This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters. Mojibake is the happenstance of incorrect unreadable characters (garbage characters shown when Computer software fails to render a text correctly according to its associated A Chinese character, also known as a Han character ( is a Logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi Japanese (

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. A literary language is a register of a Language that is used in Literary Writing. Written Chinese comprises the written symbols used to represent Spoken Chinese and the rules about how they are arranged and punctuated Grammar is the field of Linguistics that covers the Rules governing the use of any given natural language. The vocabulary of a person is defined either as the set of all Words that are understood by that person or the set of all words likely to be used by that person when constructing Spoken Chinese ( comprises many regional variants the largest of which are Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min. However, the distinction between Literary Classical and Literary Vernacular Chinese is blurry. Classical Chinese was once used for almost all formal correspondence before and during the beginning of the 20th century, not only in China but also (during various different periods) in Korea, and Japan. The twentieth century of the Common Era began on China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National Korea is a geographic area composed of two sovereign countries a civilization and a former state situated on the Korean Peninsula in East Asia. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Japan topics. Among Chinese speakers, Classical Chinese has been largely replaced by Vernacular Chinese (白話, báihuà), a style of writing that is similar to modern spoken Mandarin Chinese, while speakers of non-Chinese languages have largely abandoned Classical Chinese in favor of local vernaculars. Vernacular Chinese is a style or register of the Written Chinese Language essentially modeled after the spoken language and associated with

Literary Chinese is known as Hanmun (漢文, "Han writing") in Korean; as Kanbun (漢文, and "Han writing") in Japanese. Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. More specifically it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated The Japanese word originally meant " Classical Chinese writings Chinese classic texts, Classical Chinese literature "

Definitions

While the terms Classical Chinese and Literary Chinese are commonly used interchangeably, this might not be strictly accurate. Sinologists generally agree that they are in fact different things. Sinology in general use is the study of China and things related to China but especially in the American academic context refers more strictly to the study of classical language ^[1] By most academic definitions, Classical Chinese (古文, Pinyin Gǔwén, "Ancient Writing"; or more literally 古典漢語 Gǔdiǎn Hànyǔ "Classical Chinese") refers to the written language of China from the Zhou Dynasty, and especially the Spring and Autumn Period, through to the end of the Han Dynasty. Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most common Standard Mandarin Romanization system in use The Zhou Dynasty ( POJ: Chiu Tiau 1122 BC to 256 BC was preceded by the Shang Dynasty and followed by the Qin Dynasty in China. The Spring and Autumn Period ( was a period in Chinese history which roughly corresponds to the first half of the Eastern Zhou dynasty (from the second half of the 8th century BC The Han Dynasty ( 206 BC–220 AD followed the Qin Dynasty and preceded the Three Kingdoms in China. Classical Chinese is therefore the language used in many of China's most influential books, such as the Analects of Confucius, the Mencius and the Dàodéjīng. The Analects ( also known as the Analects of Confucius, are a record of the words and acts of the central Chinese thinker and philosopher Life Mencius also known by his birth name Meng Ke or Ko, was born in the State of Zou (simp The Tao Te Ching or Dao De Jing ( originally known as Laozi or Lao tzu ( is a Chinese classic (The language of even older texts, such as the Shījīng, is sometimes called Old Chinese. Shi Jing ( translated variously as the Classic of Poetry, the Book of Songs or the Book of Odes, is the earliest Old Chinese ( or Archaic Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese spoken from the Shang Dynasty ( Chinese )

Literary Chinese (文言文, Wényánwén, "Literary Writing", or more colloquially just 文言 Wényán) is the form of written Chinese used from the end of the Han Dynasty to the early 20th century when it was replaced by vernacular written Chinese (báihuà). The Han Dynasty ( 206 BC–220 AD followed the Qin Dynasty and preceded the Three Kingdoms in China. Vernacular Chinese is a style or register of the Written Chinese Language essentially modeled after the spoken language and associated with Literary Chinese diverged more and more from Classical Chinese as the dialects of China became more and more disparate and as the Classical written language became less and less representative of the spoken language. Spoken Chinese ( comprises many regional variants the largest of which are Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min. At the same time, Literary Chinese was based largely upon the Classical language, and writers frequently borrowed Classical language into their Literary writings. Literary Chinese therefore shows a great deal of similarity to Classical Chinese, even though the similarity decreased over the centuries.

