Classical Chinese
This article needs additional citations for verification. (January 2023) |
Classical Chinese | |
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Literary Chinese | |
古文 or 文言 | |
Region | The Sinosphere: |
Era |
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Sino-Tibetan
| |
Chinese characters | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | lzh |
Glottolog | lite1248 |
Linguasphere | 79-AAA-aa |
Classical Chinese | |
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Chinese name | |
BUC | ùng-ngiòng-ùng |
Old Chinese | |
Baxter–Sagart (2014) | *mən ŋan mən |
- Hán văn
- cổ văn
- văn ngôn
- 漢文
- 古文
- 文言
Transcriptions | |
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Revised Romanization | hanmun |
Transcriptions | |
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Romanization | kanbun |
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 the Sinosphere in a form now called Literary Chinese, which was used for almost all formal writing in China until the early 20th century. Its use is roughly comparable to that of Latin across post-Roman Europe. 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 Chinese.
Over time, Literary Chinese began to be used in
Literary Chinese has largely been replaced by written vernacular Chinese among Chinese speakers; speakers of non-Chinese languages have similarly abandoned Literary Chinese in favour of their own local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.
Definition
There is no universal agreement on the definition of "Classical Chinese". At its core, the term refers to the language used by the classics of Chinese literature roughly from the 5th century BCE until the end of the
After the Han dynasty, the divergence of spoken language from the literary form became increasingly apparent.[4] The term "Literary Chinese" has been coined to refer to the forms of written Chinese in conscious imitation of the classics, characterized by the gradual addition of new vocabulary, as well as the erosion of certain points of Classical grammar and syntax as their functions were forgotten. Literary Chinese was used in almost all formal and personal writing in China from the end of the Han dynasty until the early 20th century, when it was largely replaced by written vernacular Chinese.[5] A distinct, narrower definition of the Classical period begins with the time of Confucius (551–479 BCE) and ends with the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE.[6][7]
Function
The
Literary Chinese was adopted in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature argues that this adoption came mainly from diplomatic and cultural ties with China, while conquest, colonization, and migration played smaller roles.[9] Unlike Latin and Sanskrit, historical Chinese language theory consisted almost exclusively of lexicography, as opposed to the study of grammar and syntax. Such approaches largely arrived with Europeans beginning in the 17th century. Christian missionaries later coined the term 文理 (wénlǐ; 'principles of literature', 'bookish language') to describe Classical Chinese; this term never became widely used among domestic speakers.[10][11]
Transmission of texts
According to the traditional "burning of books and burying of scholars" account, in 213 BCE Qin Shi Huang ordered the historical records of all non-Qin states to be burned, along with any literature associated with the Hundred Schools of Thought. The imperial library was destroyed shortly thereafter upon the dynasty's collapse in 206 BCE, resulting in a potentially even greater loss. Even those works from the Classical period that have survived catastrophes of this kind are not known to exist in their original forms; they are attested only in manuscripts copied centuries after their original authorship. The "Yiwenzhi" section of the Book of Han is the oldest extant bibliography of Classical Chinese, compiled c. 90 CE—of its 653 listed works, only 6% are known to exist in a complete form, with another 6% existing only in fragments.[12]
Grammar and lexicon
Classical Chinese is distinguished from written vernacular Chinese in its style, which appears extremely concise and compact to modern Chinese speakers, and to some extent in the use of different vocabulary. Classical Chinese rarely uses words of two or more characters. This stands directly in contrast with modern northern Chinese varieties including Mandarin, in which words two to four characters in length are extremely common. Disyllabic words are also common within southern varieties, but distinctly less so than in northern varieties. Over time, varieties acquired many polysyllabic words in order to disambiguate monosyllabic words with distinct pronunciations that had since converged in a given locale, becoming
Classical Chinese can be described as a
Classical Chinese has more pronouns compared to the modern vernacular. In particular, whereas modern Standard Chinese has one character generally used as a first-person pronoun, Classical Chinese has several—many of which are used as part of a system of honorifics. Many final and interrogative particles are found in Classical Chinese.[13]
Beyond differences in grammar and vocabulary, Classical Chinese can be distinguished by its literary qualities: an effort to maintain parallelism and rhythm is typical, even in prose works. Works also make extensive use of literary techniques such as allusion, which contributes to the language's brevity.
