Does anyone still use Literary Chinese?

[user111]

I mean seriously use it and not just for artistic or entertainment purposes. I'm just wondering if anyone is aware of a "Living wenyanwen" type group (like Living latin)?

There's a classical chinese wikipedia...so..?

[Hofmann]

I use it when writing to my family. Either that or Cantonese or a mixture of both.

[Mark Yong]

I try to use the Literary Chinese model in my writing as much as is practically possible. E.g. vocabulary-wise, I always use 此 instead of 這, 彼 instead of 那, 如此 instead of 這樣, 偌 instead of 這麼, etc.

It's just my way of making a personal statement that my personal disfavour for putonghua does not mean in any way that I do not love the Chinese language. My views and opinions (read: lamentations) on putonghua killing off the dialects has been well-recorded in several other posts on this website.

[leeyah]

Literary Chinese is still used as it's English name says in 'literary' language, in writing, but also as a respectful form of speech (eg. in business: 贵公司, etc).

如此，务必, 难以 & 为(for 给), 于(for 在) etc are widely used in newspapers, essays and personal correspondence (敬请, 多多指教, 此致 etc) where the higher the level of politeness, the more it is used.

Sometimes now quite obsolete wenyan words are also used in puns, eg. mock-Confucian-style puns with the final '也', etc, or mixed with 'common' words eg. inserted to modify set phrases, which can be very funny. I believe it is also a status marker, as it is used mainly by the educated. Definitely worth learning.

[wushijiao]

As others have pointed out, classical Chinese still lives on in modern Standard Chinese, especially in its more formal or academic registers.

If you are an intermediate to advanced learner and are looking to understand more formal texts, I'd highly recommend "Expressions of Written Chinese", which has a whole detailed 150 page section covering which classical patterns are still widely used in Standrad Chinese, and there 白话/ Spoken Putonghua equivalents.

Example:

Classical: 见之于。。。。

白：NP在。。。。中表现出来 / NP表现在。。。

English: NP can be seen though...

Classical: 品味见之于细微之处。

English: Taste can be seen through small things.

白：品味在细微之处表现出来。

My views and opinions (read: lamentations) on putonghua killing off the dialects has been well-recorded in several other posts on this website.

I can't say that I agree. Putonghua is inanimate, of course. It is people with their political and social views about languages and dialects (and the role that those should play in society) that are killing off dialects.

[chenpv]

Talk to a 算命先生 or 老中医 an you will be delighted. They use literary Chinese for occupational purposes.

[Ah-Bin]

There isn't really a "Living Latin" movement, because Wenyan isn;t entirely dead yet. There are still writers who write their books and essays exclusiviely in Wenyan. They are mostly very old. The ones I know about were those wise enough to leave in forty-nine, I'm there are some old professors in the PRC who still write everything in Wenyan. The book 南明史 (History of the Southern Ming) was written as late as the 1960's entirley in Wenyan within the borders of the PRC.

I think the good thing about Wenyan was that, although it was difficult to learn, it put all Chinese on equal footing in relation to their written language, as opposed to modern written Putonghua, which privileges northerners as it is closer to their native spoken language, but further from the languages spoken in the south.

[gato]

I think the good thing about Wenyan was that, although it was difficult to learn, it put all Chinese on equal footing in relation to their written language, as opposed to modern written Putonghua, which privileges northerners as it is closer to their native spoken language, but further from the languages spoken in the south.

True, but it's also true that Putonghua is closer to everyone's spoken language than Wenyan is. It's much easier for southerners to learn putonghua, too.

[wushijiao]

I think the good thing about Wenyan was that, although it was difficult to learn, it put all Chinese on equal footing in relation to their written language, as opposed to modern written Putonghua, which privileges northerners as it is closer to their native spoken language, but further from the languages spoken in the south.

