This is a point I was also wondering the whole time. The vulgarisation of literature happened all over Europe at varifying times and in different stages. We don’t see these as changes in the language itself, but instead the authors daring to write the way they actually always spoke.

There’s something in bemoaning the loss of a poetic register in written language, but that’s a different and much less significant change.

As I understand it, Classical Chinese literature has long been inscrutable and full of references to other texts, requiring a tutor to explain everything as you read it, who learned from a tutor, and so on.