Clarity,
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Here I provide a survey on shared characters (bigrams at least)
Both of these PDF files are in Chinese - which is not very useful, for me at least. I read somewhere else that:
"Bigrams ... exist in the Chinese language, because almost all Chinese ‘words’ are made up of more than one character. Although a single character has its own meaning, it is often when it is combined with another character that it is used as a word in Chinese."
This seems to be the same (or a similar) idea which Rutt shares in his Zhouyi, explaining 'radicals':...
I'm going to find it helpful
Both of these PDF files are in Chinese - which is not very useful, for me at least. I read somewhere else that:
"Bigrams ... exist in the Chinese language, because almost all Chinese ‘words’ are made up of more than one character. Although a single character has its own meaning, it is often when it is combined with another character that it is used as a word in Chinese."
This seems to be the same (or a similar) idea which Rutt shares in his Zhouyi, explaining 'radicals':
The(se) additional strokes are usually, if illogically, called in English a ‘radical’. Broadly speaking, the ‘radical’ suggests the general meaning of the word, while the original character gives the sound, though in the course of centuries this sound may have changed and now no longer be exactly the same for every character which still contains the protograph.For example, the character huang, meaning ‘yellow’, is differentiated by adding:* ‘the water radical’ to make huang meaning ‘to flow’, * 'the jade radical’ to mean a half-moon jade pendant; while other radicals give* guang ‘broad’ and * kuang ‘a desert’. Also, in his Translation Notes, Rutt has many instances where a particular word or Yi phrase has resonance or similarities with the Book of Odes - and other texts. Ex." .... Compare 'mustering men in the countryside' (from Hex. 18) with the great hunting meet (dong) for military training mentioned in the Ode 154:4" [p307]
I think all Chinese documents, books, writings have 'bigrams' - shared characters - so we would expect to find these when looking at two different texts. And since all three of these are from around the same ancient period, I'd expect to find shared words, language, theme, ideas .... and I think (as Rutt shows in the example above) where looking at these shared themes or ideas could be useful for us.
However, I'm not entirely sure how just using bigrams themselves gets us to:
"Trac(ing) incipient language bridges among the two classics (and) also to share analysis and evaluations from both Shijing [Book of Odes] and Chun Qiu Zuo Zhuan [Zuo Commentary?] for the benefit of the Yi reader" ???
Do you have any examples you can share with us, of where you've found these bigrams useful or of benefit in understanding the Yi?
Best, D.
So, when dfreed quote the "almost all Chinese ‘words’ are made up of more than one character" s/he's ignorant about the fact that this assumption is true only for modern chinese and opposite in ancient chinese
I'm sure, Dfreed, about your 'keen interest in the Yi' as mine in researching patterns.
e.g: if someone were to look at a particular bigram - say jun zi and see how it was used in both the Yi and Songs – and perhaps then glean a better or different understanding of jun zi - "the noble, worthy, honored young one, heir, disciple" (from Hatcher) - by looking at how this phrase is used in these different texts.
... not the correct one to delve in ZhouYi, where 'radicals' are unknown ...
I'd like to hear from you, Dfreed, more a honest attitude in what you feel as 'keen interest', leaving room for incertitude, in what instead it seems your 'not-keen' interests. Not-keen yet.
When I talk about 'honesty', I mean what you wrote in the last three paragraphs, above.
Hatcher: We must live with speculation, learn to be honest about it, and work to become more effective in this uncertain state."
"What are you arguing for?"
[...] When frustrated and blocked you need to see great people [...] perhaps you need to consult with someone wiser [...] perhaps you can find that shift in perspective within yourself.
Yes, #11.
May be, Bradford Hatcher ...
The quotations ... are from hex 5 and 6 -you took in the process- from Hilary Book ....
I still question what use these might be to me – especially if I or others don't know Chinese in either it's ancient or modern forms, and if we also don't know or fully understand how important context and placement is in how the Zhouyi and other texts are composed; and if we don't know about or understand fully about the use of loan words and variants in the Zhou era - all of which I think applies to many of us here.
Quite.Hilary has said she sees some usefulness here, and I'm willing to go along with that – and others may find something of valuable here as well -
Yes and you posted it in I Ching News where it belongs for those who are interested and there should be no need for you to have to justify posting there because another person doesn't find it 'of use' to them.Sorry for interrupting here, but what this mainly is about is that I found some material useful and shared it with all of you here.
I have never 'required' any justification from anyone in the thread! What said, in summary is:the I Ching News forum the OP is not required to fully justify how useful it might be to any one member
.... others have helped me clarify what it is you are talking about (which is about bigrams and not about variants, radicals, combined characters, etc.), and ... some people will find your PDFs useful.