This situation, the usage of Literary Chinese throughout the Chinese cultural sphere despite the existence of disparate regional vernaculars, is called diglossia. In Linguistics, diglossia is a situation where in a given society there are two (often closely-related languages one of high prestige, which is generally used It can be compared to the coexistence of the universal Latin language and the more local Latin-derived Romance languages in Europe, as well as to the position of Classical Arabic relative to the various regional vernaculars in Arab lands. Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, or Neolatin languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all Classical Arabic (CA also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad See Arabic languages for the historical family of dialects The Arabic language is a Semitic language with many varieties The Romance languages continued to evolve, influencing Latin texts of the same period, so that by the Middle Ages, Medieval Latin included many usages that would have baffled the Romans. Ancient Rome was a Civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC 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, or to the position of Arabic in Persia and India. The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family. The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages) a group of closely related Languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages The Persian Empire was a series of Iranian empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland and beyond in Western Asia India, officially the Republic of India (भारत गणराज्य inc-Latn Bhārat Gaṇarājya; see also other Indian languages) is a country

Pronunciation

The shape of the Oracle bone script character for "person" may have influenced that for "harvest" (which later came to mean "year"). Oracle bone script ( refers to incised (or rarely brush-written ancient Chinese characters found on Oracle bones which are animal bones or turtle shells used in Today, they are pronounced rén and nián. A hypothesized pronunciation for each character may explain the resemblance.

Chinese characters are not alphabetic and only palely reflect sound changes. A Chinese character, also known as a Han character ( is a Logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi Japanese ( An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a Phoneme, a Spoken language, either Sound change includes any processes of Language change that affect pronunciation ( phonetic change) or sound system structures ( Phonological change The tentative reconstruction of Old Chinese is an endeavor only a few centuries old. Old Chinese ( or Archaic Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese spoken from the Shang Dynasty ( Chinese As a result, Classical Chinese is not read with a reconstruction of Old Chinese pronunciation; instead, it is either read with the pronunciations of different varieties of Chinese, such as modern standard Chinese (Mandarin) or regional varieties such as Cantonese; or, in some varieties of Chinese (e. Standard Mandarin, also known as Standard Spoken Chinese, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan g. Southern Min), with a special set of pronunciations used for Classical Chinese or vocabulary and usage borrowed from Classical Chinese usage. The Southern Min language or Min Nan ( POJ: Bân-lâm-gú or "Southern Fujian" language refers to a family of Chinese languages Dialects (In practice, all varieties of Chinese combine these two extremes; Mandarin and Cantonese, for example, also have words that are pronounced one way in colloquial usage and another way when used in Classical Chinese or in specialized terms coming from Classical Chinese, though the system is not as extensive as that of Southern Min. )

Korean, Japanese, or Vietnamese readers of Classical Chinese use systems of pronunciation specific to their own languages. This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities Vietnamese ( tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ) formerly known under French colonization as Annamese ( see Annam) For example, Japanese speakers use On'yomi and (more rarely) Kun'yomi, which are the ways kanji, or Chinese characters, are read when they are used to write in Japanese. are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with Hiragana (ひらがな 平仮名 Katakana Kunten, a system that aids Japanese speakers with Classical Chinese word order, was also used. The Japanese word originally meant " Classical Chinese writings Chinese classic texts, Classical Chinese literature "

Since the pronunciation of all modern varieties of Chinese are different from Old Chinese or other forms of historical Chinese (such as Middle Chinese), characters which once rhymed in poetry may no longer do so (e. Middle Chinese ( or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern This article is about the poetic technique For the form of ice see Rime ice. g. rhyming occurs sometimes in Min, Cantonese but not as frequently in Mandarin), or vice versa. Poetry and other rhyme-based writing thus becomes less coherent than the original reading must have been. However, some modern Chinese dialects have certain phonological characteristics that are closer to the older pronunciations than others, as shown by the preservation of certain rhyme structures. Spoken Chinese ( comprises many regional variants the largest of which are Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min. Some believe wenyan literature, especially poetry, sounds better when read in certain dialects believed to be closer to older pronunciations, such as Cantonese or Southern Min.

Another phenomenon that is common in reading Classical Chinese is homophony, or words that sound the same. In Music, homophony (hoʊˈmɒfəni from Greek "homófonos" where ομοιο = the same and φωνή = a sound tone is a texture in which two or more 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) or in Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese, many characters which originally had different pronunciations have become homonyms. In linguistics a homonym is one of a group of words that share the same pronunciation but have different meanings and are usually spelled differently 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 contains only words that are now pronounced shī, shí, shǐ and shì in Standard Mandarin (the accents indicate the four tones). Yuen Ren Chao (1892 &ndash 1982 was a Chinese American linguist and Amateur Composer. The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den ( is a famous example of Constrained writing by Yuen Ren Chao which consists of 92 characters all with the sound shi Standard Mandarin, also known as Standard Spoken Chinese, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words It was written to show how Classical Chinese has become an impractical language for speakers of modern Chinese because Classical Chinese when spoken aloud is largely incomprehensible. However the essay is perfectly comprehensible when read silently because literary Chinese, by its very nature as a written language employing a 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. A logogram, or logograph, is a Grapheme which represents a word or a Morpheme (a meaningful unit of language

The situation is analogous to that of some English words that sound the same, such as "meet" and "meat". These two words were pronounced [meːt] and [mɛːt] respectively during the time of Chaucer, as evident by spelling. Geoffrey Chaucer (c 1343 – 25 October 1400? was an English author poet Philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and Diplomat. Today they sound the same, but are distinguished by spelling. However, such homophones are far more common in Literary Chinese than in English.

