104
K. M. A. BARNETT
Now what, in Cantonese, are the things considered essential (and included); inessential (to be excluded unless there is positive reason to put them in). And which are the accepted models?
Here I'm going to make myself unpopular again. One of the principal models followed by Cantonese speakers, whether they have read him or not, is Mencius. Yes, I know: Mencius wrote in what is called Late Archaic Chinese which is very different from modern Cantonese. True. But the differences (apart from pronunciation, and no one really knows how Mencius was pronounced) the differences are quite small; of vocabulary, not of structure. Where a word has gone out of use, replace it by a current word, maybe a pair of words. The structure, the order of the words, seldom needs changing.
When drafting the notes for this talk I did have it in mind to inflict on you some readings from Mencius, in amplification of my point. But besides being too time-consuming, that is not necessary. It is all of ten years since a grammatical analysis of Late Archaic Chinese was published by W. A. C. H. Dobson of Toronto, and I invite your attention to his book19. Besides, Mencius is not the only model. Ssŭma Chien is another. For those who seriously want to find out what makes Cantonese tick, I suggest read aloud with a Cantonese teacher the first two books of Mencius, making him paraphrase them in modern Cantonese (you'll be able to do the rest of the books without him); then the same with the SIR-GE120.
Now I'm not suggesting you read the whole of the SIR-GEI with a teacher. You'll be in too much of a hurry. And the learning of a language is something that won't be hurried. So pick, for your reading, a few chapters: fortunately this enormous history is in self-contained chapters or "books". I'd say skip the first 5 BUURN-GEE2 and read CREONN-CIRWRONQ22 and his son JRI-SAI, XRONG JRYR24 (Vol. 7) and XON GHOWZOO25 (Vol. 8). Then leave the BUURN-GEE2 and take two of the SAI-GHAAH26 I suggest CRAY TAAI-GHUNQ?27 (Vol. 32) and XURNG-ZIR28 (Vol. 47). Then as many of the
19 Late Archaic Chinese, University of Toronto Press, 1959.
23 二世(皇帝)
20 史記 25 漢高祖
21 本紀 22 秦始皇(本)
28 孔子
26 世家
27 齊太公
24 項羽