(Discussion moved from here: https://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/fri...-shijing-and-zuozhuan-by-fabio-galassi.33163/ ~Moderators)
Both of these PDF files are in Chinese - which is not very useful, for me at least. I read somewhere else that:
"Bigrams ... exist in the Chinese language, because almost all Chinese ‘words’ are made up of more than one character. Although a single character has its own meaning, it is often when it is combined with another character that it is used as a word in Chinese."
This seems to be the same (or a similar) idea which Rutt shares in his Zhouyi, explaining 'radicals':
The(se) additional strokes are usually, if illogically, called in English a ‘radical’. Broadly speaking, the ‘radical’ suggests the general meaning of the word, while the original character gives the sound, though in the course of centuries this sound may have changed and now no longer be exactly the same for every character which still contains the protograph.For example, the character huang, meaning ‘yellow’, is differentiated by adding:* ‘the water radical’ to make huang meaning ‘to flow’, * 'the jade radical’ to mean a half-moon jade pendant; while other radicals give* guang ‘broad’ and * kuang ‘a desert’. Also, in his Translation Notes, Rutt has many instances where a particular word or Yi phrase has resonance or similarities with the Book of Odes - and other texts. Ex." .... Compare 'mustering men in the countryside' (from Hex. 18) with the great hunting meet (dong) for military training mentioned in the Ode 154:4" [p307]
I think all Chinese documents, books, writings have 'bigrams' - shared characters - so we would expect to find these when looking at two different texts. And since all three of these are from around the same ancient period, I'd expect to find shared words, language, theme, ideas .... and I think (as Rutt shows in the example above) where looking at these shared themes or ideas could be useful for us.
However, I'm not entirely sure how just using bigrams themselves gets us to:
"Trac(ing) incipient language bridges among the two classics (and) also to share analysis and evaluations from both Shijing [Book of Odes] and Chun Qiu Zuo Zhuan [Zuo Commentary?] for the benefit of the Yi reader" ???
Do you have any examples you can share with us, of where you've found these bigrams useful or of benefit in understanding the Yi?
Best, D.
I really wish Harmen Mesker would start a class on how to use Chinese-language sources for people with no or limited Chinese. Hilary once did a one hour session on this, as part of some other course (Imagery?), all about how to use Pleco and so on, but it wasn't anywhere nearly enough time. Harmen would be the perfect teacher for this, I reckon. He could cover the very basics of how characters are structured, how they are categorized in dictionaries, the way different characters can have multiple meanings, the specific issues with Old Chinese, many other issues.As for Svenrus' original post, studying the Zhouyi text in Chinese is quite complex. For those wishing to get a taste of the original language, Legge translation, dictionary, parallel passages in other early texts, as well as other easily accessed tools, theis invaluable. Make sure to read about HOW to use the site.Book of Changes : Yi Jing - Chinese Text Project
Yi Jing (易經) - full text database, fully browsable and searchable on-line; discussion and list of publications related to Yi Jing. In English and simplified and traditional Chinese.ctext.org
Here are some reliable resources on Chinese language: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chinese-languages/Han-and-Classical-Chinese and https://omniglot.com/chinese/ have some helpful explanations. The Wikipedia entry appears to be fairly decent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese. Victor Mair writes about how hard it is to learn: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=42963.
Dfreed is right asking for a better explication of the tools he meets, but, and this is my view spent here, just with a different attitude, as mine too, sure.
I really wish Harmen Mesker would start a class on how to use Chinese-language sources for people with no or limited Chinese. Hilary once did a one hour session on this, as part of some other course (Imagery?), all about how to use Pleco and so on, but it wasn't anywhere nearly enough time. Harmen would be the perfect teacher for this, I reckon. He could cover the very basics of how characters are structured, how they are categorized in dictionaries, the way different characters can have multiple meanings, the specific issues with Old Chinese, many other issues.
Might not be such a crowd-drawer compared to the Yijing Astrology thing, but I'd sure sign up.
I did look into how difficult it would be to learn Chinese. According to the US State Department language school, it takes about four times as long to teach someone Mandarin to a reasonable proficient level as it takes for German or French, about three times as long as for Russian. In fact, Chinese, together with Japanese, Korean and Arabic, were listed as the four most difficult of the languages they included. I was surprised to see that they ranked Indonesian as slightly harder than most European languages -- not my personal impression, I have to say.
I'm not sure I've got that many decades left.
That would be brilliant!I really wish Harmen Mesker would start a class on how to use Chinese-language sources for people with no or limited Chinese.
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).