Modern use
Prior to the literary revolution in China that began with the 1919
Many works of literature in Classical and Literary Chinese have been highly influential in Chinese culture, such as the canon of
Personal use of Classical phrases depends on factors such as the subject matter and the level of education of the writer. Excepting professional scholars and enthusiasts, most modern writers cannot easily write in Literary Chinese. Even so, most Chinese people with at least a middle school education are able to read basic Literary Chinese, because this ability is part of the Chinese middle school and high school curricula, and is a component of the college entrance examination. Literary Chinese in the school curriculum is taught primarily by presenting a literary work and including a vernacular gloss that explains the meaning of phrases. The examinations usually require the student to read a paragraph in Literary Chinese and then explain its meaning in the vernacular.
Contemporary use of Literary Chinese in Japan is mainly in the field of education and the study of literature. Learning kanbun, the Japanese readings of Literary Chinese, is part of the high school curriculum in Japan.[16] Japan is the only country that maintains the tradition of creating Classical Chinese poetry based on Tang-era tone patterns.
Phonology
Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese readers of Classical Chinese each use distinct systems of pronunciation specific to their own languages. Japanese speakers have readings of Chinese origin called on'yomi for many words, such as for "ginko" (銀行) or "Tokyo" (東京), but use kun'yomi when the kanji represents a native word such as the reading of 行 in 行く (iku) or the reading of both characters in "Osaka" (大阪), as well as a system that aids Japanese speakers with a Classical word order.
Since pronunciation in modern varieties is different from Old Chinese or other historical forms such as Middle Chinese, characters that once rhymed may not any longer, or vice versa. Poetry and other rhyme-based writing thus becomes less coherent than the original reading must have been. However, some modern Chinese varieties have certain phonological characteristics that are closer to the older pronunciations than others, as shown by the preservation of certain rhyme structures.
Another particular characteristic of Literary Chinese is its present homophony. Reading Classical texts with character pronunciations from modern languages results in many homophonous characters that originally had distinct Old Chinese pronunciations, but have since merged to varying degrees. This phenomenon is far more common in Chinese languages than in English: for example, each of the following Old Chinese words originally had distinct pronunciations, but are now all pronounced yì [î] ⓘ in Mandarin:
*ŋjajs | 議; 'discuss' | *ŋjət | 仡; 'powerful' |
*ʔjup | 邑; 'city' | *ʔjək | 億; '100 million' |
*ʔjəks | 意; 'thought' | *ʔjek | 益; 'increase' |
*ʔjik | 抑; 'press down' | *jak | 弈; 'Go' |
*ljit | 逸; 'flee' | *ljək | 翼; 'wing' |
*ljek | 易; 'change' | *ljeks | 易; 'easy' |
*slek | 蜴; 'lizard'.[18] |
The poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den was written during the 1930s by the linguist Yuen Ren Chao to demonstrate this: it contains only words pronounced shi [ʂɻ̩] with various tones in modern Standard Chinese. The poem underlines how the classical language had become impractical for modern speakers: when spoken aloud, Classical Chinese is largely incomprehensible. However, the poem is perfectly comprehensible when read, and also uses homophones that were present even in Old Chinese.
Romanizations have been devised to provide distinct spellings for Classical Chinese words, together with pronunciation rules for various modern varieties. The earliest was the Romanisation Interdialectique by French missionaries Henri Lamasse of the Paris Foreign Missions Society and Ernest Jasmin, based on Middle Chinese, followed by linguist Wang Li's Wényán luómǎzì based on Old Chinese in 1940, and then by Chao's General Chinese romanization in 1975. However, none of these systems have seen extensive use.[19][20]
See also
Notes
References
Citations
- ^ 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.
