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Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese language|Chinese prose using grammar and vocabulary very different from any Chinese spoken language|modern spoken form of Chinese. Classical Chinese was used for almost all formal correspondence before the 20th century, not only in China but also in Korea, Vietnam and Japan. Among Chinese speakers, classical Chinese has been largely replaced by Vernacular Chinese (baihua), a style of writing that is much closer to modern spoken Chinese, while speakers of non-Chinese languages have largely abandoned Classical Chinese in favor of local vernaculars. Classical Chinese stems from Old Chinese, the spoken language of the later Zhou dynasty (10th century BC - 256 BC), especially the Spring and Autumn Period (722 BC - 481 BC). This language is the language used in many of China's most influential books, such as the Analects of Confucius, the Mencius, the Dao De Jing|Daodejing, etc. Starting from the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD), however (the specific time and process being disputed among scholars), spoken Chinese dialects evolved further and further away from those of the Zhou Dynasty. However, people continued to use the grammar and style found in Zhou Dynasty literary works in their formal writing, even while actual spoken forms of Chinese continued to evolve further and further away. This collection of emulated Zhou Dynasty grammar, vocabulary, usage and style then assumed its own existence as Classical Chinese, the formal written language of China. For the next two thousand years, as spoken Chinese eventually evolved into the modern Chinese spoken language|Chinese dialects, Classical Chinese was preserved and remained more or less static. This situation can be compared to the coexistence of the Latin language and the Latin-derived Romance languages in Europe. (The coexistence of Classical Chinese and the native languages of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam can be compared to the use of Latin in countries that natively speak non-Latin-derived Germanic languages or Slavic languages.) This also corresponds to the position of Classical Arabic relative to the various regional vernaculars. Although Classical Chinese is ideally a perfectly preserved fossil of Old Chinese usage (but see the comment on homophones below), it was influenced by later writers who unavoidably inserted usage and features from their own native spoken dialects into their writing. Chinese characters are not alphabetic and do not reflect sound changes, and the actual pronunciation of Old Chinese can only be tentatively reconstructed and is unknown outside linguistic circles. As a result, Classical Chinese has no universally fixed way of pronunciation. When reading wenyan, the Chinese characters are generally read with the pronunciations of the reader's own variety of Chinese, such as modern Mandarin (linguistics)|Mandarin or Cantonese. Other varieties of Chinese, such as Min-nan|Southern Min, have a special set of pronunciation used for Classical Chinese, as well as vocabulary and usage borrowed from Classical Chinese. Korean language|Korean, Japanese language|Japanese, or Vietnamese language|Vietnamese readers of Classical Chinese use systems of pronunciation specific to their own languages. (For example, Japanese speakers use On'yomi and (more rarely) Kunyomi, which are the ways kanji, or Chinese characters, are read when they are used to write in Japanese. Kunten, a system that aids Japanese speakers with Classical Chinese word order, was also used.) Since the pronunciation of Old Chinese or other forms of historical Chinese (such as Middle Chinese) have long been lost, characters which once rhymed in poetry often no longer do, or vice versa. Poetry and other rhyme-based writing thus becomes less coherent than the original reading must have been. However, some other modern Chinese dialects adhere more closely to the original pronunciations, as evident by the preservation of rhyme structures. Some Chinese speakers thus believe wenyan literature, especially poetry, sounds better when read with a southern dialect such as Cantonese (linguistics)|Cantonese or Southern Min (linguistics)|Min. Another phenomenon that is common in reading Classical Chinese is homophony, or words that sound the same. More than 2500 years of sound change separates Classical Chinese from any modern language or dialect, so when reading Classical Chinese in any modern variety of Chinese (especially Mandarin (linguistics)|Mandarin) or in Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese, many characters which originally had different pronunciations have become homonyms, making it impossible to orally communicate using Classical Chinese. There is a famous Classical Chinese essay written in the early 20th-century by linguist Y. R. Chao called the Lion Eating Poet in the Stone Den which illustrates this. It is perfectly comprehensible when read, but contains only words that are now pronounced "shi" in Mandarin. In addition, literary Chinese, by its very