[colorincorrect]

"classical" chinese is the form of chinese used before around 1910's (but some texts which have the "modern style" predate this time). single obscure characters would be used to convey a complex specific meaning, a lot of the grammar and referents are implicit, structure is very dense, and in practice there would often be literary or historical references that would go over most readers ill-equipped to deal with such things. it was also fashionable to write in "symmetry", but modernists who pushed for literary reform thought a lot of this was just style over substance.

"modern" chinese was developed around the 1910s as a push for modernization/literacy as influenced by western imperialism/thought spreading into china. tldr they advocated for readability/accessibility, which meant a stylistic reform of the language.

if you can read modern chinese well enough, you can kinda understand about 30-80% of the meaning, depending how obtuse the text is and or when it was composed, but early chinese education (elementary school) includes some Tang poems from 600-900 AD, but is still quite readable. compared to something like middle english, which modern readers cannot read at all, you can see that the chinese language hasn't changed all that much

cf:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese#Grammar_and_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_vernacular_Chinese

[yorwba]

> compared to something like middle english, which modern readers cannot read at all, you can see that the chinese language hasn't changed all that much

It helps that ancient texts are usually not presented in the original handwriting (which has changed a lot over the millenia) and of course the writing system masks changes in pronunciation. If you speak Mandarin, try reading a text in another Sinitic language using an alphabetic writing system, e.g. a random article of the Hakka Wikipedia: https://hak.wikipedia.org/ Then consider how different the last common ancestor of both languages must have been.

[thaumasiotes]

> compared to something like middle english, which modern readers cannot read at all, you can see that the chinese language hasn't changed all that much

This is nonsense. Here's some middle english (taken from https://www.chaucermss.org/?manuscript=Dd&tale=GP&version=si... ):

    A Millere was there / dwellyng many a day
    As any Pecok / he was proud and gay
    Pipe he coude and fisshe / and nettes bete
    And trne cuppes / & wel wrestel and shete
    Ay by his belt / he bar a long panade
    And of a swerd / ful trenchaūt was the blade

Middle English is much more similar to modern English than Classical Chinese is to modern Chinese (of any variety), for the obvious reason that Middle English is separated from modern English by less than half the period separating Classical Chinese from modern Chinese.

[colorincorrect]

fair enough. i was told that by a old/english scholar and i checked wiki sample text to confirm, but i must have been mistaken.

>Middle English is much more similar to modern English than Classical Chinese is to modern Chinese (of any variety), for the obvious reason that Middle English is separated from modern English by less than half the period separating Classical Chinese from modern Chinese.

i think it depends on the specific text in question, but i'm drawing blanks because im not very informed on old lit in general. again tang poems are taught at an early age, but perhaps most text would be harder to read

[quotemstr]

Perhaps you are thinking of Old English, which really is different beyond comprehension. Here's a bit of Beowulf:

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,

þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,

hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,

monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,

egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð

feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,

weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,

oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra

ofer hronrade hyran scolde,

gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning.

[thaumasiotes]

This is more fair. As yorwba points out elsewhere, though, some pretty large differences between Old Chinese and modern Chinese are masked by the fact that Classical Chinese is always presented with modern spelling[1]. (Other, larger differences are fully apparent.) To be more closely analogous, you'd render "þæt wæs god cyning" as "That was good king" -- and suddenly the gap from "that was good king" to "that was _a_ good king" doesn't look so large.

[1] There are good reasons for this; since Chinese writing bears very little phonetic information, we have only limited knowledge of what Old Chinese sounded like in the first place.

[yorwba]

Applying the same cognate replacement (using Wiktionary as an etymology dictionary) to the full snippet above, I end up with

What. We gar-danes' in yore days

thede kings', thrym frained,

how the athelings ellen framed.

Often Shield Sheafing scathers' threats

many maidens, mead-seats' off-towed

eysed Eorlas. Since erst was

few-shaft found, he that frother bode,

waxed under welkin, worth-minds theed,

othat him each there umsittings'

over whale-road hear should

change yielded, that was good king.