More on the advantages on knowing Classical Chinese

[William Farris]

Hello:

          I'm surprised that everyone trained in premodern Japanese history, literature, religion, or whatever did not have at least 2 years of Classical Chinese.

         Certainly for Nara and Heian Japan, it was the lingua franca of East Asia, spoken in Korea, Japan, and Viet Nam as well as China.

        When was kana invented?  The 900s?  If so then that means that all the texts written before that date (六国史。律令。類聚三代格。懐風藻。for starters) must have been written and read by people with a knowledge of Classical Chinese.

       When are the first texts with the markings for 漢文?  I'll bet there pretty late. I don't know?

       Lastly, let me show the readers of this list a REALLY NEAT advantage of knowing Classical Chinese--reverse engineering to obtain either modern Chinese readings or Korean or Japanese Sinicized readings.

      Take, for example the Chinese character 入。In modern Chinese, it is pronounced ru, with the tone going down, I believe.  But when the character was borrowed from China in Japan, it was pronounced rup, with the same tone.  The closest the Japanese could come to rup was にふ, thus giving us the modern Sino-Japanese reading of にゅう.  But as you all know, that's not all the time, as in 入唐, or ニットう.  That pronunciation derives from the old reading of rup, not nyuu.

      You can do the same for Korean readings and I assume, Vietnamese.

      You can also reverse engineer from the Sino-Japanese reading to modern and 唐代的readings.

      Take the character for "snow" pronounced in Sino-Japanese せつ.  That means that snow was also an entering tone 入声, rupsheng.  So the Classical reading for snow in Chinese was swyet, with a downward tone.  The modern Chinese Reading for 雪 is swye, dropping the -t.

       All this is thanks to E. Bruce Brooks, a brilliant teacher and intellect.

       Anyway, I don't know whether I have made my point, but as always, the more you know the more you learn.

Best wishes,

Wayne

PS Isn't 稲作 pronounced いなさく？

[Paula R. Curtis]

Dear Wayne (and all),

With respect, I am sure many people on this mailing list would have loved to have had 2 years of classical Chinese, or even 1 year. Or even 1 year of formal instruction in bungo, hentai kanbun, etc. But the reality of our education systems is that such training is woefully undervalued and understaffed with experts (one need only see the temp posting by Harvard in bungo/kanbun just today to see that). Speaking for myself, I was extremely fortunate to get bungo training with Charles Quinn and Naomi Fukumori at Ohio State as an MA student. At Michigan, only one semester when taught by Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen before her retirement. There were never enough students, even at a large R1 university with a long history of premodern Japanese for a formal hentai kanbun course. I once asked to join a classical Chinese class and was told the instructor would not let me because I had not taken modern Chinese. My formal instruction in anything resembling kanbun did not begin until year 4, while working in Japan with experts there, and any additional training might have been interpreted as a "luxury" when time to degree was of the essence. 

All to say: access to premodern language training entails a great deal of privilege, and the lay of the land academically is quite different for premodernists than it was even ten years ago. We should be cautious about judging what our colleagues, early or otherwise, should or should not have mastery of at any given time in their careers.

Best,

Paula

--
PMJS is a forum dedicated to the study of premodern Japan.
To post to the list, email pm...@googlegroups.com
For the PMJS Terms of Use and more resources, please visit www.pmjs.org.
Contact the moderation team at mod...@pmjs.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PMJS: Listserv" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pmjs+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmjs/CAFSdm5S7U0phO3n8O_Jfz_Ruxw%2BsyPrxMyuGQyKAO%2BjhqVOQEA%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Paula R. Curtis

Yanai Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer

Department of Asian Languages & Cultures

University of California, Los Angeles

http://prcurtis.com/

[William Farris]

Paula (and all):

          I don't know what to say, except that I was lucky enough to have come into contact with Prof. Brooks.  I'm not judging others, but trying to point out that the more you can learn the better.

