Vernacular Chinese encyclopedia topics

History

During the Zhou Dynasty, Old Chinese was the spoken and written form of Chinese, and was used to write classical Chinese texts. Starting from the Qin Dynasty, however, spoken Chinese began to evolve faster than the evolution of written Chinese. The difference gradually grew larger with the passage of time. By the time of the Tang and Song dynasties, people began to write in their vernacular dialects in the form of bianwen and yulu and the spoken language was completely distinct from the still-maintained written standard of Classical Chinese. Those not educated in Classical Chinese—almost the entirety of the population—could understand only very little of the language. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, vernacular dialects began to be used in novels, but were not generally used in formal writing, which continued to use Classical Chinese.

Literature in Vernacular Chinese

Jin Shengtan, who edited several novels in vernacular Chinese, is widely regarded as the pioneer of literature in the vernacular style. However, it was not until after the May Fourth Movement in 1919 and the promotion by scholars and intellectuals such as Columbia University educated libertarian Hu Shi, Japanese educated leftist Lu Xun, Chen Duxiu, and leftist Qian Xuantong that Vernacular Chinese, or Bai hua, gained widespread importance. In particular, The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun is generally accepted as the first modern work to fully utilize the vernacular language.

Classical Chinese became increasingly viewed as an archaic fossil hindering education and literacy, and, many suggested, social and national progress by the politically left. The works of Lu Xun and other writers of fiction and non-fiction did much to advance this view. Vernacular Chinese soon came to be viewed as mainstream by most people. Along with the growing popularity of vernacular writing in books in this period was the acceptance of punctuation, modeled after that used in Western languages (traditional Chinese literature was almost entirely unpunctuated), and the use of Arabic numerals.

Since late 1920s, nearly all Chinese newspapers, books, and official and legal documents have been written in Vernacular Chinese. However, the tone or register and the choice of vocabulary may be formal or informal, depending on the context. Generally, the more formal the register of Vernacular Chinese, the greater the resemblance to Classical Chinese. Since the transition, it has been, however, extremely rare for a text to be written in predominantly Classical Chinese. Only educated speakers have full reading comprehension of Classical texts, and very few are able to write proficiently in Classical Chinese. Classical Chinese is taught throughout mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau although they operate in completely different education systems. However, proficiency differs greatly among these jurisdictions. Proficiency in Classical Chinese is higher among high school graduates in Taiwan (possibly aided by the fact that use of traditional characters has always been maintained in Taiwan), whereas Hong Kong was a British Crown Colony of over 100 years prior to 1997 heavily emphasized written English than vernacular Chinese in their education system.

Other variants

Some other vernacular variants of Chinese, notably Cantonese, Shanghainese and Hokkien / Taiwanese (Min Nan), include additional and adapted characters for writing texts that reflect the language as spoken. Unlike Vernacular Chinese, these written forms have not been standardized and are used in informal contexts only. They are most commonly used in commercial advertisements, song lyrics sang colloquially in native dialect, and legal records to accurately record dialogue and colloquial expressions.