Classical Chinese as a written standard

from my knowledge of Japanese used poetically at the beginning of the 20th century, they used a lot more kanji than now.

I've seen the word "kore" (this) was written with 是, which means "this" in classical Chinese; "koko" (here) was written "此處" which is a rather literary version of the Chinese "這裡." "此" could also be used in place of the "ko" in "kono" which also means "this."As for the particle "no," the possessive particles 之 and 的 could be used instead of the hiragana.
 
from my knowledge of Japanese used poetically at the beginning of the 20th century, they used a lot more kanji than now.

I've seen the word "kore" (this) was written with 是, which means "this" in classical Chinese; "koko" (here) was written "此處" which is a rather literary version of the Chinese "這裡." "此" could also be used in place of the "ko" in "kono" which also means "this."As for the particle "no," the possessive particles 之 and 的 could be used instead of the hiragana.

Wait, 是 means 'this'?

I thought it meant "am" or "is".

美国人。
 
It means "this" in classical Chinese. There is also the term 於是 that has survived in present day usage, it means “at this point.”
 
It means "this" in classical Chinese. There is also the term 於是 that has survived in present day usage, it means “at this point.”

Oh, I see. That's pretty different.

If 是 is 'this', though, what was '这'? Or did they not use it?

Sorry about this interrogation, it's just extremely interesting. I've only learnt Beijing Mandarin and some dashes of Mindong, along with a sprinkling of Shanghainese (though I'm better at Mandarin than either two southern dialects).
 
Oh, I see. That's pretty different.

If 是 is 'this', though, what was '这'? Or did they not use it?

Sorry about this interrogation, it's just extremely interesting. I've only learnt Beijing Mandarin and some dashes of Mindong, along with a sprinkling of Shanghainese (though I'm better at Mandarin than either two southern dialects).

From Wiktionary's entry on 這 (the traditional form of 这):

Phono-semantic compound (形聲): semantic 辶 ‎(“walk”) + phonetic 言

The character was originally a verb meaning "to meet", whose modern pronunciation is yàn. It was later borrowed for the proximal demonstrative "this/here", by a confusion in handwriting with 遮. 遮箇 and 遮個 are found in old texts.
 
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Oh, I see. That's pretty different.

If 是 is 'this', though, what was '这'? Or did they not use it?

Sorry about this interrogation, it's just extremely interesting. I've only learnt Beijing Mandarin and some dashes of Mindong, along with a sprinkling of Shanghainese (though I'm better at Mandarin than either two southern dialects).
ruth's answer is informative. Interestingly, plenty of the very basic characters in modern Mandarin are rather recent developments.
 

It's

Banned
I have no knowledge I could contribute, but I find the idea fascinating. It could be expanded way beyond this.
Aren't there timelines with a world-dominating Chinese Empire, diverging as early as Tang or, at the latest, Song? They should have found a solution here...
Non-phonetic writing systems could have been an alternate way of global communication. I mean in OTL we have English, and that's fine by me, but this is an intriguing alternative.

As the Chinese typewriter demonstrates, a conceptually based written language is hopelessly impractical. Very decorative, certainly, but for progress?
 
As the Chinese typewriter demonstrates, a conceptually based written language is hopelessly impractical. Very decorative, certainly, but for progress?

It's perfectly practical in Japan and Taiwan.

Also, one might argue that one of the main reasons that China is still one country is because the complexity of the writing system tends to instill a strong identity in the user—all that time used to learn how to read and write makes you intellectually and emotionally attached to the culture behind it.
 
It's also not really about "progress" or what's the most "logical." If it were about what were logical, we'd all speak Lojban or something.

And it's true—while there are plenty of common input systems that use an alphabetic or syllabic input system, there are plenty that don't, like the Cangjie input method. You can argue all day about whether this is really the optimal method for computer input—hell, you can argue all day about the practicality of an ideographic system—but it doesn't change the fact that, at the end of the day, in a world of mass literacy and education, there are millions and millions of people who use hanzi every day.

I think Falecius' point about MSA gets closest to the heart of the sort of world I wanted to explore with this question. In retrospect, I think I got bogged down a lot on the mechanics of what this system would look like, rather than going with a simpler point or question: can we make Classical Chinese a regional (or even global!) written lingua franca? How do we get there? And what does the world look like in a world where this is feasible?
 
It's perfectly practical in Japan and Taiwan.

Also, one might argue that one of the main reasons that China is still one country is because the complexity of the writing system tends to instill a strong identity in the user—all that time used to learn how to read and write makes you intellectually and emotionally attached to the culture behind it.

Personally I disagree. I just find the Chinese like to over complicate in doing simple things. Chopsticks? You can do everything chopsticks can do with a spoon and a fork.
 