- ^ Vogelsang 2021, pp. xvii–xix.
- ^ Norman 1988, pp. xi, 83.
- ^ Li 2020, p. 41.
- ^ Li 2020, p. 40.
- ISBN 978-0-521-68494-1.
The Classical period proper begins with Confucius (551―479 BC), and ends around the founding of the Qin Empire in 221 BC. The attested language of the period was probably not very different from cultured speech. The gap between the written and the spoken language began to develop in the Han dynasty (206 BC―AD 220) and increased naturally with time.
- ^ Pulleyblank 1995, p. 3, "The classical period proper begins with Confucius 孔子 (-551 to -479) and continues through the Warring States period to the unification and founding of the empire by Qin 秦 in -221. This was the period of the major philosophers and also of the first works of narrative history.".
- ^ Norman 1988, pp. 83–84, 108–109.
- (PDF) from the original on 2022-03-03.
- ISBN 978-0-804-70909-5– via Google Books.
- ISBN 3-805-00433-8– via Google Books.
The term "Wenli" (文理) was "an English word derived from Chinese roots but never used by the Chinese" (Yuen 1976, 25). The original meaning is "principles of literature (or: writing)," but by the missionaries of the last century it was coined to stand for Classical Chinese. For sinologues outside the missionary circle, the term "wenli" was not acceptable ("... what the missionaries persist in calling wen li, meaning thereby the book language as opposed to the colloquial"— Giles 1881/82, 151).
- ^ Vogelsang 2021, p. 262.
- ^ Brandt 1936, pp. 169, 184.
- ISBN 978-1-853-59483-0.
- ISBN 978-9-810-24486-6.
- ^ 文部省 (1951). 第七章 国語科における漢文の学習指導. 中学校 高等学校 学習指導要領 国語科編(試案) (in Japanese). Archived from the original on 2009-12-15.
- ^ Baxter & Sagart 2014, p. 239.
- ISBN 978-3-110-12324-1.
- ISBN 978-9-027-24785-8.
- ISBN 978-0-521-64572-0.
Works cited
- Baller, Frederick William (1912). Lessons in Elementary Wen-li. ISBN 978-0-524-09708-3.
- ISBN 978-0-199-94537-5.
- Brandt, J. J. (1936). Introduction to Literary Chinese (2nd ed.). H. Vetch – via Google Books.
- ——— (1973). Wenli Particles. Vetch and Lee – via Google Books.
- ISBN 978-0-608-18227-8– via Google Books.
- Dawson, Raymond Stanley (1984). A New Introduction to Classical Chinese (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-198-15460-0.
- Li, Yu (2020). The Chinese Writing System in Asia: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-90731-7.
- Morgan, Evan (1931). A Guide to Wenli Styles and Chinese Ideals: Essays, Edicts, Proclamations, Memorials, Letters, Documents, Inscriptions, Commercial Papers, Chinese Text with English Translation and Notes (2nd ed.). Christian Literature Society of China. Retrieved 1 March 2012 – via Google Books.
- ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.
- ISBN 978-0-774-80541-4.
- Rémusat, Abel (1822). Élémens de la grammaire chinoise, ou, Principes généraux du kou-wen ou style antique: et du kouan-hoa c'est-à-dire, de la langue commune généralement usitée dans l'Empire chinois (in French). Paris: Imprimerie Royale.
- Vogelsang, Kai (2021). Introduction to Classical Chinese. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-198-83497-7.
External links
- Classical Chinese for Everyone, Bryan Van Norden, 2004
- Chinese Notes: Introduction to Classical Chinese, Alex Amies, 2013
- Chinese Texts: A Classical Chinese course, Mark Edward Lewis, 2014
- Literary Chinese, Robert Eno, 2012–2013 (to access the book use provided PDF index file)
- A Primer in Chinese Buddhist Writings, John Kieschnick, 2015
- Classical Chinese Lexicon, John Cikoski, 2011.
- Microsoft Translator releases literary Chinese translation (Microsoft Translator Blog, August 25, 2021)