[SOLO] The Works of Mencius (Legge ed.) - kaz

[Ariphron]

The Works of Mencius (Legge ed.), by Mencius (372 BCE - 289 BCE) and James Legge (1815 - 1897)

Mencius (c. 372–289 BC), or Mengzi (孟子 Mèngzǐ), was one of the most important figures in the history of Chinese philosophy. His book consists largely of conversations he had with princes about the wise manner of governing a state.

James Legge (1815-1897), Scottish missionary and later professor of Chinese at Oxford, prepared a five-volume series "The Chinese Classics" (1861-1872; originally planned as seven volumes), combining Chinese text with English introductions, notes, and translations. The introduction, called Prolegomena, is an extended monograph on Mencius's personality, thought, place in Chinese society, compatibility with Christian moral teachings, and contrast with other ancient Chinese philosophers. The notes, recorded in separate files from the text, provide useful information for students of the Chinese language.

In the first edition, the romanization used in the Prolegomena and notes was that of Morrison's dictionary, which is supposed to reflect the educated speech of Nanjing, although to the extent that Morrison relied on earlier work by Jesuit missionaries, it may reflect usage of the 17th and 18th centuries more than of the 19th. Towards the end of Legge's life, the first two volumes of the series were revised with a new romanization and terminology representing Beijing Mandarin. This is the second volume.

(Summary by Ariphron)

Source text (please read only from this text!): https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chinese_Classics.html?id=mXVFAQAAIAAJ

Target completion date: 2024-10-31

Prooflistening level: Standard
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Magic Window:

BC Admin
LibriVox recording settings: mono (1 channel), 44100 Hz sample rate, 128 kbps constant bit rate MP3. See the Tech Specs

Intro to recording:
Leave 0.5 to 1 second of silence at the beginning.

For the first section, say:

"Section (or Chapter) # of The Works of Mencius. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org." "The Chinese Classics, Volume II: The Works of Mencius, by Mencius and James Legge. Section Title."

End of recording:
Say:

"End of section #. Read by your name, city, date.

If you are recording the final section of the book, add:

"End of The Works of Mencius, by Mencius and James Legge."

Leave 5 seconds of silence at the end.

Filename: worksofmencius_##_mencius_128kb.mp3 where ## is the section number. (e.g. worksofmencius_01_mencius_128kb.mp3)

Upload to the LibriVox Uploader: https://librivox.org/login/uploader

MC to select: Kazbek

Copy and paste the file link generated by the uploader into the relevant Listen URL field in the Section Compiler, enter the duration in the Notes field, and post in this thread to let your PL and MC know that you have uploaded a file. You may also post the file link in the thread.

[Ariphron]

As suggested in the description, I'm planning to record the Chinese text and Legge's introduction and notes in this project, which will be catalogued as in Chinese (the notes are of interest primarily to those who are studying the Chinese text), and Legge's translation in a separate project. That way, listeners who want to hear the text in either language will find it where they expect.

[Ariphron]

The romanized Chinese in the notes follows the system of Morrison's Dictionary (1815-1823), as modified by Medhurst for his dictionaries (1842-1848). This system is based on the old Nanjing-based Southern Mandarin, and is furthermore very confusing to modern readers, as the use of the letters e and i is reversed compared to the modern Hanyu Pinyin. Section headings will be converted to pinyin and divisions to modern usage; thus the commentary and translation to what Legge gives as "GUNG-SUN CH῾OW. PART I." will be listed as "Gongsun Chou, Part A"

For the tones Legge follows his Cantonese teachers, resulting in terminology that is horribly confusing to modern readers. I will translate this back into Chinese as I encounter them in the commentary. Thus, when Legge writes (in his notes) "up. 3d tone," I will read it as 陰去聲, and the listener, knowing that in Mandarin 去聲不分, will have no trouble interpreting this as "4th tone" by the modern terminology.

[Ariphron]

I have described the accent I am using as "the phonology of the old Southern Mandarin, spoken with the sounds of contemporary Mandarin". For the benefit of prospective prooflisteners, here is a more detailed description.

In general, I go for regular reflexes of ancient pronunciations, rather than following the contemporary standard (fortunately, they agree in the vast majority of cases); and I resist certain mergers that have occurred in Mandarin, choosing however pronunciations, inspired by what I have heard from mainstream Mandarin speakers, that should not be distracting to listeners. My pronunciation will diverge from the contemporary standard in the following ways:

1. I will follow Legge's printed tone indications, even where the pronunciation indicated is now considered obsolete.

2. I will pronounce all etymologically checked syllables (入聲 rusheng "entering-tone") short and detached from the next syllable, with tone contours following the systematic tone reflexes characteristic of Henan dialects. In the entering-tone, liquid 次濁 (cizhuo) initials -> short 4th tone; etymologically voiced obstruent 濁 (zhuo) initials -> short 2nd tone; etymologically unvoiced obstruent 清 (qing) initials -> short 1st tone.

