Cantonese Classical Chinese

Classroom Classical Chinese with Cantonese pedagogical reading (文言文 粵音 wén yán wén Jyutping: man4 jin4 man4 jyut6 jam1) is the standard Cantonese reading of Literary Chinese (文言文) as taught in Hong Kong, Macau, and overseas Cantonese-medium Chinese schools. Distinct from: (1) zh_han / zh_tang (reconstructed Old/Middle Chinese pronunciations used for historical-linguistic study, not pedagogy); (2) zh_song (Mandarin school-pronunciation of Classical Chinese, despite the "Song" name); (3) ja_kanbun (Japanese kun-yomi rendering); and (4) Vietnamese hán văn or Korean hanmun readings. The Cantonese 文言 reading is the canonical Sinitic pedagogical reading tradition outside Mandarin and preserves more Middle Chinese-derived phonological distinctions than Mandarin: full set of six tones reflecting Middle Chinese tone categories, retained stop finals -k/-t/-p (lost in Mandarin), nasal -m (merged with -n in Mandarin). Used to read Classical poetry (Tang shi, Song ci), Confucian texts (四書五經), and Tang prose (古文) in Hong Kong secondary school 中國語文 curriculum.

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