Classical Chinese lexicon


Almost all lexemes in Classical Chinese are individual characters one spoken syllable in length. This contrasts with modern Chinese dialects where two-syllable words are extremely common. Chinese has acquired many polysyllabic words in order to disambiguate monosyllabic words that sounded different in earlier forms of Chinese but identical in one region or another during later periods. Because Classical Chinese is based on the literary examples of ancient Chinese literature, it has almost none of the two-syllable words present in modern varieties of Chinese.
Classical Chinese has more pronouns compared to the modern vernacular. In particular, whereas Mandarin has one general character to refer to the first-person pronoun, Literary Chinese has several, many of which are used as part of honorific language, and several of which have different grammatical uses.
In syntax, Classical Chinese words are not restrictively categorized into parts of speech: nouns used as verbs, adjectives used as nouns, and so on. There is no copula in Classical Chinese; is a copula in modern Chinese but in old Chinese it was originally a near demonstrative, the modern Chinese equivalent of which is .
Beyond grammar and vocabulary differences, Classical Chinese can be distinguished by literary and cultural differences: an effort to maintain parallelism and rhythm, even in prose works, and extensive use of literary and cultural allusions, thereby also contributing to brevity.
Many final particles and interrogative particles are found in Literary Chinese.

Content words

As with function words, there are many differences between the content words of Classical Chinese and those of Baihua. Below are synonyms used in the two registers. Some Classical Chinese words can have more than one meaning.
However, Classical Chinese words still exist among many chengyu, or Chinese idioms.
The Classical Chinese words and examples will be written in traditional characters, and the modern vernacular will be written in both simplified and traditional characters.
Classical Chinese wordPart of speechBaihua word
Baihua word
MeaningClassical Chinese exampleBaihua translation Baihua translation English meaning
日noun太阳太陽sun雲開見'拔开云雾，见到太阳。拔開雲霧，'。The clouds opened and the sun shone through.
目noun眼睛眼睛eye每毙一人掩其'因此每射杀一个人，'。因此每射殺一個人，'。Whenever he killed a man, he covered his eyes.
虎noun老虎老虎tiger不入'不敢进入'，'。不敢進入'，'。One may only catch the tiger cub by entering the tiger's den.
犬noun狗狗dog一犬吠形，百犬吠聲一只'，'。一隻'，'。One barking dog sets all the street abark.

Works cited

  • 《新高中文言手册》 （1998年 北京华书）
  • 《新华字典》 （第10版