Talk:Vernacular Chinese
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Along with the popularity of the vernacular language in books are the addition of punctuation : I assume, what is meant is: Wenyan did not use punctuation. Baihua did, which made it popular. Is this correct?
BTW: Did the change to horizontal writing coincide with this change?
Sebastian 18:18, 2005 Feb 28 (UTC)
- Classical Chinese traditionally employed no punctuation. I believe punctuation started to be used during the early 20th century for vernacular writing, and reprinting of classical Chinese texts had punctuation retroactively added. I'm not completely sure when the punctuation system was formalized though and have no sources on this unfortunately. It could be during the conventions regarding the adoption of Mandarin as the official spoken language and the adoption of Vernacular Chinese as the offical written language in the 1910s and 20s that it was formalized. Punctuation can be used in vertical writing as well, and the switch to horizontal was not officially done until the creation of the People's Republic of China in the 1950s. -- Umofomia 19:32, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
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- One more thing... Taiwan actually retained use of vertical writing for offical purposes until just recently (see [1]). However, newspapers, novels, and other daily writings continue to be written vertically. People from Hong Kong also traditionally write vertically, although officially it has been horizontal since their return to the PRC in 1997. The use of computers also makes it harder to continue the tradition of vertical writing. -- Umofomia 19:38, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
[edit] The name: Vernacular Chinese
Is this the standard English term for the modern Chinese written language? I would suggest the name could be confused with vernacular spoken Chinese, "vernacular written Chinese" would be clearer. In many academic works, "standard written Chinese" or "modern written Chinese" seem to be used much more widely used, and "vernacular Chinese" only used for the written language used in pre-20th C popular novels. LDHan 12:04, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Dialects?
These novels written in the vernacular during the Ming and Qing, which spoken dialect did they tend to represent? Was it still Mandarin even back then?70.48.41.175 19:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
