In the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the common people spoke about the same as they do today,

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 "roll" bamboo slips, it is necessary to delete the unimportant words.

It can be said that "classical Chinese" is the world's earliest "compressed" format for written records.

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.

The first "text" is the meaning of a written article. "Yan" means to write, express, record, etc. "Wenyan", that is, the written language, "Wenyan" is relative to the "spoken language", and the "oral language" is also called the "vernacular".

The last "text" is the meaning of works, articles, etc., and it refers to the genre of literature.

"Classical Chinese" means "an article written in written language." And "vernacular writing" means "writing in a commonly used and straightforward spoken language". For example, right now, "Have you eaten?"”。

In ancient China, there was a difference between expressing the same thing in "spoken language" (colloquial language) and "written language" (written language), for example, if you want to ask someone if they have eaten, in oral language, it is "Have you eaten?".In written language, it is "Rice no?".”。

"Rice no" is the classical Chinese, here, the noun "rice" is used as a verb, which means to eat.

Before 1919, all articles in China were written in classical Chinese. Nowadays, we generally refer to "ancient texts" as "classical Chinese".

In the thousands of years of Chinese history, the spoken language has changed greatly, but classical Chinese has maintained a similar format. Classical Chinese allows speakers of different languages to "write and talk", and is a method of communication that has a fixed format but is not very difficult.

Roughly before the Tang Dynasty, especially in the pre-Qin period, there was little difference between speech and composition, such as the Book of Songs and Chu Ci, which contained a large number of folk languages, oral languages and dialects at that time.

Around the time of the Han Dynasty, the clerical and spoken languages began to separate, but they were not completely separated.

It was not until the Sui and Tang dynasties of the Northern and Southern Dynasties that the true sense of literary and vernacular was initially formed. "Vernacular" refers to "a type of written Chinese." It was formed on the basis of spoken language since the Tang and Song dynasties, and was initially only used for popular literary works, such as the variations of the Tang Dynasty, the texts of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, **, etc., as well as some academic works and official documents after the Song and Yuan dynasties.

It was not until after the 'May Fourth' New Culture Movement that it was widely used in the whole society. Vernacular literature is relative to classical Chinese (which is a written style based on the spoken language of the pre-Qin period, regarded the classic works of the Qin and Han dynasties as a paradigm, and formed with the continuous strengthening of the mainstream feudal ideology), that is, articles written in the vernacular, also known as linguistic style.

Actually, it's quite different.

In ancient times, the vernacular spoken by ordinary Chinese people was the ancient vernacular, which was formed in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties periods, and basically Ganbao's "Sou Shen Ji" was written in this ancient vernacular of the Wei and Jin dynasties.

The ancient vernacular developed in the Tang and Song dynasties, and the vernacular of this period is reflected in the book as the Zhiwei ** represented by the Tang legend.

The development of the Chinese vernacular is mainly reflected in the ** circulated among the people. Mandarin is an improved version of the northern dialect and is very different from the ancient vernacular.

At least in pronunciation, there is a big difference, the pronunciation of ancient Chinese is called "Nanyin" today, and its pronunciation is relatively close to the dialects of Guangdong and Fujian provinces today.

There are more wild histories in the Tang, Ming and Qing dynasties, and there are more prosperous times in the Tang, Ming and Qing dynasties.

The Tang, Ming and Qing dynasties were more economically prosperous and thus culturally prosperous, while the Song Dynasty had many wars.