Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese is the literary form of Chinese established around 500 BCE by the classics of Confucius and the Daoist masters. Written in a terse style in which nearly every character stands for an independent word, its grammar was imitated by scholars for millennia as Literary Chinese, the standard medium of government, history, philosophy and poetry across China until the early twentieth century.

From the second century CE it spread to Korea, Japan, Vietnam and the Ryukyu Islands, where it long served as the language of administration, Buddhism and elite learning. The written language kept its ancient grammar while spoken Chinese evolved, so that mastering it required years of formal schooling.