Just 'English with Hanzi' (oldnorthwhale.com)

The article argues that modern written Mandarin has increasingly adopted European (especially English and Indo-European) grammatical habits, turning a traditionally more paratactic language into one that relies on explicit connectors, copular structures, and noun-heavy “wrapper” phrasing. It attributes this shift to historical borrowing—through 19th-century missionary translations, Japanese “returnee” technical vocabulary, and early 20th-century translation styles associated with the May Fourth movement. The author concludes that learners seeking the older literary logic may be better served by engaging directly with Classical Chinese rather than modern Mandarin.