Old Written Chinese

Generally speaking, writing differs from speech to varying degrees in all languages, with the former more terse and compact than the latter. What makes Chinese outstanding in this respect is that for 2,000 years, its standard written language, wényán ‘classical literary language’, was almost completely divorced from the contemporary speech of its users.

Wényán looks to the style of writings prevalent in the period from the Spring and Autumn period to the Eastern Han dynasty for its grammatical and lexical norms. There is general consensus among Chinese linguists that, partly owing to the higher degree of independence of the logographic writing system to the phonetic details of actual speech in comparison with a phonographic writing system, and partly owing to general constraints imposed upon writing by the then available technologies, this discrepancy between spoken and written language existed from the very beginning. In its early stages, however, writing in Chinese followed speech more closely than was the case later. Detailed analysis of texts of the period demonstrates that the then prevalent written language contains a considerable number of elements of the vernacular, including those from diverse dialects of different areas. Local states and areas may also differ with regard to the script used.

After the emperor Qin Shihuang unified China for the first time in 221 BC, among the first things he did was to unify the writing system using the xiaozhuàn ‘small seal’ style, burning books written in other writing systems, and executing scholars who disagreed with the harsh measures.