Vernacular Chinese

Vernacular Chinese is written Chinese shaped by spoken language rather than classical literary conventions. Modern vernacular prose, especially the national written standard, became dominant in the twentieth century.

Classical Chinese: The concise literary written language used in China for centuries, modeled on ancient texts and distinct from everyday speech. Vernacular reform defined itself against this established written standard.
Written Chinese: The system of writing used to represent the Chinese language, encompassing historical and contemporary written forms. Vernacular Chinese is one major style within the wider written tradition.
Modern Chinese literature: Chinese literature produced since the late nineteenth century amid political, social, and linguistic transformation. Vernacular prose became its dominant literary medium.
Literary Chinese: The traditional written language of East Asia, based on classical Chinese texts and used across multiple regions. Its prestige and conventions are the principal historical counterpart to vernacular prose.
May Fourth Movement: A cultural and political movement that began in China in 1919 and advocated intellectual, literary, and social reform. Its writers made vernacular prose a vehicle for cultural renewal.
Modern Standard Chinese: The standardized modern form of Chinese based primarily on the Mandarin spoken in Beijing. It supplies the principal linguistic basis of modern vernacular writing.
Chinese newspaper: A periodical publication that reports news and commentary in Chinese. Newspapers helped circulate accessible vernacular prose to expanding publics.
Classical Chinese grammar: The grammatical patterns of classical Chinese, a compact written language distinct from modern spoken varieties. Vernacular writing favors structures closer to modern usage than these classical patterns.
New Culture Movement: An intellectual movement in early twentieth-century China that challenged traditional values and promoted new forms of education and literature. Its advocates argued that accessible vernacular writing could transform public culture.
Baihua: A Chinese written style modeled more closely on contemporary speech than on classical literary Chinese. Baihua names the vernacular literary style central to the modern transition.

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