Mandarin-Classical Chinese dictionaries?

[Renacido]

I know there's probably not much of an interest to write in Classical Chinese these days, but still, out of curiosity I would want to know if there are any dictionaries being published for people wanting to write in Classical Chinese rather than reading texts only.

[Hugh]

As in a dictionary where you look up modern words and get the classical equivalents? The difficulty with it is that there's no clear line between classical / literary / modern. They're not separate languages, so you can't just have an index of conversions x -> y. You'd have to know what period of written Chinese you were aiming for, and then check that the binomes etc. you want to use existed then, which I imagine would be extremely hard. Sticking to single characters would help (文言 tends to be more monosyllabic, after all) but even then there's a lot of variation across the centuries. And then there are cross-over texts like 浮生六记 - most of that is covered by a modern dictionary, but it's still considered Literary Chinese.

Really I'd say writing in a literary style today is more about grammar and style than vocabulary. Perhaps modern written style guides aimed at a literary style might be more useful than dictionaries. People do still write this way so there must be resources for it.

[Jane_PA]

If you mean Chinese 文言文-白话文 dictionary，I am sure you can get one in China. But if you asked about a 文言文-英语 dictionary，then I am not sure.

[Daan]

I've never seen any, although you may want to look into this book. It may be of help, although it obviously won't get you writing like whoever penned the Analects. Then again, I'm not sure that's the style you should be aiming for.

You could also look into Fanfan's blog (misplaced the address, though it should be easy to find), which is also written in a sort-of Classical Chinese. And there's a an edition of Wikipedia in Wenyan, too.

[Kenny同志]

I am afraid a wenyan dictionary will be of very limited use to aid you in your writing in wenyan. Ancient Chinese didn’t speak wenyan, but educated people could write in elegant wenyan because most of what they read was wenyan.

Read enough, imitate the authors, and you will be able to write in decent wenyan.

There’re still people writing in wenyan. Take a look at this: http://www.iwenyan.com/

[Hofmann]

I've asked the Classical Chinese professor in my university on how one can practice writing, and he said one can only read.

[knickherboots]

Hofmann: Based on the the existence of websites of www.iwenyan.com and the 文言文 entries in Wikipedia, it seems obvious that there are opportunities to practice writing, so I don't understand that professor's statement. Maybe he thought, like many, that there appears to be no practical reason to "practice writing," which is a different issue.

[Michaelyus]

I imagine the comment is in the same vein as those who compose music in a particular style, e.g. fugues in the style of JS Bach. The style is quite definite, and aberrations are easily spotted, hence the 'absorption' of the style is primary.