Personally I disagree. I just find the Chinese like to over complicate in doing simple things. Chopsticks? You can do everything chopsticks can do with a spoon and a fork.
I just find the Europeans like to over complicate in doing simple things. Forks? You can do everything forks do with your fingers and your hands. ;)
 
Personally I disagree. I just find the Chinese like to over complicate in doing simple things. Chopsticks? You can do everything chopsticks can do with a spoon and a fork.

Then you missed the point. The overcomplication isn't there for material practicality, but to reinforce a special mental atmosphere—Chinese or East Asian exceptionalism, if you will. The Chinese has more of an attachment to his identity, which is good for the rulers.

But as for chopsticks, you may think they are unwieldly to use, but it's not the case if you know how to use them already. You only need to learn it once or twice, and then you've got a tool that is more accurate than a fork, since you can control the angle of individual prongs. Then zoom out and have a look at the bigger societal picture: how much expense does the community save by producing simple wooden or plastic sticks for utensils (that can be produced by untrained labor if needed) as opposed to the more complex process needed to make spoons, forks, and knives?
 
I personally think technology has made the Chinese writing system easier to use, specifically for typing on smartphones. I myself as a native English speaker find it much easier to type text messages using Chinese than English. For Chinese, you just type a few letters in pinyin and select the characters or string of characters you're looking for to express your meaning, and since Chinese words are very short, you can type a lot very fast. With English, you end up wasting a lot of time typing lengthy words and also spacing them out - You can see the problems that many people have had using the Latin alphabet as a language of smartphone communication with all of the “autocorrect fails," and all of the lamented shortcuts that young people have made when sending text messages ("2" instead of "to" or "too," "b4" instead of "before," and so on).

The downfall of Chinese is that it's one of the worst languages for adopting foreign vocabulary, which makes it a very impractical language for global communication in today's world. English, for example, adopts foreign words and simply modifies the pronunciation to fit English phonetics (so Russian vodka, "wuhd-kah," becomes "vahd-kuh" and so on). The same is true for most written languages using an alphabet, abjad, or abugida. Chinese, however, is bounded by its character system, so foreign-adopted words and names often end up sounding nothing like the source - For example, Britney Spears‘ name in Chinese is "Bu Lan Ni - Si Pi Er Si". This is entirely the fault of the writing system, as Dungan, a dialect of Chinese spoken by descendants of Chinese Hui Muslims in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, uses the Cyrillic alphabet and effortlessly adopts Russian, Turkic, and English vocabulary without having to match new words to the constraints of Chinese character pronunciations.
 
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The way that Chinese gets around foreign vocabulary is by simply translating it if need be, or contracting it into something simpler and easier pronounced. My only complaint is that they insist on using Hanzi to transliterate even the most complex words—why not just reinstate zhuyin? Then you would actually know that you're reading a sound and not characters.

For Chinese, you just type a few letters in pinyin and select the characters or string of characters you're looking for to express your meaning, and since Chinese words are very short, you can type a lot very fast.
Totally agree with this. About 80% of my texts have been in Chinese lately and now I'm tiring of texting in English.
 
But it doesn't change the fact that, at the end of the day, in a world of mass literacy and education, there are millions and millions of people who use hanzi every day.

I think Falecius' point about MSA gets closest to the heart of the sort of world I wanted to explore with this question. In retrospect, I think I got bogged down a lot on the mechanics of what this system would look like, rather than going with a simpler point or question: can we make Classical Chinese a regional (or even global!) written lingua franca? How do we get there? And what does the world look like in a world where this is feasible?

Indeed. A modern system to keep Classical Chinese alive would look a lot like... Classical Chinese.
First thing, I think, is an educational system. A huge part of the modern success of MSA is that there was a traditional system in place that imparted both basic literacy and some largely passive knowledge of Classical Arabic to a fairly large number of children for religious reasons; that is, Qur'anic schools. Some minimal knowledge of Arabic is more or less required to perform Islamic daily rituals such as prayers (although believers are not required to actually know what the verses they are reciting in prayer mean, or pronounce them with precise correctness, they are encouraged to learn enough to do so).
I am not aware of anything comparable in pre-modern China, but I am not so well versed in the topic.
 
Actually, throughout most of Vietnam's history, Classical Chinese was the written standard, and this lasted even into the 20th century (though Vietnam did eventually develop native characters, which were largely used in a different writing system used in different discourse). I think it could be possible for Classical Chinese to survive as the written language of Vietnam if we butterfly away the adoption of the Vietnamese alphabet (chữ Quốc ngữ), which might entail Vietnam not ever being French (possibly as British?)
 