I agree, but, one also has to look at why people who speak a dialect other than Putonghua chose to write in Standard Chinese (with its strong reliance on the dialect of Putonghua). When I lived in the PRC, I had simply assumed that it was because the government would not allow people to write in dialects, which is basically true. But, in Hong Kong, a place that has always taken a laissez faire view towards language use, most native Cantonese speakers choose to write in Standard Chinese when writing about any subject that is considered “weighty”, serious, important, official, or that involves China as a whole.

Why is this the case? I strongly suggest people who are interested in dialects read Don Snow’s “Cantonese as a Written Language” because he goes into fascinating depth about these issues over a few hundred pages. But in summary, people chose to write in Standard Chinese for a variety of reasons, but the most important are (in no particular order):

- Standard Chinese is often seen as prestigious, and to some degree, it is seen as the inheritor to Classical Chinese and the inheritor of China's political and historic glory. So, writing in Standard self-identifies oneself with China, whereas writing in dialect would identify oneself with a smaller and more limited “in group”.

- Written Cantonese is often seen as “vulgar”, (while the vulgar aspects of spoken Putonghua are often less known by native HKers). It’s important to note that most dialects, when they are first written, often go through a phase of being seen as “vulgar” or simply the domain of lightweight issues (such as celebrity gossip, fashion…etc).

- By writing in Standard Chinese, one can communicate with the broader Chinese community.

- Even in pre-白话 days, Cantonese speakers, by and large, wrote in Classical, which was not based on the their spoken language anyway and was hard to learn. Therefore, a tradition has been ingrained in people that they should, to some degree, distrust their intuition about following how they speak when writing compositions. For young children learning to write in Standard Chinese in primary school, this tradition has been carried on, and many people become suspicious of trusting one’s mouth as a guide to the formal standards written with the pen, to a large extent.

- Standard Chinese isn’t entirely hard to master for the southerner who receives a decent education (as most do nowadays), and thus the degree to which it impedes communication isn’t seen as all that great, especially by the educated and the elites (who formulate these things).

- Parents and educators often tend to think that writing in dialects sets a bad standard for children.

- People are often unaware of the extent to which Standard Chinese relies on Putonghua.

Of course, that is just my re-cap of the issues raised by Don Snow, and any errors are attributable to me. My main point is that, if one were to suggest that people should write in Classical or in dialects as an act of rebellion, of sorts, against an oppressive, semi-imperialist language policy, I think it actually doesn’t quite capture the rationale and motivations for why people often choose to write in Standard Chinese when they actually have other options.

[Mark Yong]

gato wrote:

...it's also true that Putonghua is closer to everyone's spoken language than Wenyan is.

I am not so sure about that. The 閩 Min dialects, for instance, have lexicons that, due to centuries of geographic isolation from the mainstream development of Chinese, has retained a large vocabulary of words from the Classical Chinese lexicon. I feel that we tend to think ptuonghua is closer to most of the spoken languages because of its relative similarity to Cantonese.

wushijiao wrote:

Parents and educators often tend to think that writing in dialects sets a bad standard for children.

True, but isn't putonghua technically a dialect, being derived from the Beijing dialect? Looking through the older dictionaries, we find that words in putonghua that we often take for granted, e.g. 這 and 那 for demonstrative particles, did not carry those definitions in the standard written vocabulary of the time, but were rather the dialectal usages of the words in the North.

Also, we should not forget that just over a century ago, Literary Chinese was also read and understood by the educated elite of Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Continuation of the teaching of Literary Chinese in the Oriental nations today (in Japan, it is known as 漢文 kanbun) today could perhaps have better-bridged communication ties.

[Lu]

True, but isn't putonghua technically a dialect, being derived from the Beijing dialect?

'Technically' it's pretty difficult to define what is a dialect and what a language. If Putonghua is a dialect, that makes one wonder what language it is a dialect of.

Minnanese has more vocab in common than Putonghua has, but from what I've learned of it, the grammar differs as much from classical Chinese grammar as Putonghua grammar does.

[Ah-Bin]

'Technically' it's pretty difficult to define what is a dialect and what a language. If Putonghua is a dialect, that makes one wonder what language it is a dialect of.

