14 September 2006

三字经

Full credits to this post attributed to the fantastic Gutenburg Project (Traditional Chinese B5 encoding) and here (simplified Chinese GB2312 encoding).

As with everything else, there's a bit of revision history going on there. This thing was originally written ages ago, with versions littering throughout the ages. My personal chuckle (cool!) moment came when I read this (which apparently isn't in the 宋 version)

辽于金,皆称帝。太祖兴,国大明。号洪武,都金陵。迨成祖,迁燕京。十六世,至崇祯。阉乱后,寇内讧。闯逆变,神器终。清顺治,据神京。至十传,宣统逊。举总统,共和成。复汉土,民国兴。

What? okay, so we want to add in 明 dynasty history. Okay. but why are we using 十六世? And this 复汉土... does it refer to the end of the Second World War? It has to be, because it refers to the People's Republic, 民国. The previous part about proclaiming the President, that links in with the Republic, 共和.

This is the beauty of the Chinese language. One can parse history, people, nature, literature, everything, in three-word phrases. Ah. Beauty.

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