Written vernacular Chinese
[1] A style based on vernacular Mandarin Chinese was used in novels by Ming and Qing dynasty authors, and was later refined by intellectuals associated with the May Fourth Movement.
The differences grew over time: By the Tang and Song dynasties (618–1279), people began to write in their vernacular dialects in the form of bianwen and yulu (語錄; 'language record'),[citation needed] and the spoken language was completely distinct from the formal Literary Chinese.
[2] In the 20th century, political activists began attempting to replace formal Literary Chinese with a written vernacular based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin.
These activists wanted to create a literary context more accessible to the general public, and ultimately increase literacy in the country.
[4] Lower Yangtze Mandarin formed the standard for written vernacular Chinese, until it was displaced by the Beijing dialect during the late Qing.
[3] It has even been suggested that Mao acted to preserve characters at the encouragement of Joseph Stalin, so that China would maintain a domestic writing system and the linguistic heritage attached to it.
In particular, Lu Xun's The True Story of Ah Q is generally accepted as the first modern work to fully utilize vernacular language.
[9] On one hand, reformers aggressively debated over the use of loanwords and the ideology of literature and public acceptance of new genres,[10] while the consensus became clear that the imposition of Literary Chinese was a hindrance to education and literacy, and ultimately social progress within China.
Prolific writers such as Lu Xun and Bing Xin published popular works and appeared in literary journals of the day, which also published essays and reviews providing a theoretical background for the vernacular writing, such as Lu's "Diary of a Madman", which provoked a spirited debate in contemporary journals.
Until the 1970s, the legal code of the Republic of China was written in Literary Chinese, though in a form replete with modern expressions and constructions that would have been foreign to ancient writers.
Presently, the ability to read some Literary Chinese is taught using familiar character forms: simplified throughout mainland China, and traditional in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.
Despite initial intentions on the part of reformers to create a written language that closely mirrors the colloquial Mandarin dialects and to expunge classical influences from the language for the sake of modernization, it became clear to users of the new written standard that the admixture of a certain proportion of Literary grammatical constructions and vocabulary into baihuawen was unavoidable and serves as an important means of conveying tone and register.
Thus, for the vernacular language used in official settings like academic and literary works or government communications (e.g. in academic papers, textbooks, political speeches, and legal codes), a small number of stock classical constructions and vocabulary items continue to be employed and are subject to additional related requirements relating to classical prosody and parallelism.
Though clearly dependent on context and on the personal preferences of the author, analyses of typical 20th-century essays and speeches have yielded a ratio of formal to informal expressions of around 2:3, or 40%.