nature as a written language employing an logographic writing system, can often get away with the use of homophones that even in oral Old Chinese would not have been distinguishable in any way. The situation is analogous with some English words that sound the same, such as "meet" and "meat". These two words were pronounced /me:t/ and /mE:t/ (akin to modern "mate" and "met") respectively during the time of Chaucer, as evident by spelling. Today they sound the same, but are distinguished by spelling. English spelling is only a few centuries old and was in its original form a sound-based system, so such examples are not very common; the Chinese writing system is, by contrast, several thousand years old and logographic, so such examples are commonplace and exist for nearly all characters. Wenyan is distinguished from baihua by the use of different lexicon|lexical items (i.e., vocabulary) and a style that appears extremely concise and compacted to modern Chinese speakers. For example, wenyan rarely uses words composed of two Chinese characters; nearly all words are of one syllable only. This stands directly in contrast with modern Chinese dialects where two-syllable words are normal and very common. There is also a greater amount of pronouns present relative to the modern vernacular. In particular, whereas Mandarin has one general character to refer to the personal pronoun "me", Literary Chinese has several, many of which are used as part of 客套语 (honorific language). This phenomenon exists because two-syllable words evolved in Chinese to compensate for sound change: as sound changes occurred, words that originally sounded different begin to be pronounced in the same way, and thus have to be distinguished by other means. (Compare "pen"/"pin", identical in the American South, and distinguished only by saying "ink pen" and "safety pin".) Since Classical Chinese is an imitation of Old Chinese, it has almost none of the two-syllable words present in modern Chinese languages. For the same reason, wenyan is much more ready to drop subjects, verbs, objects, etc. when their meaning is understood or readily inferred; wenyan did not develop a subject inanimate pronoun ("it" used as a subject) until quite late. As a result, a sentence that may take 20 characters in baihua can often be rendered in wenyan in four or five. There are also differences in lexicon, especially in grammatical particles, as well as in syntax. In addition to grammar and vocabulary differences, wenyan can be distinguished by literary and cultural differences: an effort to maintain parallelism (grammar)|parallelism and rhythm, even in prose works, and its extensive use of cultural allusions often unfamiliar to modern readers, thereby also contribute to the brief style. Wenyan was the primary form used in Chinese literary works until the May Fourth Movement, and was also heavily used in Japan and Korea. Ironically, Classical Chinese was used to write the Hunmin Jeongeum (document)|Hunmin Jeongeum in which the modern Korean alphabet (Hangul) was promulgated and the essay by Hu Shi in which he argued against using Classical Chinese and in favor of baihua. Exceptions to the use of wenyan were vernacular novels such as The Dream of the Red Chamber, which was considered low class at the time. Today, pure wenyan is occasionally used in formal or ceremonial occasions. The National Anthem of the Republic of China on Taiwan (中華民國國歌, pinyin: zhōngh?a m?ng?o g?ogē), for example, is in wenyan. In practice there is a socially accepted continuum between baihua and wenyan. A person writing a letter that is otherwise in baihua might include wenyan expressions and phrases to express that the matter being discussed is formal or serious and important. A letter written completely in wenyan would be considered quaint and old-fashioned, but hardly wrong and/or incorrect. Most Chinese people with at least a middle school education are able to read basic wenyan, because the ability to read (but not write) wenyan is part of the Chinese middle school and high school curricula and is part of the college entrance examination. Wenyan is taught primarily by presenting a classical Chinese work and including a baihua gloss that explains the meaning of phrases. Tests on classical Chinese are often essentially translation exercises that ask the student to express the meaning of a paragraph in baihua, using multiple choice. In addition, many works of literature in wenyan (such as Tang Dynasty|Tang poetry) have major cultural influences. However, even with knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, wenyan can be extremely difficult to decipher, even by educated native speakers of Chinese, because of its heavy use of literary references and allusions as well as its extremely abbreviated style. Chinese_language Category:Classical languages Category:Chinese language Category:Japanese language Category:Korean language Category:Vietnamese language de:Wenyan ja:漢文 sv:Klassisk kinesiska This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Classical Chinese".
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