Classical Chinese - Definitions

Definitions

While the terms Classical Chinese and Literary Chinese are often used interchangeably, Sinologists generally agree that they are in fact different. "Classical" Chinese (古文; pinyin: gǔ wén, "ancient writing") 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 (AD 220). 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 Tao Te Ching. (The language of even older texts, such as the Classic of Poetry, is sometimes called Old Chinese, or pre-Classical.)

Literary Chinese (文言, pinyin: wényán, "written language"; in modern Chinese it additionally got a suffix 文, pinyin: wén means "text", "writting": 文言文) 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. During this period the dialects of China became more and more disparate and thus the Classical written language became less and less representative of the spoken language. Although authors sought to write in the style of the Classics, the similarity decreased over the centuries due to their imperfect understanding of the older language, the influence of their own speech, and the addition of new words.

Literary Chinese is also known as Wen-li (Chinese: 文理; pinyin: wén lǐ; Wade–Giles: wen-li. Christian missionaries appropriated the word "wenli", which the Chinese used to define as "principles of literature", to refer to literary Chinese. Only missionaries used "wenli" to refer to literary Chinese; the Chinese and non missionary Sinologues did not use the term "wenli", and viewed it as incorrect.

This situation, the usage of Literary Chinese throughout the Chinese cultural sphere despite the existence of disparate regional vernaculars, is called diglossia. It can be compared to the position of Classical Arabic relative to the various regional vernaculars in Arab lands, or of Latin in medieval Europe. 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. The coexistence of Classical Chinese and the native languages of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam can be compared to the use of Latin in countries that natively speak non-Latin-derived Germanic languages or Slavic languages, to the position of Arabic in Persia or the position of the Indian language, Sanskrit, in Southeast Asia, Tibet, China and Indonesia.