ever read contemporary Chinese works about Chinese history. Large tracts of Classical Chinese are discussed without translation assuming the reader understands the text in question and often the contemporary work itself can read very classically. Modern literature can also occasionally lapse into Classical Chinese constructions for a sentence or two. And anecdotally I don't think I've ever met a Chinese high school graduate who didn't have some proficiency with Classical Chinese. I've said this before elsewhere, sometimes it's useful to think of Classical Chinese as a separate language from modern Chinese, sometimes it's useful to think of it as an extremely elevated register of modern Chinese. Modern literary works can be more or less "classical" in nature depending on the whims of the author.
        thaumasiotes 7y ago
        > There's a nontrivial overlap between formal modern Chinese and Classical Chinese. > This is especially evident if you ever read contemporary Chinese works about Chinese history. Large tracts of Classical Chinese are discussed without translation assuming the reader understands the text in question and often the contemporary work itself can read very classically. If you read some non-contemporary early modern English literature, you may find Latin, classical Greek, or French discussed or used without translation in the expectation that the reader will be able to understand it directly. But this is evidence that the reader is expected to have undergone significant training, not that English speakers can understand ancient Greek without training. > And anecdotally I don't think I've ever met a Chinese high school graduate who didn't have some proficiency with Classical Chinese. We can be even more definite here: this is because Chinese high school graduates have all received training in Classical Chinese.
rabboRubble 7y ago
Many, if not by most definitions, traditional characters map to 1 simplified character. Unfortunately, not all. Example, a 9 traditional : 1 simplified map 斗 ⇄ 鬥斗鬪鬦鬭鬬闘閗逗 Here's a list that probably is mostly complete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguities_in_Chinese_character_simplification#1_to_9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguities_in_Chinese_charact...

auvi 7y ago

Many thanks. So the characters shown in the IEEE Spectrum article, are they in Traditional Chinese? I wonder whether the implementation of the programming language covers both characters or not.

Aperocky 7y ago
Those are traditional Chinese characters, I have no idea if simplified characters are also supported (shouldn't be hard as it would be another symbol set, so probably) but if you're going to write classical Chinese, might as well have the full immersion.

colorincorrect 7y ago

your last sentence is inaccurate: an english reader cannot read any latin at all naively, but a modern chinese reader can interpret little/some/most of classical chinese, depending on the specific text in question

sansnomme 7y ago
English is a weird Romantic-Germanic hybrid (Germanic by linguistic classification but with a tremendous/predominant vocabulary of Romantic origin). A more apt comparison would be with respect to a French/Italian/Spanish reader. See: Interlingua
- colorincorrect 7y ago
  misread, my bad; but i remain suspicious because from what i've heard the latin grammar is something quite alien, but then again i heard it from an english speaker....
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    I am a native English speaker, though one with much more interest in the structure of language than average. Latin grammar isn't all that different from English grammar. It's usually possible to translate a sentence from Latin into English in a way that simultaneously preserves both the meaning and the grammatical structure of the original. Attempting to do that between unrelated languages is vastly more difficult; in such cases, a translation that tries to preserve the source grammar will usually end up being hopelessly ungrammatical in the target language. I think you're overestimating, or at least overselling, the degree to which modern Chinese people can read classical text without training.
    - dwohnitmok 7y ago
      I'm actually with colorincorrect here. There's a nontrivial overlap between formal modern Chinese and Classical Chinese. This is especially evident if you ever read contemporary Chinese works about Chinese history. Large tracts of Classical Chinese are discussed without translation assuming the reader understands the text in question and often the contemporary work itself can read very classically. Modern literature can also occasionally lapse into Classical Chinese constructions for a sentence or two. And anecdotally I don't think I've ever met a Chinese high school graduate who didn't have some proficiency with Classical Chinese. I've said this before elsewhere, sometimes it's useful to think of Classical Chinese as a separate language from modern Chinese, sometimes it's useful to think of it as an extremely elevated register of modern Chinese. Modern literary works can be more or less "classical" in nature depending on the whims of the author.
      - thaumasiotes 7y ago
        > There's a nontrivial overlap between formal modern Chinese and Classical Chinese. > This is especially evident if you ever read contemporary Chinese works about Chinese history. Large tracts of Classical Chinese are discussed without translation assuming the reader understands the text in question and often the contemporary work itself can read very classically. If you read some non-contemporary early modern English literature, you may find Latin, classical Greek, or French discussed or used without translation in the expectation that the reader will be able to understand it directly. But this is evidence that the reader is expected to have undergone significant training, not that English speakers can understand ancient Greek without training. > And anecdotally I don't think I've ever met a Chinese high school graduate who didn't have some proficiency with Classical Chinese. We can be even more definite here: this is because Chinese high school graduates have all received training in Classical Chinese.

rabboRubble 7y ago

Many, if not by most definitions, traditional characters map to 1 simplified character. Unfortunately, not all. Example, a 9 traditional : 1 simplified map 斗 ⇄ 鬥斗鬪鬦鬭鬬闘閗逗 Here's a list that probably is mostly complete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguities_in_Chinese_character_simplification#1_to_9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguities_in_Chinese_charact...