Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese using grammar and vocabulary very different from any 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.

Grammar and Lexicon

Wenyan is distinguished from baihua by the use of different lexical items (i.e., vocabulary) and a style that appears extremely concise and compact 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 first-person pronoun ("I"/"me"), Literary Chinese has several, many of which are used as part of 客套语 (honorific language), and several of which have different grammatical uses (first-person collective, first-person possessive, etc.).

Related Topics:
Lexical items - Chinese character - Syllable - Pronoun - Honorific - First-person collective - First-person possessive

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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 wenyan 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.

Related Topics:
Grammatical particle - Syntax

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In addition to grammar and vocabulary differences, wenyan can be distinguished by literary and cultural differences: an effort to maintain 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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Classical Chinese grammar and lexicon is also significantly different from that of Literary Chinese. For example, increasing use of 是 (Modern Mandarin shì) as a copula ("to be") rather than as a near demonstrative ("this"), and the appearance of 這 (Modern Mandarin zhè) taking its place as such, is a hallmark of Literary Chinese. Literary also tends to use far more two-character combinations than Classical.

Related Topics:
Copula - Demonstrative

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~