         When I was a grad student, from 1973-1981, there were two classes in Classical Chinese at Harvard, one (taught by Patrick Hanan) that required a knowledge of modern Chinese, and Brooks', which did not.  I chose Brooks' and am forever in his debt for that.

         As for current conditions, I am well aware that such classes may not be available any more.  It is indeed sad!

        What I was trying to do in my email was not chide but teach.  With the tool that Brooks gave us and I tried to pass along, perhaps it might open new vistas in teaching and research.

        I wonder what Sasha Vovin would have written?  David Lurie?

With all kind regards,

Wayne

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmjs/CAL1MDVTQ%2BWKwm_%2BxnJXrdRJ87G1C6JYgbFSmwyiSV4amhLYv_A%40mail.gmail.com.

[Christopher Hepburn]

I thought to reply, with all due respect to those in thread, from the outsider's perspective. The field of Japan Studies has traditionally catered to the pantheon of academia, and to the exclusion of musicologists, like me, who do do work in premodern Japan. 

In my research, I deal with "cursed questions," i.e., those questions that will never be answered without an operation of Wellsian proportions, e.g., what is music doing in waka, and how is it doing it?, no matter how much we try to eff the ineffable. Many critics continue to imply that if the question can't be answered, well, it's simply not worth asking — I don't think so! However, thirty years ago, if I were a trailblazing 5 year old, I would have had trouble publishing an article in Monumenta Nipponica or Journal of Japanese Studies, if only because, as a musicologist, the danger courts would immediately raise the flag of suspicion on what they would have perceived to be a lack (whether the lack existed or not) of linguistic competence and translation skills. This criteria, among others, was something of a lodestar that defined much of what good scholarships, whatever that means, in Area Studies and Japan Studies was then (not to mention the aversion to interdisciplinary theories). Simply put, if you weren't brought up in the traditional study of Japan, you simply couldn't understand Japan: a very We and They way of thinking, just without the last modifying line that turns the entire poem on its head (apologies to Rudyard Kipling).

In short, scientific progress, at least in the humanities, is no longer marked by utopian ideals, which could, I suppose, be seen by some as devolution to some. However, I should like to think that our movement away from those ideas is progress in and of itself. To be sure, as my late friend, Richard Taruskin, once said, if we insist both on posing questions and on keeping them open, then we can avoid slippage into dogma and authoritarian coercion. To that end, the object of inquiry should be, as William James would say, towards deepening our senses of what the issue really is... and the only way we can do that is by being open to new ways of understanding.

This isn't in response to anyone in particular but the field as a whole. 

Best,

Christopher

P.S. Musicology was just as guilty as Japan Studies thirty years ago. 

--

Christopher Hepburn, PhD

University of Southern California

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmjs/CAL1MDVTQ%2BWKwm_%2BxnJXrdRJ87G1C6JYgbFSmwyiSV4amhLYv_A%40mail.gmail.com.

[Chris Kern]

As far as the history of 漢文訓読, I remember reading/learning the following: The Chinese texts were first brought to Japan through Korea, and thus presented first to people who had no contact with China and did not know any Chinese. The Koreans had already come up with the 漢文訓読 method and simply taught that to the Japanese people (for use with Japanese rather than Korean). Attempting to pronounce the texts as Chinese was only done for limited purposes, particularly chanting of sutras. I would appreciate any correction on this as I do not specialize in kanbun or the history of Japanese, but this is what I remember from books on the history of Japanese. (In other words, even the earliest texts like 日本書記 and 懐風藻 would have been read by the original readers in 漢文訓読 style, with only some loan words pronounced in sino-Japanese).

> Certainly for Nara and Heian Japan, it was the lingua franca of East Asia, spoken in Korea, Japan, and Viet Nam as well as China.

This is exactly why I don't feel tied down to any specific way of reading the texts (for instance, using Middle Chinese reconstructed readings and avoiding 訓点). To me,the 訓点 and 漢文訓読 reading style is completely sufficient for my needs, and learning to pronounce all the characters (whether as modern Mandarin or as middle Chinese) so that I can avoid using the 訓点 and 訓読 glosses would be a lot of work for not that much gain.

