i cant believe this ...uncle has been in this forum since 2003....now want to ban me for using my old nick....well-done.....
back to you confused little one-why is uncle in a position to tell you all these, because i am far more superior to you in terms of history. languages and most of all, my chinese cultural heritagepls note that mandarin is a spoken language....that is what we have been talking abt all this while. written chinese is not spoken mandarin...the chinese characters from Tao de Jing and Shijing have not changed for thousands of years. mastery of written chinese means you can read this no doubt. but unfotunately you are reading this is in a foreign language and not Laozhi's language, as scroobal pointed out, the nuances and finer points would all have been lost to you. lao zhi would have written his work with one thing in mind while you would have read with another.
a better example is shijing, try reading poems in mandain means the poems do not rhyme and has no rhythm. you cannot connect to the era when these ancient poems were written. you dun hv to learn old chinese or middle chinese but it is helpful if you can appreciate your own roots by retaining your knowledge of dialects. if you read the first poem in shijing in hokkien, at least two lines would still rhyme and overall there is still some semblance of a poem, that is what you have been missing. you are hopelessly lost thinking mandarin was your mother tongue
try reading this in mandarin...i kind of suspect you probably cnat read chinese either
關關雎鳩 在河之洲 窈窕淑女 君子好逑
參差荇菜 左右流之 窈窕淑女 寤寐求之
求之不得 寤寐思服 悠哉悠哉 輾轉反側
參差荇菜 左右采之 窈窕淑女 琴瑟友之
參差荇菜 左右芼之 窈窕淑女 鐘鼓樂之
[/QUOTE
Uncle ki lan lah! mudskipper lu kon simi lanjiao? Superior ki lan Pondan kiah!
