What did Chinese textbooks look like in the 19th century? (Part 6)
In Part 5 I finished reviewing the pronunciation and character parts of von der Gabelentz’s textbook. In this final part I’ll continue to review its syntax p...
review
What did Chinese textbooks look like in the 19th century? (Part 5)
In Part 4 I finished my review of Wade’s textbook and gave it the highest rating among all the 19th-century textbooks I’ve reviewed so far. In this part I’ll...
What did Chinese textbooks look like in the 19th century? (Part 4)
In Part 3 I finished reviewing Morrison’s textbook and also began reviewing Wade’s textbook. In this part I’ll continue to comment on the character and the s...
What did Chinese textbooks look like in the 19th century? (Part 3)
This is the third part of this long post. In this part I’ll present my remaining review for Morrison’s book and then turn to Wade’s seminal work.
What did Chinese textbooks look like in the 19th century? (Part 2)
In this part I continue to share my personal impressions of 19th-century Chinese language textbooks. I’ll finish off my review of Marshman’s book and then st...
What did Chinese textbooks look like in the 19th century? (Part 1)
Recently I was having this conversation with a (hyper)polyglot friend—who had already inspired a post on this blog by the way—where we exchanged ideas on var...
Learning programming languages like natural languages: Is it a good idea?
Recently I came across a short article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences entitled “The language of programming: a cognitive perspective” (Fedorenko et al. 2019...
Language in a Qing-Dynasty polyglot’s eyes: A review of GU Hongming’s “The Chinese language”
Lately I’ve been reading a book entitled The Spirit of the Chinese People (Chinese title: 春秋大義). It’s a collection of essays written by the famous Chinese sc...
Fictional languages and the linguistic view in Three-Body (Part 3)
In “The linguistic view in Three-Body (Part 2)” I wrote about my thoughts on some language-related settings and descriptions in my recent favorite sci-fi no...
Fictional languages and the linguistic view in Three-Body (Part 2)
In “The linguistic view in Three-Body (Part 1)” I briefly introduced the phenomenal sci-fi trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past, aka “Three-Body,” written by ...
Fictional languages and the linguistic view in Three-Body (Part 1)
I’m a sci-fi lover, and in the past few years I’ve been deeply impressed by the trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past written by the Chinese author Cixin Liu. ...