Grammar and lexicon

Wenyan is distinguished from baihua in its style that appears extremely concise and compact to modern Chinese speakers and to some extent the use of different lexical items (i. In Linguistics, the lexicon (from Greek Λεξικόν of a language is its Vocabulary, including its words and expressions e. , vocabulary). An essay in wenyan, for example, might use half as many Chinese characters as in baihua, even though the general sense of the writing remains the same. A Chinese character, also known as a Han character ( is a Logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi Japanese (

In terms of conciseness and compactness, for example, wenyan rarely uses words composed of two Chinese characters; nearly all words are of one syllable only. A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds This stands directly in contrast with modern Chinese dialects where two-syllable words are extremely common. This phenomenon exists, in part, because polysyllabic words evolved in Chinese to disambiguate homophones that result from sound changes. This is similar to phenomena in English like the pen/pin merger of the American South. The high front Vowels of English have undergone a variety of changes over time which may vary from dialect to dialect Because the two sound alike, a certain degree of confusion can occur unless one adds qualifiers like "writing pen" and "stick pin". Similarly, Chinese has acquired many polysyllabic words in order to disambiguate monosyllabic words that sounded different in Old Chinese but identical today. Since wenyan is an imitation of Old Chinese, it has almost none of the two-syllable words present in modern Chinese languages.

Wenyan has more pronouns compared to the modern vernacular. In Linguistics and Grammar, a pronoun is a Pro-form that substitutes for a (including a noun phrase consisting of a single Noun) with or 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 honorific language, and several of which have different grammatical uses (first-person collective, first-person possessive, etc. An honorific is a word or expression that conveys esteem or respect when used in addressing or referring to a person ).

For syntax, wenyan is always ready to drop subjects, verbs, objects, etc. In Linguistics, syntax (from Ancient Greek grc συν- syn-, "together" and grc τάξις táxis, "arrangement" is the when their meaning is understood or readily inferred. Also, parts of speech can change themselves easily: nouns used as verbs, adjective used as nouns, etc. In Grammar, a lexical category (also word class, lexical class, or in traditional grammar part of speech) is a linguistic category of words (or There is no copula in wenyan; the copula 是 (shì) in modern Chinese was originally a near demonstrative ("this", now replaced by 這 (zhè) in modern Chinese) in Old Chinese. Demonstratives are deictic words (they depend on an external frame of reference that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others

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 literary and cultural allusions, thereby also contribute to brevity. In Grammar, parallelism is a balance of two or more similar Words Phrases or Clauses The application of parallelism in sentence construction

Teaching and use

Wenyan was the main form used in Chinese literary works until the May Fourth Movement, and was also used extensively in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The May Fourth Movement ( was an anti- imperialist, cultural and political movement in early modern China. Classical Chinese was used to write the Hunmin Jeongeum proclamation 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. Hu Shih ( 17 December 1891 — 24 February 1962 born Hu Hung-hsing (胡洪騂 Hu Hongxing was a Chinese philosopher and Essayist (The latter is exactly parallel to the essay written by Dante in Latin in which he expounded the virtues of the vernacular Italian. ) 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. Dream of the Red Chamber (also Red Chamber Dream, Hung Lou Meng or A Dream of Red Mansions) ( originally The Story of the Stone

Today, pure wenyan is occasionally used in formal or ceremonial occasions. The National Anthem of the Republic of China, for example, is in wenyan. " National Anthem of the Republic of China " is the current National anthem of the Republic of China (ROC In practice there is a socially accepted continuum between baihua and wenyan. For example, most notices and formal letters are written with a number of stock wenyan expressions (e. g. salutation, closing). Personal letters, on the other hand, are mostly written in baihua, but with some wenyan phrases sometimes, depending on the subject matter, the writer's level of education, etc. Letters (and/or essays) written completely in wenyan today may be considered quaint, old-fashioned, or even pretentious by some, but may seem impressive to others.

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. Middle school or Junior High School serves as a "bridge" between the Elementary School and the High School High school is the name used in some parts of the world (in particular Scotland, North America and Australia) to describe an institution In formal education a curriculum (plural curricula) is the set of courses and their content offered at a School or University. 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 poetry) have major cultural influences. Literature is the Art of written works Literally translated the word means "acquaintance with letters" (from Latin littera letter The Tang Dynasty ( Middle Chinese: dhɑng (June 18 618&ndashJune 4 907 was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate" generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic However, even with knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, wenyan can be difficult to understand by native speakers of Chinese, because of its heavy use of literary references and allusions as well as its extremely abbreviated style. In general a reference is a relation between objects in which one object designates by linking to another object An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference or representation of or to a well-known person place event literary work myth, or work of art

See also

• Chinese language
• Sino-Japanese vocabulary
• Sino-Korean vocabulary
• Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
• Classical Chinese Wikipedia
• Classical Chinese writers

References