Written vernacular Chinese
| Written vernacular Chinese | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 白話文 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 白话文 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hanyu Pinyin | báihuàwén | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | "plain speech writing" | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
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| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | báihuàwén |
| Bopomofo | ㄅㄞˊㄏㄨㄚˋㄨㄣˊ |
| Wade–Giles | pai2-hua4 wen2 |
| Wu | |
| Romanization | bah入 gho去 ven |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Jyutping | baak6 waa2/6 man4 |
| Southern Min | |
| Hokkien POJ | pe̍h-oē bûn |
Written Vernacular Chinese (simplified Chinese: 白话文; traditional Chinese: 白話文; pinyin: báihuàwén) refers to forms of written Chinese based on the varieties of Chinese spoken throughout China, in contrast to Classical Chinese, the written standard used during imperial China up to the early twentieth century. A written vernacular based on Mandarin Chinese was used in novels in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and later refined by intellectuals associated with the May Fourth Movement. Since the early 1920s, this modern vernacular form has been the standard style of writing for speakers of all varieties of Chinese throughout mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore as the written form of Modern Standard Chinese. This is commonly called Standard Written Chinese or Modern Written Chinese to avoid ambiguity with spoken vernaculars, with the written vernaculars of earlier eras, and with modern unofficial written vernaculars such as written Cantonese or written Hokkien.
During the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC), Old Chinese was the spoken and written form of Chinese, and was used to write classical Chinese texts. Starting from the Qin (221 BC), however, spoken Chinese began to evolve faster than the evolution of written Chinese. The difference gradually grew larger with the passage of time. By the time of the Tang and Song dynasties (618–1279), people began to write in their vernacular dialects in the form of bianwen and yulu (simplified Chinese: 语录; traditional Chinese: 語錄; pinyin: yǔlù; literally: "language record"), and the spoken language was completely distinct from the still-maintained written standard of classical Chinese. The majority of the population, not educated in classical Chinese, could understand very little of written or printed texts. During the Ming and Qing (1368–1912), vernacular language began to be used in novels, but formal writing continued to use classical Chinese.
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