Ancient Chinese and Tao Te Ching

[Elta]

I have a question for Chinese speakers/Readers

I am trying to memorize TTC by recognising the charecters in each verse - as you know this is tricky because they can only be viewed in the context of the sentence and you have to remember multipule meanings for each letter.

My question is in general how diff. are the pronounciation of the words from back then and are the meanings of the charecters generally the same?

 

[Dann]

That's quite a challenge you set up for yourself there. Even us native speakers steer clear from such 'deep' tasks.

Chinese characters can be read into a multitude of dialects/pronouncations, and so it doesn't matter even if we don't know how the original was read in its time.

As for the meanings of the words they would mostly be the same, but there will be many archaic 'words' that are no longer used today and might present a problem. I would also expect certain otherwise 'normal' characters to have additional archaic meanings that only devoted scholars will be able to know, language being an ever evolving creature. Just think how different Shakespeare or Dante sounds to us today.

 

[aronnax]

Hey Dann, when you speak chinese then switch to english, do you change your tone like me?

 

[Dann]

Change what tone?

 

[Tomoyo]

我用中文的时，如果我要用英文，我的声不边的。

The computer I'm using is all weird now. I couldn't type in Roman characters for a while. Sorry about the bad Chines俄。Thisis 热阿联络员 not 妇女。

I 我ish I could provide a translation, but this is really not working, like, at all.

What the hell. Now it can't type in Chinese.

Anyway.

I think what he means is that some people use the first tone 噢发 Chienese Oh。 Damn。 It's 回来了。 这个电脑太麻烦了。

Sorry。 对不起。 This sucks.

EDIT:　ＯＫＡＹ．　ＷＨＡＴ I　ＭＥＡＮＴ　ＴＯ SAY WASＴＨＡＴ A LOTＯＦ CHINESE SPEAKERS USE　ＴＨＥ FIRST tone to insert an English word or some English letters. Others speak the English as if the entire sentence was English.

 

[civverguy]

My tone in English is very different than my tone in Chinese when I speak. I think this has to do with whether English is your second language or not.

 

[Elta]

That's quite a challenge you set up for yourself there. Even us native speakers steer clear from such 'deep' tasks.

Chinese characters can be read into a multitude of dialects/pronouncations, and so it doesn't matter even if we don't know how the original was read in its time.

As for the meanings of the words they would mostly be the same, but there will be many archaic 'words' that are no longer used today and might present a problem. I would also expect certain otherwise 'normal' characters to have additional archaic meanings that only devoted scholars will be able to know, language being an ever evolving creature. Just think how different Shakespeare or Dante sounds to us today.

Thanks just the advice I needed.