I agree that almost anyone doing pre-modern Japanese research should have some ability to read kanbun, but I think it's fine if that's done via 漢文訓読, which is something that is relatively easy to learn for someone who has a good foundation in classical Japanese. Even if you do have the ability to take a class where you learn to read the kanbun texts as Chinese, it can be difficult to maintain that ability if you are not regularly practicing Chinese.

-Chris

Auburn University

[mariachiar...@unisalento.it]

Dear all,

I totally agree with William Farris concerning the necessity to learn Classical Chinese in studying ancient Japan. I am one of the lucky ones who could learn Chinese and Japanese, as a student, and without this formation I could never have been able to study Nara period texts, or Chinese literature of the Heian period. My student, who could not learn Chinese while in my university, did it in Japan, and now is dealing with ancient dictionaries, other than translating ryō with me. As Paula Curtis rightly says, the current education system is globally poor and does not give us the opportunity to train young people as it has been done for us.

As for kundoku, in David Lurie, Realms of Literacy, it is explained very clearly and put in a broad context. Very recently a thorough essay can be found in Arthur Defrance, La poèsie japonaise de l’époque de Nara, PhD thesis, École pratique des hautes études, 2022, chapter 3 (L'écriture dans le Japon de Nara), pp. 79-154, where origin and development of kundoku in Korea and Japan are carefully explained.

Maria Chiara Migliore

Associate Professor
Department of Humanities 
University of Salento 
Piazzetta Rizzo, 1
73100 Lecce, Italy

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmjs/CAGL_G%3DrygwMqR50jaj0BRprrinDC9KFJtoWkF%2B5Rh7m4HrwDrA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Richard Bowring]



This discussion took an interesting turn but my attention was drawn to something else in the initial post. “The closest the Japanese could come to rup was にふ.” I very much doubt the Japanese were so hard of hearing. It is is mistake to try and use Mandarin in such a context, because the Mandarin reading is often the outlier. Most eastern dialects have an initial “n” for 入 , and further south Vietnamese has nhat (with diacritics). Baxter reconstructs it as “n(u)p”. I would like to come to the defence of the early Japanese pioneers. I am sure their hearing was fine and they probably heard the character pronounced first by someone from early Paekche or the eastern seaboard.

Further on is the statement “The Classical reading for snow in Chinese was swyet”. I think I heard Sasha turning in his grave.

Best

Richard Bowring 

Sent from my iPad

On 10 Feb 2023, at 19:59, William Farris <wfa...@hawaii.edu> wrote:



Paula (and all):

          I don't know what to say, except that I was lucky enough to have come into contact with Prof. Brooks.  I'm not judging others, but trying to point out that the more you can learn the better.

         When I was a grad student, from 1973-1981, there were two classes in Classical Chinese at Harvard, one (taught by Patrick Hanan) that required a knowledge of modern Chinese, and Brooks', which did not.  I chose Brooks' and am forever in his debt for that.

         As for current conditions, I am well aware that such classes may not be available any more.  It is indeed sad!

        What I was trying to do in my email was not chide but teach.  With the tool that Brooks gave us and I tried to pass along, perhaps it might open new vistas in teaching and research.

        I wonder what Sasha Vovin would have written?  David Lurie?