3. There is a series of sibilants (審神子母二等; sr-, zr- and dzr- in Baxter's Middle Chinese transcription), including 山生師士, which are sh- in Beijing-standard Mandarin, but regularly evolved to s- in many northern dialects. The Morrison and Medhurst dictionaries are inconsistent as to how these were spoken in the old Nanjing Mandarin, but I will be reading them all with s-, on the grounds that pronunciations with sh- were likely the result of readings of dictionary keys by scholars whose understanding of historical Chinese phonology was incomplete. (I am not talking of a merger of s- and sh-, which is more typical of southern dialects; the dialects I am familiar with preserve a distinct sh- sound in words such as 是市始氏.) Similarly for affricates; I will read 楚 as cǔ. The reference I use to identify these words is the Middle Chinese transcription in the Baxter-Sagart table, available online here:
https://ocbaxtersagart.lsait.lsa.umich.edu

4. Various words where the old Southern Mandarin apparently showed regular development, but contemporary Mandarin has something different: 尋 xín (MC Baxter zin) instead of xún; 強 jiàng "make an effort" (MC Baxter gjangX) instead of qiǎng, etc.

5. In Beijing Mandarin, as in most northern dialects, o and e are allophones of the same vowel, predictable from the medial and coda. In old Southern Mandarin, as in most Jiang-Huai dialects, they contrasted with one another. I will pronounce the /o/ of the pair as in contemporary Mandarin, whether it became pinyin e = zhuyin ㄜ = [ə~œ], or pinyin o = zhuyin ㄛ = [ɔ]; and the /e/ of the pair as [ɛ] = zhuyin ㄝ. Thus you will hear unaccustomed pronunciations such as 墨子 mèzǐ, 國 guē (also an example of 清入聲 becoming short first tone for this project where it is in second tone in Beijing Mandarin), 者 [ʈʂɛ] ㄓㄝˇ.

6. The "tuan" 團 initials are given by Medhurst in unpalatalized form k-, h-; I will be reading them in the modern palatalized pronunciation (pinyin q-, j-, x-, IPA [ʨ], [ɕ]), but subtly preserving the contrast by pronouncing the "jian" 尖 variants of pinyin q-, j-, x- (Morrison-Medhurst ts-, s-) as [ʧ] and [ʃ]; while pinyin ch-, zh-, and sh- are retroflex ([ʈʂ] and [ʂ]).

[Kazbek]

Ariphron, I'll be glad to set this up for you. The MW is up. I've tweaked the filename.

Using modernized spelling in the MW is fine, but we can't supply our own translations in the recordings. You could include a clarification about Legge's tone nomenclature in the book summary.

Michael

[Ariphron]

Thanks, Michael.

I myself will get confused if I keep on saying "third tone" when I mean "fourth tone." I'd rather omit Legge's tone terminology and rely on my pronunciations of the words to convey the information he gives by naming the tones.

Perhaps better, I could use the standard English translations of the names of the classical tones, amounting to dereferencing of the abbreviations:

"upper 1st tone" = 陰平聲 or 上平聲 -> upper level tone
"lower 1st tone" = 陽平聲 or 下平聲 -> lower level tone
"up. 2d tone" = 陰上聲 -> upper rising tone
"low. 2d tone" = 陽上聲 -> lower rising tone
"up. 3d tone" = 陰去聲 -> upper departing tone
"low. 3d tone" = 陽去聲 -> lower departing tone
"up. 4th tone" = 陰入聲 -> upper entering tone
"low. 4th tone" = 陽入聲 -> lower entering tone

This solution is acceptable to me but not my first choice; the reason I avoid these translations is that it isn't clear whether the names of the tones were ever descriptive in any systematic way. They may simply have been exemplars, i.e. "the tone of 平 píng" etc. At any rate, these terms are ancient and not descriptive of modern dialects, and 上 and 入 are not good exemplars in Mandarin.

I might include a version of the table above in the description, supplying also the Mandarin tone reflexes. Perhaps if I list the pinyin of the Chinese terms in the note, they could be considered modernized English terminology and therefore acceptable in the recordings.

[Kazbek]

Our policy doesn't give much room for maneuver in terms of changing the text that is being read:

https://wiki.librivox.org/index.php/Recording_&_Text_Policies

The only exceptions that come to mind are expanding abbreviations and correcting typos. There's more leeway for skipping parts of the book that aren't part of the main text. For example, you as BC can decide to omit a footnote.

Michael

[Ariphron]

There's a better solution. After some digging, I have found Legge's 1895 revised edition, which converts romanization to a version of Wade's and tone numbers to the standard Mandarin tones. There are some typos and inconsistencies in the conversion, but these I can correct as I go, as far as the tone numbers go; inconsistencies in the romanization won't affect my pronunciation. I haven't found any substantive changes. The page numbers now run continuously from the prolegomena to the main text, and the English text was reset, but not the Chinese text; I'll want to consult the table of errata from the first edition when I read the Chinese text from the second edition. Incorrect Chinese characters in the notes appear to have been corrected.

1861 text:
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chinese_Classics.html?id=oG6HbL3METYC

1895 text:
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chinese_Classics.html?id=mXVFAQAAIAAJ

[Ariphron]

I've put the link to the 1895 edition in the first post, but apparently only an MC can change the date given for cataloging purposes. Michael, I think it makes sense to give 1861 as the date of first publication and 1895 as the copyright date of the edition from which I'm reading.

[Kazbek]

Great! I've updated the info in the database.

Moving the thread to Going Solo.

Michael

[Ariphron]

Section 1 is ready for PL.

[Ariphron]

Section 2 is ready for PL.

[Kazbek]

Section 1 is PL OK. Very enjoyable. I can PL section 2.

Michael

[Kazbek]

Section 2 is PL OK.

Michael

[Ariphron]

Thanks, Michael. When I get to the notes, explaining usage of one word after another, it will be a challenge to keep it enjoyable, but I'll do my best.