Making the distinction between these two terms is difficult, and I have posted before on why the terms should not be used at all. However the technical definition of "dialect" used by linguists is "any variation of a language". Non-specialists are used to using the word as a term for non-standard varieties of speech, or those considered vulgar. But according to anyone who uses the term in a technical sense in linguistics, Putonghua is nothing more than the "standard dialect of Chinese".(Chinese = 汉语 not 普通话)

The word to describe a non-standard dialect is "patois" or 土话, neither of these words sound very nice, though.

This was also in the Chinese translation of Peter Trudgill's "Sociolinguistics" 社会语言学, I think it was "方言是一个语言的变体", no mention of standards or non-standard. I haven't read much else from Chinese linguists, but it is probably politically unwise to suggest that the regime's use of 方言 in opposition to 语言 is not completely accurate.

Thumbs up to Wushijiao for the summary of Snow. My way of thinking is similar: certain attitudes and prejudices against writing in something that approximates non-standard Chinese have simply been transferred from Classical Chinese to written Mandarin. This may still change some time in the future, after all, only a century has passed since people ceased to look on writing in Mandarin as a vulgar exercise.

I am not so sure about that. The 閩 Min dialects, for instance, have lexicons that, due to centuries of geographic isolation from the mainstream development of Chinese, has retained a large vocabulary of words from the Classical Chinese lexicon.

Indeed...and some types of Min like Hainanese have a high proportion of words from the indigenous Li (Hloi) languages as well.

[calibre2001]

I think the good thing about Wenyan was that, although it was difficult to learn, it put all Chinese on equal footing in relation to their written language, as opposed to modern written Putonghua, which privileges northerners as it is closer to their native spoken language, but further from the languages spoken in the south.

I had always wondered whether the written vernacular language(白話文學) used in the past is indeed mandarin or just 'chinese'. I'm talking about the type you find in 西遊記,水滸 etc. It seems to resemble 'mandarin' in terms of grammar, words along with classical chinese. In any case it looks like northern 'mandarin' had already enjoyed widespread use long before it became the today's standard spoken 'chinese'.

See a similar discussion posted here

白話

[wushijiao]

@Mark Young- Keep in mind, I was simply just trying to re-cap some of the point in Snow’s book, without putting a value judgment on the validity of the arguments. I think some HK parents think, “I don’t want my son/daughter reading violent and vulgar comics and magazines in written Cantonese because it is a waste of time. If they read Standard Chinese materials, they’ll being using their time productively and will be able to better master Standard Chinese, giving them better grades in school”. This, in fact, is the attitude of my Cantonese teacher, ironically. She does not approve of written Cantonese, and thinks it’s a bad influence on children.

Personally, I’m all in favor of writing in dialects, and I think writing in Classical Chinese, as a way to communicate with other East Asians and as a way to further one’s knowledge of historical texts, is also an interesting idea. But, at the same time, I don’t think those ideas should be seen in opposition to learning Putonghua or being able to write in Standard Chinese.

[gato]

I think writing in Classical Chinese, as a way to communicate with other East Asians is also an interesting idea.

It's easier for Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese to learn English than Classical Chinese, I think.

Classical Chinese was already a language of the elite in China. I'm sure when it was used as an official written language in Korea, Japan and Vietnam, it was the language of an even more select elite.

[wushijiao]

It's easier for Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese to learn English than Classical Chinese, I think

Hehe... true. I think the only Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese likely to learn classical are those who already study Mandarin or those who are history geeks. In either case, it would be limited to a fairly small elite.

[Mark Yong]

calibre2001 wrote:

I had always wondered whether the written vernacular language(白話文學) used in the past is indeed mandarin or just 'chinese'. I'm talking about the type you find in 西遊記,水滸 etc.

