Very good point. I notice that many varieties (eg Cantonese) seem to make many distinctions that have collapsed in Mandarin. So, whether Classical Chinese read

Very good point. I notice that many varieties (eg Cantonese) seem to make many distinctions that have collapsed in Mandarin. So, whether Classical Chinese read out was intelligible to ancient listeners is hard to establish, but there’s a good chance it was. Surely, Classical Chinese is a language quite different from contemporary vernacular Chinese. Of course, Latin is quite different from Spanish, too. Yet, I’d maintain that Classical Latin is more easily rendered in modern English (and with less interpretative leeway) than Classical Chinese.