Is today s classical Chinese really the style used by the ancients? How did the ancients communicate

There are several important points on this issue, and we often speak of vernacular and classical Chinese. Due to the misleading information, many people think that the current vernacular is called vernacular, and the ancient is classical Chinese. So I'm curious why it's different.

In fact, there is a misunderstanding here. It can be easily understood that vernacular is a spoken language and classical Chinese is a written language. This means that in ancient times, it was still vernacular when it was spoken, but when it was necessary to communicate in writing, it was classical Chinese.

There are two main reasons for this difference.

First, the writing medium is very expensive and must be streamlined.

The reason for this is that in ancient times, it was very expensive to use as a carrier for writing words, whether it was the earliest oracle bones, or later silk, in the later bamboo sticks, and later paper were not easy to obtain, and the cost was very high.

In order to save costs, it is necessary to be concise and concise in order to save as much paper as possible. Before papermaking, the writing of the characters was bamboo sticks, and they were rolled up before a chapter was written, which was called a volume, so there was an idiom that opening the book is beneficial.

Aside from the cost, the light weight is very heavy, a book may cost dozens of catties or even hundreds of catties, the average person's physical strength is not good to move, the idiom is rich in five cars, this is the phenomenon, these five cars of books may not even have a full set of hundreds of schools.

Second, the recording must be fast and streamlined.

In ancient times, the monarch and the Son of Heaven often set up historians, and the job of these historians is to record their words and deeds.

These historians must refine the spoken language into written language, otherwise they will not be able to keep up at all, and they may miss important conversations, and bamboo sticks, pen and ink are all costs that need to be saved. This led to the formation of classical Chinese over time.

This method of writing became the specialty of the literati. In order to maintain a sense of superiority, they have always rejected vernacular writing, even if it is spoken.

The turn of the vernacular.

This habit continued until the advent of movable type printing, because of the improvement of paper and printing technology, so that cost was not the main constraint, from the Song Dynasty there were vernacular books, the more mature the technology, the more vernacular the text.

This is a cost consideration, not something else. However, due to the resistance of the literati, the development did not go smoothly, and it was not until a large number of foreign students returned to China that the vernacular language completely emerged, and gradually acquired classical Chinese as a written language.

This change is due to the fact that a large number of international students have returned to China to bring new ways of thinking, on the one hand, because the vernacular is easier to understand, and classical Chinese requires a solid knowledge of literature.

In the end, the distorted history thinks that the loss of the vernacular and the death of the written language may be an irreparable loss to our culture, which is the lifeblood of thousands of years. but was once abandoned.

It is indeed used by the ancients, but the ancients generally used vernacular Chinese when communicating, and classical Chinese is just a style written by the ancients.

Classical Chinese has its general rules in the syntax of the line, it can not be said to be ancient Chinese, but only a style of Chinese literature, during the Han Dynasty in China, classical Chinese has been separated from the daily spoken language, the development of two-sided trend. A colloquial language that has gradually developed into an easy-to-understand way of communication. The other is moving towards a written development trend and has become a retro written style.

Today's classical Chinese is the ancient genre. In ancient times, the cost of recording and disseminating was high, so the concise and concise style of classical Chinese was adopted. In ancient times, common people mostly used vernacular to communicate, and scholars also used vernacular Chinese, but they would mix some classical Chinese.

Yes, the classical Chinese we learn now is indeed the style used by the ancients to communicate, but the people at that time felt that it was daily life, just like us when we spoke Mandarin, and did not think that it was a very high literary achievement.

Classical Chinese is a style used by the ancient literati, that is, by those who went to school and were officials. Ordinary people don't use this kind of style, they can't understand this style, they all use vernacular.

It's simple. First of all, we must understand the relationship between language and writing, and language and writing do not arise at the same time. If the language comes first and the text comes later, then the text is a record of the language and forms a phonetic script; If the words come before and the language comes later, then the words are a record of the meaning, forming a file of the disadvantages of the words.

Chinese characters are ideograms, so there are characters first, and then in phonetics, forming language. It can be seen that at the beginning, it was communicated in literary language. But then the large number of Chinese characters is created, and the prominent problem is that the number of human pronunciations cannot keep up, which leads to a particularly large number of accented characters.

Classical Chinese, which is expressed in the basic meaning of a single word, is not up to the task of language communication, and is used in written language. So what to do with talking? Increase the number of syllables, put two words together and form a word, after the number of syllables increases, the meaning will naturally be expressed more, so that the vernacular is formed.

The ancients did not speak classical Chinese.

Reasons for the paragraph: 1. The first "Wen" of "Wenyan" means beautiful, "Yan" is written, expressed, and recorded, "Wenyan" is written language, and the last "Wen" is Yuanzhou for works and articles, which indicates the type of language, and "Wenyan" is relative to "oral language".

2. Classical Chinese is a kind of written language in ancient China, which mainly includes the written language formed on the basis of the spoken language of the pre-Qin period.

3. In ancient times, people had a very low education rate, and they only used literary language when writing articles, and the common people did not understand literary language, and spoke dialect-type vernacular.

Classical Chinese is a processed written language based on ancient Chinese. It may have been processed in the earliest written language based on spoken language. Classical Chinese is a written language composed of ancient Chinese texts, mainly including written languages formed on the basis of the spoken language of the pre-Qin period.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the items used to record the text have not been invented, and the recorded text is bamboo slips, silk and other things, and the silk ** is expensive, the bamboo slips are bulky and the number of words recorded is limited, in order to be able to write down more things on the "one roll" bamboo slips, the unimportant words will be deleted. Later, when "paper" was used on a large scale, the ruling class's habit of using "official documents" had been formalized, and the use of "classical Chinese" had evolved into a symbol of reading and literacy. Classical Chinese is relatively vernacular Chinese, and its characteristics are written on the basis of words, focusing on allusions, battles, and neat rhythms, including strategies, poems, words, songs, eight strands, and ancient Chinese and other literary styles.

In order to make it easier to read and understand, classical Chinese in modern books is generally marked with punctuation marks.

Large points: a subset of scripture and history.

There are many subdivisions: poems (ancient poems, near-style poems, rhythmic poems, quatrains, words, songs, yuanqu, music, folk songs, limerick poems), books, tables, strategies, treatises, chronicles, words, fu, prose (ancient texts, pun style), **, legends, miscellaneous plays, excerpts, sketches, couplets, lantern riddles, riddles, sacrificial texts, congratulatory speeches, inscriptions, list texts, notices.