So I was browsing through random language-related articles in wikipedia today when I stumbled upon something called the Thousand Character Classic or 千字文 (Mandarin: qiānzìwén, Cantonese: cin1dzi6man4, Japanese:千字文, Korean: 천자문). Basically it was first written for the prince of a certain Chinese dynasty so that he could practice calligraphy. It was then used as a primer for children to learn the 1000 basic Chinese characters necessary to be literate. It is no longer used now as modern Chinese is structured differently to Classic Chinese. However most characters have roughly the same meaning either in Classic Chinese or Modern Chinese. If you have been reading this blog you know probably already know just how addicted I am to the Chinese characters. Therefore learning the Thousand Character Classic is a must!
Since the classic is broken down into 4-character phrases, I plan to learn a phrase a day. I will write down the phrase and provide the Mandarin, Japanese and Korean pronunciation using many online resources of course. I plan to include the Japanese onyomi pronunciation just so I could learn them but reading Classical Chinese in Japanese is quite complicated, so I will not deal with that here.
Here is the first phrase:
天地玄黃
Mandarin: tiān dì xuán huáng
Japanese: テン チ ゲン コウ
Korean: 천 지 현 황