From my understanding, it was considered as written Chinese, but classified as vulgar written Chinese at that time (in the same way written colloquial Cantonese stands in relation to Putonghua today). That said, it was already a sign of things to come, i.e. that the Northern dialect would eventually be chosen as today's modern written standard - for the Northern dialect was the one dialect that, compared to the other dialects, had an established literature (even if it was considered vulgar) as far back as the 17th century.

wushijiao wrote:

This, in fact, is the attitude of my Cantonese teacher, ironically. She does not approve of written Cantonese, and thinks it’s a bad influence on children.

I think the problem with Cantonese writing in Hong Kong - or, for that matter, dialectal writing anywhere today - is that because the absence of any standards or norms has resulted in it degrading into a vulgar form of writing.

One example of what your teacher would probably consider as a bad language culture is the injudicious use of 假借字 loan words. For instance, 'to give' in Cantonese is 'bei', which should really be written as 畀 (check 康熙字典, it defines the character as 賜也). But because Standard Chinese (read: Putonghua) has now been the accepted written standard in educated Hong Kong, this word has now been obscured by its synonym in Putonghua, i.e. 給. As a result, when people need to specifically write the Cantonese word 'bei', they end up using the incorrect substitute 俾. Little wonder, then, that dialect writing is seen as vulgar!

That said, I agree that writing in a 'standard language' has the positive effect of pulling the writers and the readers back to some semblance of 'norm' and 'linguistic correctness'. One only needs to listen to a literate (by 'literate', I mean the ability to read and write Chinese in some standard form or other) speaker vs. an illiterate speaker to hear the difference.

wushijiao wrote:

I don’t think those ideas should be seen in opposition to learning Putonghua or being able to write in Standard Chinese.

Fully agree. To clarify, insofar as discrimination towards dialects and dialect-based writing is concerned, I suppose my discontent lies mainly with China and Singapore's language policy of promoting Mandarin at the expense of the dialects, that's all. As you correctly pointed out, "...it is people with their political and social views about languages and dialects" that are to blame, not the language itself.

[wushijiao]

Fully agree. To clarify, insofar as discrimination towards dialects and dialect-based writing is concerned, I suppose my discontent lies mainly with China and Singapore's language policy of promoting Mandarin at the expense of the dialects, that's all. As you correctly pointed out, "...it is people with their political and social views about languages and dialects" that are to blame, not the language itself

Thanks. Just to be clear, I'm a fan of dialects (I'm trying to learn Cantonese), Putonghua, and 文言文!

I, too, wish that the PRC would loosen its grip on language policy. I think people, at this point, would all be compelled to learn Putonghua in an organic process (without the State doing anything), and at the same time, writing in dialects could allow for more creativity. But, I don't think the trends are boding well for dialects in written or spoken form in the mass media:

http://www.danwei.org/language/too_much_dialect_on_the_small.php

[Hofmann]

It seems people are still a bit fuzzy on what a dialect is and what a language is. A language is something mutually intelligible. Mandarin and English are languages. A dialect is a variety of a language. Beijinghua and Western American English are dialects. Cantonese and Mandarin are different languages. (A lot of people might argue against me on this, but frankly, they're idiots, so ignore them.) What most people call "Cantonese" is Standard Cantonese, which is identical to the Cantonese in Guangzhou. Another Cantonese dialect is Taishanese.

The written form of Cantonese isn't standardized, partially because of the reasons in listed in wushijiao's post. I have a feeling that if it were standardized, I would not like the standard. The current spoken standard didn't follow the acrolect, so if the written standard does the same, the standard written Cantonese would look quite barbaric indeed. That is why I encourage people to use the correct characters when writing Cantonese.

[calibre2001]

Well I see some confusion between spoken and written languages. We can certainly agree that dialects are spoken 'languages' but has little or no history of being written languages. Hence 假借字 as mentioned.

I understand the concern of promoting spoken mandarin over spoken dialects but I don't see how so for written mandarin. Traditionally, chinese has always been a family of languages with a single writing system. It was once CC that played the role of the latter, now it is Mandarin. For dialect speakers, it would make no difference since they are still writing something they don't speak.