This is the best part of that article:
Whereas modern Mandarin is merely perversely hard, classical Chinese is deliberately impossible. Here's a secret that sinologists won't tell you: A passage in classical Chinese can be understood only if you already know what the passage says in the first place. This is because classical Chinese really consists of several centuries of esoteric anecdotes and in-jokes written in a kind of terse, miserly code for dissemination among a small, elite group of intellectually-inbred bookworms who already knew the whole literature backwards and forwards, anyway.
It's actually very true. People usually are taught or already have knowledge of what a passage of, say, the Analects actually means and then they go to the text to discern the meaning of the characters and how, when combined, they form the meaning and alternate meanings that they were taught previously.
However, this is where this author is mistaken - you don't need to learn modern Mandarin or any form of modern Chinese to learn classical Chinese. In fact, if you only want to learn classical Chinese, you could just go straight to it. This is a bit of a myth that Chinese people like to circulate around, probably out of pride. I was told, when enquiring about a certain institution's Chinese language program, that Classical Chinese is only for graduate students who have a strong basis in modern Mandarin. Totally false. Having the basics of vocabulary, grammar, and idea forming of any east Asian language - Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or Vietnamese - is enough for you to start learning the classical language. The only use I've had for modern Chinese is for using online search engines and karaoke.
Anyone on this forum who is a Matteo Ricci fan like me needs only a few books to start learning classical Chinese:
Textbooks:
1) An Introduction to Classical Chinese (or the republished version, A New Introduction to Classical Chinese) by Raymond Stanley Dawson
2) A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese by Paul Rouzer
3) An Introduction to Literary Chinese by Michael A. Fuller
4) Chinese through Poetry by Archie Barnes
5) Du's Handbook of Classical Chinese Grammar by Archie Barnes
6) Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar by Edward Pulleybank
Reading Material:
1) Confucian Analects translated by James Legge (Dover)
2) Mencius translated by James Legge (Dover)
3) Tao Te Ching translated by John Wu (be sure to buy the one with Chinese text)
The Dawson textbook and the Rouzer textbook are pretty basic. Fuller gets into some difficult readings, but after you've completely mastered any one of these three books, you should be able to read independently.
Recommendations #4 and #5 I have not reviewed myself, except for what Amazon previews allow - they seem very good though, and Chinese Through Poetry has gotten excellent reviews.
#6 is universally recommended as *the* book to get.
Dover Publications sells James Legge's translation of The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, the Analects (these three are all included in the Confucian Analects book), and the Mencius. These editions have the original Chinese, Legge's English translation, his explanatory notes, and his complete dictionary of all the characters that appear in the text. Indispensible.
John Wu's translation of the Tao Te Ching also includes the original Chinese along with his English translation.
Learning Classical Chinese does have it's advantages - for one thing, one does not need to worry about a complicated grammar system like Latin or French. You just absord the style of writing of the ancients and copy it. Another thing is that there are no tenses to learn - you just add characters to indicate past, present, future, etc.
It's a fascinating language.
Will be very useful in the future, for the evangelization of China.