I think people are forgetting that for a period of time, Classical Chinese was the lingua franca for East Asia. Or rather, it was a written lingua franca that was never spoken. The Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese languages all eventually developed their own writing systems. The thread was initially discussed how Classical Chinese could remain the lingua franca across East Asia, as well as how Classical Chinese could be used to create a writing system for each national language.

The conversation of course diverged from there.
 
Indeed. A modern system to keep Classical Chinese alive would look a lot like... Classical Chinese.
First thing, I think, is an educational system. A huge part of the modern success of MSA is that there was a traditional system in place that imparted both basic literacy and some largely passive knowledge of Classical Arabic to a fairly large number of children for religious reasons; that is, Qur'anic schools. Some minimal knowledge of Arabic is more or less required to perform Islamic daily rituals such as prayers (although believers are not required to actually know what the verses they are reciting in prayer mean, or pronounce them with precise correctness, they are encouraged to learn enough to do so).
I am not aware of anything comparable in pre-modern China, but I am not so well versed in the topic.

This makes me wonder...

Would a greater spread of Islam into China encourage the cause of literacy in Chinese characters? Or would it largely divert it with study of Arabic? My perception of Islam in China (or at least among the Hui, who are unique among the Muslim groups in China in that they speak only Sinitic topolects) is that it seems to have a degree of separation with the Arabic texts, and more use of Chinese, though I could be wrong about this, as I don't know a great deal about it.

But, taking that as a given, maybe wider adoption of Islam in China—it doesn't have to be a majority, even, I don't think, but maybe 15% rather than OTL's modern-day 2% could transform the society in far-reaching ways. Greater links to the Islamic world could provide greater opportunities for expansion in Central Asia, and ironically it might take some loosening of Confucianism to give Chinese the shot in the arm necessary to keep it as top dog in Asia.

There's a tension, though, too. Traditionalism—the use of the archaic language of Classical Chinese—is somewhat the goal in this AHC, so while divesting China of some of it in the interest of modernization to give it a shot at warding off European dominance, stripping away too much could lead to China discarding CC in favour of the vernacular, and—depending on the extent of the modernization—even the shedding of Chinese characters entirely, with Xiao'erjing becoming the script of choice for mass literacy. So can we save CC while letting Classical China go, to a certain extent? Or, if that's not achievable, is there another way to keep China in charge of Asia without sacrificing the traditionalism?

We can brutalize Europe with a Years of Rice and Salt-level plague, but in that situation I think we're confronted with another problem, which is that Arabic—especially if Islam has more success in China—becomes the heir apparent for the position of world lingua franca, probably displacing any use of CC even for communication between China, Japan, and Korea. There's also the possibility that some kind of all-consuming war could grip Europe during the critical years, which could certainly accompany famine or plague, and might divert interest from investing in exploration and long-distance trade, in favour of the shorter-term goals of feeding and defending the nation. What kind of PODs could get us a Great War in Europe early enough to throw off or at least delay European interest in colonization long enough to give China the opportunity to establish a sphere of influence in East Asia that could withstand later European attempts to crack it open?
 
This makes me wonder...

Would a greater spread of Islam into China encourage the cause of literacy in Chinese characters?

I don't think so.
Islam tends to encourage literacy in the Arabic abjad (and Arabic language in particular). The script itself is pretty adaptable, but hardly a fitting choice for Sinitic languages. It could potentially evolve into an alphasillabary (like its South Arabian cousin did in Ethiopia and its closer Aramaic sibling may have done in india), but this never happened historically.
I am not familiar with Hui literacy traditions.
However, Qur'anic schools everywhere in the Islamic world are pretty much inherently geared toward not only Arabic script, but also Arabic language, since the Qur'an is quite emphatically in (Classical) Arabic (and notionally untraslatable for ritual purposes, a concept established from fairly early on).
I would say that Islam is a no-go for Classical Chinese, except as providing an exemplary model to organize education.
I would suppose that the linchpin of any widespread education in Classical Chinese would be the Chinese Classics, since they more or less define what Classical Chinese is.
I think that in a pre-modern context, the complex nature of the writing system is actually an inherent hurdle. It takes time to memorize hundreds (actually, thousands, but let's allow for some degree of ATL simplification, even if that wouln't be Classical Chinese any longer) of characters with their meanings and phonetic renditions. A modern educational system, within the framework of a modern state and a modern economy, can manage that with relative ease; but in a pre-modern context, I would suppose that detaching script and language is a significant advantage.

I would dwell on the topic longer (I may tomorrow, it is fairly interesting and touches things I am currently busy teaching about) but I am too tired now, sorry.
 
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