Vernacular Chinese
From Freepedia
| Vernacular Chinese | |
|---|---|
| Traditional: | 白話 |
| Simplified: | 白话 |
| Pinyin: | báihuà |
| Literal Meaning: | "plain language" |
Vernacular Chinese (pinyin: báihuà; Wade-Giles: paihua) is a style or register of the written Chinese language essentially modeled after the spoken language and associated with Standard Mandarin. This term is not to be confused with the various present-day vernacular spoken varieties of Chinese. Since the early twentieth century, Vernacular Chinese has been the standard of writing for speakers of all varieties of spoken Chinese throughout China, succeeding Classical Chinese, the former written standard used in China since the time of Confucius. The term Standard Written Chinese now often refers to Vernacular Chinese.
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 away from the written standard, as is the case in the history of many languages, and the written standard, still based on the Old Chinese of the Zhou Dynasty, was codified and fossilized into Classical Chinese, even as the spoken language evolved further and further away. 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 (变文 [變文] biànwén, "altered language") and yulu (语录 [語錄] yǔlù, "language record"), 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.
Jin Shengtan, who edited several novels in vernacular Chinese, is widely regarded as the pioneering champion 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 Hu Shi, Lu Xun, Chen Duxiu, and Qian Xuantong that Vernacular Chinese, or Bai hua, gained widespread importance. Classical Chinese became increasingly viewed as an archaic fossil hindering education and literacy, and, many suggested, social and national progress. 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 became 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 entirely unpunctuated), and the use of Arabic numerals.
Since the late 1920s, nearly all Chinese newspapers, books, and official and legal documents have been written in Vernacular Chinese. However, the tone/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.
See Chinese grammar for the grammar of the modern standard written language, which is Vernacular Chinese.
Some other vernacular variants of Chinese, notably Cantonese, Shanghainese and Hokkien / Taiwanese (Min Nan), utilize particular forms of the Chinese writing system, including 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 and legal records to accurately record dialogue and colloquial expressions.
| Chinese: spoken varieties | |
| Categories: |
Gan | Hakka | Hui | Jin | Mandarin | Min | Pinghua | Xiang | Wu | Yue |
| Subcategories of Min: | Min Bei | Min Dong | Min Nan | Min Zhong | Pu Xian | Qiong Wen | Shao Jiang |
| Note: The above is only one classification scheme among many. The categories in italics are not universally acknowledged to be independent categories. | |
| Comprehensive list of Chinese dialects | |
| Official spoken varieties: | Standard Mandarin | Standard Cantonese |
| Historical phonology: | Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Proto-Min | Proto-Mandarin | Haner |
| Chinese: written varieties | |
| Official written varieties: | Classical Chinese | Vernacular Chinese |
| Other varieties: | Written Vernacular Cantonese |
