Baihua
With Baihua , actually Baihuawen ( Chinese 白話文 / 白话文 , Pinyin báihuàwén - "everyday language"), one on the everyday language is Northern Chinese -based modern standard language meant. It forms the grammatical and lexical basis of modern standard Chinese .
In contrast to classical Chinese , Baihua is more understandable and therefore more accessible to the majority of the people. Therefore, in Chinese textbooks, the transition from classical Chinese to Baihua is of great importance for the democratization and modernization process in China.
Emergence
At the beginning of Chinese language history, literary and everyday language were largely identical. In the course of time the everyday language changed, but people continued to write in the old forms; the everyday language thus moved further and further away from the literary language. This made education (as well as the civil servant career directly connected with it) an almost exclusive privilege of the upper classes, who were wealthy enough to send their children to school and let them learn the literary language there.
At the beginning of the 20th century, many intellectuals such as Hu Shi , Chen Duxiu and Lu Xun began to demand and promote reform of the Chinese language. They wrote essays in everyday language (Baihua) instead of the then commonly used literary language , even "Wenyan" ( 文言 called) and promoted to the public for a general adoption of Baihua. Thanks to their efforts, the Baihua gradually assumed a dominant role in literature. It is very difficult to determine a clear time for the change from Wenyan to Baihua, because many of the texts that were written at that time would, from today's perspective, be described more as a mixture of literary and everyday language. By the late 1920s, however, virtually all Chinese newspapers, books, and official documents were written in Baihua.
criticism
These days, there are also allegations against the Baihua in China. On the one hand, the weakening of Wenyan in the official curriculum (for example, all schoolbooks are written in Baihua) is perceived by some nationalists as an alienation from tradition, because it means that young Chinese can no longer understand the works of their ancestors. On the other hand, some critics are of the opinion that the aesthetic demands of the Baihuas cannot be compared with those of Wenyan.
Wenyan has grown in importance again in recent years. Reading and memorizing Wenyan texts is back on the agenda in some elementary schools. The aim is to teach the youngsters the Chinese moral concepts contained in the old works and thus to strengthen their cultural self-confidence.