Wednesday, March 16, 2022

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 32

率賓歸王

shuài bīn guī wáng

"Leaders and followers alike united under the king"

 

 率 is often pronounced lü, and means "rate" or "frequency," so the usage here threw me off. I know 賓 mainly from 賓賓, a delicious brand of rice cracker that one of my coworkers often brings in to share. I typically think of it as meaning "guest," but it also means "to serve/obey," hence its use here as "follower." Classical Chinese, as I've mentioned before, often allows any class of word be used as another class, e.g., a verb here being used as a noun—"one who obeys." 

"Leaders and followers," by the way, could just as easily be swapped for "rulers and ruled," as is the case in my copy of the 千字文.

I want to mention that I recently joined an online classical Chinese course offered by Outlier Linguistics. I'm lucky enough to already own the textbook, which is apparently pretty hard to obtain at the moment, and so far I'm really digging the class. John Renfroe, the teacher, is easygoing, deeply knowledgeable, and interacts well with students. Odds are if you're reading this blog, you've got some interest in classical Chinese, so I highly recommend signing up for the next Outlier course once this one finishes in a few months.


微臣
史大偉


 


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