Classical Chinese Resources

It’s important to understand that most English-language resources for Chinese are geared towards modern Mandarin. Classical Chinese is usually read aloud in the native dialect of the modern speaker, whether Mandarin, Cantonese, et cetera; you will probably want to go with the Mandarin readings. Hence, the pinyin spelling given for a character in any modern dictionary is suitable, as are audio/video resources on how to accurately pronounce Mandarin (often labeled simply as “Chinese”). When consulting a general-purpose Chinese dictionary, keep in mind that the Classical sense may be the second, third or fourth definition given.

The stroke order demonstrations you’ll find on various websites are completely applicable.

Fonts

Every mainstream operating system, whether for desktop or mobile, includes decent Chinese font coverage these days. However, the Classicist might find the occasional unicode mystery box where a character ought be without an especially thorough font. This website uses Babelstone Han, an extremely comprehensive font that includes both Traditional and Simplified characters in an elegant serif style. Unfortunately, the font maintainer Dr. Andrew West has recently passed on, so I am worried that the website will eventually disappear. The license says the font “may be used and distributed freely for personal or commercial purposes.” As such, I have also uploaded my own copy you may download:

You might also want the Noto fonts if you don’t already have them. They were designed by Google for general-purpose modern use but should include almost every character you’ll realistically encounter in Classical texts. Unlike Babelstone, these fonts support different level of boldness. There are four:

Interestingly, the serif/sans distinction works the same way as Western typography: the serifs (or more strictly, brush stroke hooks) represent an old-fashioned, serious style while sans strokes of even thickness are modern and more casual.

If you specifically need a low-resolution pixel font (Classical roguelike?), the most comprehensive option is the 16x16 Unifont. It has both Traditional and Simplified and uh, pretty much everything else (cursive writing systems like Arabic and Devanagari are a no-go however). If the OTF format does not work for your application, go to this page and download the TTF from the list at the bottom of the page. Note that this font is actually split into two files (the second has “upper” in the name); the base one is likely sufficient for your needs but grab the “upper” one if anything’s missing. They also provide bitmap images of every character in the font.

Online Dictionaries

The singly most comprehensive free online resource in English for Chinese characters is good’ ol Wiktionary. Simply paste the character directly into the search box on the English version of the site. Simplified characters will mostly just have an entry telling you to look at their Traditional form, so skip straight to that to save time. Wiktionary is so comprehesive that it’s visually overwhelming, and you might have to scroll down quite a bit to find the simple definition of a character. It has information on historical forms, etymology, pronunciation across various dialects/languages including reconstructed Old and Middle Chinese, stroke order animations…

Zi Tools is only partly in English, but has a lot of information on character history combined from other resources.

Zdic has only a little English (usually just a basic literal definition) but I have found it often pops up with an answer when I am struggling to understand the meaning of a multi-character idiomatic phrase.

Pleco is a very good dictionary for simply understanding the meaning of a character or common phrase, but oddly, there’s only a mobile app available (no website interface) even though it’s free with no ads. They sell optional add-on dictionaries. It has its own built-in handwriting input that works even if your phone doesn’t have a Chinese input set up.

Classical Primary Sources

The main English-centric website for online copies of Classical texts is the Chinese Text Project aka ctext. It defaults to Traditional, there is a Simplified toggle in the upper left (“简体”). They have their own dictionary which may help you track down an especially obscure sense of a word. Some texts have an interlinear English translation, but most of these are public domain and nnnot the best… James Legge my nemesis

The Chinese edition of Wikisource has an enormous amount of original texts.

If you’re competent to delve into the Chinese internet, there’s plenty of ebook files kicking around with nicely formatted Classical text and commentaries. My Simplified printed copies all come from scouring Ali Express, but it’s hard to find them because the product information has all been machine translated to English, resulting in things like 礼记 the Book of Rites being listed as “Gift Notes”…

Textbooks

Classical Chinese for Everyone by Bryan W. van Norden is a short, light, and affordable introduction that’s meant to not scare you off. It does not assume you already know anything at all. However, it’s only going to give you a vague impression of the basics, and doesn’t impart enough solid grammar and vocabulary information to enable you to tackle texts on your own. It uses Traditional characters but provides Simplified forms when defining.

Classical Chinese: A Functional Approach by Kai Li and James Erwin Dew is my #1 favorite textbook that I found the most helpful. However, you absolutely must have a working knowledge of modern Chinese to get much out of it, at least a solid HSK3, ideally HSK4. (It both assumes you already know plenty of common characters and that you can understand a translation from Classical to Modern Mandarin, which they prefer over translating to English as it’s less wibbly.) It gives much more concrete, actionable information on the grammar and has many well-chosen examples. It is available in both Traditional (green cover) and Simplified (orange cover) editions.

Language of the Dragon by Gregory Chiang is a reader that is recommended by the publishers to be paired with Functional Approach above. I haven’t read it yet but it appears to be in Traditional. And actually, most dragons prefer Basque.

A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese by Paul F. Rouzer is big, thick, heavy and professorly. As you might expect, it does not acknowledge the existence of Simplified.