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Classical Chinese information


This article is about a written language. For the canon of literature written in it, see Chinese classics. For the spoken language contemporaneous with its emergence, see Old Chinese. For the set of modern character forms, see Traditional Chinese characters.
"Wenyan" and "Wen Yan" redirect here. For the Tang dynasty Buddhist master, see Yunmen Wenyan. For the film director, see Vivian Qu.
Classical Chinese
Literary Chinese
古文 or 文言
RegionThe Sinosphere:
  • China
  • Japan
  • Ryukyu Islands
  • Korea
  • Vietnam
Era
  • Originally written c. 5th century BCE – c. 2nd century CE
  • Widely used as a literary language until the 20th century
Language family
Sino-Tibetan
  • Sinitic
    • Chinese
      • Classical Chinese
Writing system
Chinese characters
Language codes
ISO 639-3lzh
Glottologlite1248
Linguasphere79-AAA-aa
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Classical Chinese
Chinese name
Chinese文言文
Literal meaningliterary language writing
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese alphabet
  • Hán văn
  • cổ văn
  • văn ngôn
Chữ Hán
  • 漢文
  • 古文
  • 文言
Korean name
Hangul한문
Hanja漢文
Japanese name
Kanji漢文

Classical Chinese[a] is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from c. the 5th century BCE.[2] For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary Chinese, which was used for almost all formal writing in China until the early 20th century. Each written character corresponds to a single spoken syllable, and almost always to a single independent word. As a result, the characteristic style of the language is comparatively terse.

Starting in the 2nd century CE, use of Literary Chinese spread to the countries surrounding China, including Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and the Ryukyu Islands, where it represented the only known form of writing. Literary Chinese was adopted as the language of civil administration in these countries, creating what is known as the Sinosphere. Each additionally developed systems of readings and annotations that enabled non-Chinese speakers to interpret Literary Chinese texts in terms of the local vernacular.

While not static throughout its history, its evolution has traditionally been guided by a conservative impulse: many later changes in the varieties of Chinese are not reflected in the literary form. Due to millennia of this evolution, Literary Chinese is only partially intelligible when read or spoken aloud for someone only familiar with modern vernacular forms. Literary Chinese has largely been replaced by written vernacular Chinese among Chinese speakers; speakers of non-Chinese languages have similarly abandoned Literary Chinese in favour of their own local vernaculars. Although varieties of Chinese have diverged in various directions from the Old Chinese words in the Classical lexicon, many cognates can be still be found.

  1. ^ Nguyễn, Tri Tài (2002). Giáo trình tiếng Hán. Tập I: Cơ sở (in Vietnamese). Nhà xuất bản Đại học Quốc gia Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh. p. 5.
  2. ^ Vogelsang 2021, pp. xvii–xix.


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