Classical Chinese, which, as we have seen, had long since ceased to be a spoken language on the mainland (if indeed it had ever been), has been in use in the Japanese archipelago longer than the Japanese language itself. The oldest written remnants found in Japan are all in Chinese, though it is a matter of considerable debate whether traces of the Japanese vernacular are to be found in them. Taking both languages together until the end of the nineteenth century, and taking into account all the monastic documents, literature in the widest sense of the term, and texts in "near-Chinese" ("hentai-kanbun"), it is entirely possible that the sheer volume of texts written in Chinese in Japan slightly exceed what was written in Japanese.