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Why is this text so extraordinarily difficult?


i__forget

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This is the text in question:

10月8日,在母亲灵位前写成《祭母文》,祭文追述慈母勤俭持家、爱抚子女、和睦邻里等优良品德:“吾母高风,首推博爱。远近亲疏,一皆覆载。恺恻慈祥,感动庶汇。爱力所及,原本真诚。不作诳言,不存欺心。整饬成性,一丝不诡。手泽所经,皆有条理。头脑精密,劈理分情。事无遗算,物无遁形。洁净之风,传遍戚里。不染一尘,身心表里”

It is taken from 
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/毛泽东
Does anyone understand it? Why is it so complicated and incomprehensible? Is this some sort of ancient/poetic Chinese? Thanks in advance!

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I do not have any problem understanding the first part (still a bit difficult), but after the colon it becomes harder mainly by the heavy usage of classical Chinese. For instance, I asked a native the meaning of "恺恻" and he didn't know either. Also, many words are different in Modern Chinese, like  吾 instead of 我, or 物 instead of 事. Anyway, a Chinese won't have any problem getting what the text wants to convey.

My native language is not English, but I think it may be more or less as hard as reading some English from 400 years ago.

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Yes , this text uses some older Chinese words that we don’t really use today. Like 吾。this mean “ I”.

 

if you use this word today in your daily conversations, some people might laugh because it is outdated to use this. 

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