Written vernacular Chinese

With Baihua, actually báihuàwén (Chinese白话文/白话文, everyday language '), one based on the everyday language of northern Chinese modern standard language is meant. It forms the grammatical and lexical basis of the modern standard Chinese.

In contrast to traditional Chinese Baihua is understandable and so the large part of the people accessible. Therefore, it is attributed in Chinese textbooks to the transition from classical Chinese to Baihua a great importance for the democratization and modernization process of China.

Formation

At the beginning of the Chinese language history of literature and everyday speech were largely identical. In the course of time, changed the everyday language, but you further wrote in the old forms; everyday language so distant ever further from the literary language. This made the training ( as well as the order directly connected bureaucratic career ) to an almost exclusive privilege of the upper classes, who were wealthy enough to send their children to school and leave them there to learn the literary language.

Beginning of the 20th century began, many intellectuals like Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu and Lu Xun, to call for a reform of the Chinese language and promote. They wrote essays in everyday language ( Baihua ) instead of the then commonly used literary language ( Wenyan ) and promoted to the public for a general adoption of Baihua. Thanks to their efforts, the Baihua gradually assumed a dominant role in the literature. A clear time for the change from Wenyan to Baihua but can be very difficult to determine, because many of those resulting texts would be called from today's perspective, rather than a mixture of literary and everyday language. Already in the late 1920s but virtually all Chinese newspapers, books and official documents were written in Baihua.

Criticism

In today's time also allegations against the Baihua be noisy in China. On one hand, the weakening of Wenyan in the official curriculum (for example, all textbooks are written in Baihua ) by some nationalists as an alienation from tradition construed, as this young Chinese could no longer understand the works of their ancestors. On the other hand, some critics believe that the aesthetic demands of the Baihuas was not to be compared with that of the Wenyans.

In recent years, the Wenyan but has gained importance again. Reading and memorizing Wenyan texts in some primary schools back on the agenda. The aim is to teach those contained in the ancient Chinese works morals their children and thus strengthen the cultural self-confidence.