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Quote:

Originally Posted by komitsuki (Post 772742)

Classical Chinese as in written Chinese language for the pre-1905 educated class in contrast to spoken Chinese language (Mandarin, Min, Wu, Yue).

Not so fast. From Wikipedia:

Quote:

While the terms Classical Chinese and Literary Chinese are often used interchangeably, Sinologists generally agree that they are in fact different.[1] "Classical" Chinese (古文 "Classical Chinese") refers to the written language of China from the Zhou Dynasty, and especially the Spring and Autumn Period, through to the end of the Han Dynasty (220 AD). Classical Chinese is therefore the language used in many of China's most influential books, such as the Analects of Confucius, the Mencius and the Tao Te Ching. (The language of even older texts, such as the Classic of Poetry, is sometimes called Old Chinese, or pre-Classical.)

Literary Chinese (文言文, "Literary Writing", or more colloquially just 文言) is the form of written Chinese used from the end of the Han Dynasty to the early 20th century when it was replaced by vernacular written Chinese. Literary Chinese diverged more and more from Classical Chinese as the dialects of China became more and more disparate and as the Classical written language became less and less representative of the spoken language. At the same time, Literary Chinese was based largely upon the Classical language, and writers frequently borrowed Classical language into their Literary writings. Literary Chinese therefore shows a great deal of similarity to Classical Chinese, even though the similarity decreased over the centuries.

As it stands, unless you can read Chinese, I doubt you can differentiate literary Chinese from 白話 (vernacular/spoken Chinese) on sight unless you assume everything written on parchment is literary Chinese.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz (Post 772809)

Not so fast. From Wikipedia:

As it stands, unless you can read Chinese, I doubt you can differentiate literary Chinese from 白話 (vernacular/spoken Chinese) on sight unless you assume everything written on parchment is literary Chinese.

In my case, I do have a decent background on literary (or "colloquially" classical) Chinese, thanks to my old style school curriculum in South Korea.

This is exactly like a short-hand convention for saying Classical Sanskrit, it actually means:

1. Vedic Sanskrit
2. Post-Panini Sanskrit

As a matter of fact, there is is no 100% strict boundary between them in Post-Panini case.

Quote:

Originally Posted by komitsuki (Post 773002)

As a matter of fact, there is is no 100% strict boundary between them in Post-Panini case.