Classical Chinese

Literary form of written Chinese

Classical Chinese is the style of Chinese language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from c. the 5th century BCE. For millennia thereafter, the syntax of written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary Chinese, which was used for almost all formal writing in China until the early 20th century. Compared to modern vernacular Chinese, each written character in Classical Chinese almost always corresponds to a single independent word, and as a result the language is characteristically terse and can be difficult to understand for readers without literary training and experience. Starting in the 2nd century CE, use of Literary Chinese spread to surrounding countries that were heavily influenced by Chinese culture such as Vietnam, Korea, Japan and the Ryukyu Islands, where it represented the only known common form of writing for a long time in those countries' history.

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