Chinese people can read literature from 2,500 years ago as easily as modern newspapers
Although some modern characters share roots with ancient scripts, reading classical Chinese literature is notoriously challenging for modern native speakers and requires specialized study, refuting the idea that it can be read as easily as a modern newspaper.
Judged against fact-checker rulings and reference works: claims of this kind are settled by the fact-checking record, not journal abstracts.
skeptics.stackexchange.com: Can Chinese people read the literature of 2500 years ago .... skeptics.stackexchange.com. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15452/can-chinese-people-read-the-literature-of-2-500-years-ago-as-easily-as-yesterday
The question quotes the claim as a skeptical premise, pointing to a negative answer regarding its literal truth.
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frontiersin.org: Frontiers | Exploring the pretraining effect in learning classical Chinese reading skills. frontiersin.org. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1692135/full
Explicitly states that reading Chinese classical texts is very challenging, even for native speakers of Chinese.
doi.org: Exploring the pretraining effect in learning classical Chinese reading skills. doi.org. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1692135
Confirms that reading classical Chinese texts is very challenging for native speakers, contradicting effortless reading.
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