Sinographs 101 · Chapter 09

The master’s opening

The last of the little words — every one borrowed, every one everywhere:

Sign	Key	Says	Means	How to see it
者	who	zhě	the one who — turns a verb into its doer	the old picture is disputed; the grammar is not: X 者 is "the one who X-es"
其	its	qí	his, her, its, their	a winnowing basket on a stand — the basket moved out, the pronoun moved in
亦	also	yì	also, likewise	a person with two small marks under the arms — armpits, says the tradition, borrowed whole for "too"
于	at	yú	at, to, toward	origin disputed — the old preposition of the annals and the Songs
乎	really	hū	the breath that ends a classical question	a rising breath-mark: the spoken lift of "…is it not?"

者 makes doers: 知者, “the one who knows”; 仁者, “the humane one.” 其 possesses: 其心, “their hearts.” 亦 says too, 于 points at, and 乎 turns whatever came before it into a question hanging in the air. None of them can be drawn; all of them were borrowed; and together with chapter 05’s set they are the entire connective tissue of a classical sentence.

The wise and the humane, whole

The line this course has circled since chapter 02 — now at its fifth visit, and 者 was the last missing piece of its frame:

知者▢水，仁者▢山。zhī zhě yào shuǐ, rén zhě yào shān"the one who knows delights in water; the humane one delights in mountains" — only "delights" itself stays boxed, twice; everything else, both frames and both landscapes, is yours

Analects 6.23 — the fifth visit. urn:nabu:kanripo:KR1h0004:006:30a · license: attribution.

The opening sentence

The Analects begins with three questions. You have read the third since chapter 06. Here are the first two — the most famous opening in East Asian literature, read under your own power:

▢而▢▢之，不亦▢乎？xué ér shí xí zhī, bù yì yuè hū"to learn, and in season practice it — is that not a pleasure?" — the boxed words are "learn," "in season," "practice," "pleasure"; the grammar that carries them (而…之，不亦…乎) is all yours

不亦▢乎？bù yì lè hū"is that not a joy?" — the second question's famous close (a friend has come from far away), one box for the joy; the four-character phrase (bù yì lè hū) has meant "what could be better" for two thousand years

Analects 1.1. urn:nabu:kanripo:KR1h0004:001:1a · license: attribution.

Look at what you are actually reading in that first line: 而 hinges the clauses, 之 carries the object, 不亦…乎 wraps the whole in a warm rhetorical question. The content words are still boxed — and the sentence’s shape is already fully audible. That is the deepest lesson so far: classical prose stands on its little words, and the little words are now yours.

The basket and the bride

其 and 于 take their bow in the two oldest voices of the canon — the Laozi page you started on, and a wedding song:

▢中有▢大，而王▢其一▢。yù zhōng yǒu sì dà, ér wáng jū qí yī yān"within the bounds there are four greats, and the king occupies one of them" — the sentence that follows the four-greats line of the course's first page: 其一, "one of them," lands the count

之子于▢。zhī zǐ yú guī"this child goes to her wedding home" — the Peach Tree song's refrain: 之 as "this," 子 the bride, 于 pointing the way, one box for the homecoming; the song goes on "may she set her house right," with 其 for "her"

Line 1: Laozi 25 — the fourth fragment from chapter 00's first page · urn:nabu:kanripo:KR5c0057:025:1a. Line 2: Classic of Songs (Shijing), "Peach Tree" · urn:nabu:kanripo:KR1c0001:001:34a. Both license: attribution.

Where this leaves you

Fifty-five characters — one in every five characters of the entire classical corpus is now yours, and with them every way a character can mean: pictures, marks, stacked meanings, borrowed sounds, and sound-plus-sense compounds. The chapters that began with the busiest word in the world end with the busiest sentence: learn, and in season practice. That is this course’s whole foundation, laid. The next course does exactly what the sentence promises — 102 · Literary Chinese puts the sentence to work, grammar by grammar, on the real texts.