Language of the Dragon: A Classical Chinese Reader, Vol. 1

Rating:
Summary: Great for Studying Classical Chinese
Review: I am trying to learn Classical Chinese, and I have found that this is the most complete and most user-friendly book yet. I have only used Volume 1, but will quickly get Volumes 2 and 3.

Rating:
Summary: good
Review: This is a combined review for volumes 1 and 2 of _Language of the Dragon_. They have above average explanations, but these two books leave something to be desired organizationally.

What these books do better than any other textbook I have seen as of this writing is to explain the grammar of both words and sentence patterns as they are explained in Chinese books. The biggest problems are a) it starts out great and after several chapters goes to just good, and b) the book feels like these are his lecture notes. Worth noting is that these books seems to be designed as part of a curriculum rather than just off the shelf literary Chinese textbooks. This is good or bad, depending on your ability and wants. The major way you will notice this is that he frequently tries to show you connections between the classical and modern languages.

Volumes 1 and 2 are not all that different in make-up, just that 1 is of course more basic than 2. Each chapter deals with a short passage (multiple passages in volume two) and if you work through the whole chapter (except exercises) you will generally have your questions answered. One helpful learning aid not to be ignored is how he uses 'baihua' to explain the original text. Often, even if he is working on something else, reading his modern Chinese translation of a particular sentence may explain a point you didn't understand in the text. But his baihua translations are only for select sentences.

Volume 1 has four appendices in the back which are as follows: 1) Classification of Words which, if mined, will yield, 2) Sentence Elements, 3) Basic Sentence Types, and 4) Index to Function Words which should be read. Only appendices 3 & 4 refer to the book, and even they only to chapters, not page numbers. Volume 2 also has four appendices: 1) a 50 question multiple guess sentence pattern test without answers, 2) a word about punctuation, inferior to what you will find in the back of most Chinese only dictionaries, 3) a brief chronology of Chinese history, and 4) a very weak index to both volumes, hardly worthy of the name. The latter is the biggest single reason I didn't give this 5 stars: no real index. I find an index to be indispensable for language learning.

Important for you to know is that you must have a good reading ability in modern Mandarin if you wish to properly use these books. The author recommends 3 (three) years, but I think that is too optimistic. With the exception of a tiny number of terms not glossed for unknown reasons and terms you have learned in previous chapters (though some repeat terms are reglossed), he has Pinyin for nearly all vocabulary items and idioms, but generally not elsewhere (i.e. grammar or sentence patterns).

Much of the grammar explanations and most of the vocabulary glosses in these books are bilingual, though not 100%. Yet even when there is English and Chinese you will get a much better picture if you can read both. This is less necessary with the grammar explanations. He works in a lot of idioms in both volumes, but while translated they are not often explained, even when they may not be readily obvious.

Rating:
Summary: Answering the Debate on Classical Chinese Pedagogy
Review: Within the minute world of Classical Chinese scholarship and pedagogy is the debate about whether North Americans should be taught classical Chinese in English or in modern Mandarin.

The dividing line seems to be the size and purpose of the university: larger universities, whose aim is to instruct research methods to a relatively large number of students with diverse backgrounds and interests (literary, historical, archaeological, for use with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean texts), prefer to teach Classical Chinese in English. Liberal arts colleges, with their goals for linguistic fluency and overall cultural knowledge, tend to emphasize how knowledge of Classical Chinese can boost proficiency of the modern spoken language, without regard for specialists or students of Japanese history. In addition, Chinese language and literature faculties are pretty distinctly divided at larger universities, and classes in Classical Chinese are usually handed to junior faculty in the literature division, rather than language teachers busy with upper-level language classes in Business Chinese.

Gregory Chiang was a Chinese teacher at Middlebury College, a small college with great pride in the strength of its Chinese department. Chiang Laoshi did not develop his Language of the Dragon with the book-buried, office-bound scholar in mind; instead, he put into his books a prominent concern for use of Classical Chinese in contemporary conversation. Nearly every explanation of vocabulary or grammar--almost all written both in Chinese and in English--translates the terms in question into modern Chinese. This not only solidifies grammar patterns in the modern learner's mind, it also sidesteps questions of translation from Classical Chinese to English by providing smoother examples of translation within the history of Chinese itself.

But in case my description makes Chiang Laoshi's books seem like an upper-level textbook for modern Mandarin rather than a serious series of lessons for rigorous study of Classical Chinese, let me dissuade you. All the virtues of other Classical Chinese textbooks are here: samples of famous and important texts culled from Classical literature and philosophy, accurate and exacting explanations of difficult vocabulary and grammatical patterns, well-formated appendices for quick reference, and more. But by keeping its subject close to modern spoken Chinese, the textbook also sets its texts up for quicker internalization--which means closer reading and better learning--than when trying to supplement everything with an English definition and sticky translation.

For future scholars and translators, the Chinese should come first and on its own terms; if the original text cannot be read fluidly, the translation cannot be written in English fluently.