Does anyone still use Literary Chinese?

[trien27]

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.

I'd disagree: Those southern dialects which used to be in the north were first comers way before Mandarin & Putonghua were in use.

Hakka*, Min* & Yue* are totally different than Putonghua.

*Hakka = groups of nomadic peoples who don't have a steady "home", so they are called "guest families", where they travel all over China and settled in different parts, and speak Hakka & Cantonese, most of the time.

Min = people from Fujian province, whose dialect is closer to Teochiu dialect, than Mandarin. Teochiu / Chiu chow, etc... is in Kwangtung province.

Yue = Cantonese speakers, which can be in Hong Kong, or Kwangchow, which is Pinyinized to "Guangzhou", which is somewhat wrong being that Guangzhou is based on Mandarin and Kwangchow is a based on Cantonese pronunciation of the Provincial capital of Kwangtung province, pinyinized to "Guangdong".

None of the southerners can easily learn Putonghua, because their "home" dialects are so vastly different from Putonghua. I guess whoever wrote the above quite doesn't speak any southern dialects, because if they did, they won't be saying that Putonghua is easy to learn for southerners. It is only easy when the words and pronunciations are similar, which doesn't occur most of the time.

Writing in 文言文 is difficult because in those days when it was written everyone spoke their own dialect. Each group would think that a certain saying or poem sounds better in their own dialect. Some poems when read aloud would not rhyme in Mandarin but would rhyme in other dialects and vice versa [sorry, I do not like using Latin words, but if I don't here, no one would understand]. Is that a 文言文 problem or a modern Mandarin problem? I haven't the slightest clue.

Edited August 8, 2009 at 05:09 PM by trien27

[wushijiao]

That Classcial Chinese Wikipedia is interesting. It would be nice to have a forum in which 文言文 were used for discussing current events. (Mark Young, you seem pretty pasionate about this. Why not set up such a site and get rich and famous like Roddy!)

The demographics and linguistic backgrounds of the contributors - I am guessing that given the articles are all in Traditional Chinese, that the writers are mainly Hong Kong and Taiwan based.

That would be interesting to know. On the one hand, I tend to see more Classical used in the HK media. But on the other hand, I think that, on average, there are more hardcore history buffs in the Mainland, and the amount and variety of history books you can buy about the most obscure topics is much greater in the Mainland, perhaps due to economies of scale (for example, you can go to the history book store in Shanghai, which is opposite the foreign language bookstore. It's a hstory-lover's paradise). Many of those books rely on a lot of source material that is in 文言文

[trien27]

The demographics and linguistic backgrounds of the contributors - I am guessing that given the articles are all in Traditional Chinese, that the writers are mainly Hong Kong and Taiwan based.

That's only a major possibility. Chinese people from Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Norway, Germany, Russia, USA, etc... and other southeast Asian countries write in Traditional Chinese, or Simplified or a mix of everything plus their own invented form of writing, and speaks Cantonese, Mandarin or other dialects.

It's due to the fact that people from any country/region which primarily doesn't speak Chinese and or use Traditional Chinese which makes it seem like those authors and publishers, which are Chinese and do use Traditional Chinese are just from Hong Kong and Taiwan exclusively. That's because they have to deal with the language of their currently "home" country first.

Edited August 8, 2009 at 05:32 PM by trien27
additional information

[Mark Yong]

wushijiao wrote:

It would be nice to have a forum in which 文言文 were used for discussing current events.

Actually, the concept of using a classical language for current events online is not an entirely new idea. There is a Finnish website that does news broadcasts in Latin:

http://www.yleradio1.fi/nuntii/

Would love to do something for Literary Chinese... though, I doubt very much that I will get rich in the process! And perhaps if our Literary Chinese-literate counterparts in Japan and Korea jump on-board, it could spur the return of Literary Chinese as a common written medium across the Oriental nations.

trien27 wrote:

That's only a major possibility. Chinese people from Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Norway, Germany, Russia, USA, etc... and other southeast Asian countries write in Traditional Chinese, or Simplified or a mix of everything plus their own invented form of writing, and speaks Cantonese, Mandarin or other dialects.

It's due to the fact that people from any country/region which primarily doesn't speak Chinese and or use Traditional Chinese which makes it seem like those authors and publishers, which are Chinese and do use Traditional Chinese are just from Hong Kong and Taiwan exclusively. That's because they have to deal with the language of their currently "home" country first.

I am not so sure about that. Literary Chinese does require special study in order to be able to read it, let alone write in it. For the countries you have listed, where Chinese language education exists, I would venture to guess that they would use Modern Standard Chinese (baihuawen) rather than Literary Chinese, and that those who can write in Literary Chinese would be the (very much) older generation.