With all kind regards,

Wayne

On Fri, Feb 10, 2023 at 1:08 PM Paula R. Curtis <prcu...@umich.edu> wrote:

Dear Wayne (and all),

With respect, I am sure many people on this mailing list would have loved to have had 2 years of classical Chinese, or even 1 year. Or even 1 year of formal instruction in bungo, hentai kanbun, etc. But the reality of our education systems is that such training is woefully undervalued and understaffed with experts (one need only see the temp posting by Harvard in bungo/kanbun just today to see that). Speaking for myself, I was extremely fortunate to get bungo training with Charles Quinn and Naomi Fukumori at Ohio State as an MA student. At Michigan, only one semester when taught by Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen before her retirement. There were never enough students, even at a large R1 university with a long history of premodern Japanese for a formal hentai kanbun course. I once asked to join a classical Chinese class and was told the instructor would not let me because I had not taken modern Chinese. My formal instruction in anything resembling kanbun did not begin until year 4, while working in Japan with experts there, and any additional training might have been interpreted as a "luxury" when time to degree was of the essence. 

All to say: access to premodern language training entails a great deal of privilege, and the lay of the land academically is quite different for premodernists than it was even ten years ago. We should be cautious about judging what our colleagues, early or otherwise, should or should not have mastery of at any given time in their careers.

Best,

Paula

Paula R. Curtis

Yanai Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer

Department of Asian Languages & Cultures

University of California, Los Angeles

http://prcurtis.com/

--

PMJS is a forum dedicated to the study of premodern Japan.
To post to the list, email pm...@googlegroups.com
For the PMJS Terms of Use and more resources, please visit www.pmjs.org.
Contact the moderation team at mod...@pmjs.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PMJS: Listserv" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pmjs+uns...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmjs/CAL1MDVTQ%2BWKwm_%2BxnJXrdRJ87G1C6JYgbFSmwyiSV4amhLYv_A%40mail.gmail.com.

--
PMJS is a forum dedicated to the study of premodern Japan.
To post to the list, email pm...@googlegroups.com
For the PMJS Terms of Use and more resources, please visit www.pmjs.org.
Contact the moderation team at mod...@pmjs.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PMJS: Listserv" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pmjs+uns...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmjs/CAFSdm5RALZOkEdowVNYZP8L7dHZUoeZ0uCoCNPt7v6Z_hYd0GQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[J K]

It would be worth noting that a number of Japanese authors in antiquity spoke Chinese. Kūkai 空海, for example, and then Ennin 円仁, come to mind. Ennin's travelogue, the Nittō guhō junreikōki 入唐求法巡礼行記, is written entirely in Chinese. He records a lot of colloquial language, particles, and expressions. It has been proposed that Ennin probably didn't speak much Chinese when he arrived in China, but over time he acquired speaking skills. I don't get the impression that Ennin would have used kundoku in Tang China. For the monks and scholars of that general period in Japan, Chinese was a spoken language and not strictly restricted to writing. The circumstances changed in later times, but several generations could learn spoken Chinese. There were also figures who had studied in China (遣唐使) and returned to Japan, sometimes with their bilingual children. "Classical Chinese" was a living language at the time. There were plenty of bilingual Japanese authors.

Jeffrey Kotyk

University of Bologna

[William Farris]

Richard:

          Thank you for your learned comment.  As might be expected you, not to mention Professor Vovin, are much more in tune with historical linguists than I am.

          When it comes to historical linguistics, I am an admitted amateur, having learned what I know through the aforementioned E. Bruce Brooks.

          But I cherish the knowledge--even half-knowledge--that he imparted to me, because it is SO MUCH BETTER than abject ignorance.

          I am aware that many Japanese learned Chinese and that the Koreans played an important role in the Japanese elites' learning of Classical Chinese.

          As for specifics, 入　may well have begun with n- and not r-, as in modern Chinese.  BUT the two sounds are formed in the mouth very similarly with the tongue and the forward palette.  So can we be sure?

          What I was trying to do was to offer those without a grounding in Classical Chinese a way to derive the Sino-Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese readings--very simply and mechanically.  And at the same time, reverse engineer to obtain the Modern Chinese pronunciation. 

          It may not meet the exacting requirements of current historical linguistics, but it is practical for someone like me, a social and economic historian of premodern Japan.

Wayne

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmjs/42050147-864C-4C66-BC6A-7E8232F8F3A0%40cam.ac.uk.