Classical Japanese

OK, so I know this can span a few hundred years and various stages of official Japanese, but I wanted to put the feelers out there to see if there was much interest in getting something started to read some short texts and learn a bit about the grammar. I guess Classical Japanese pretty much only covers the Heian Period, so The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book would be included, and maybe The Tale of Heike, The Tosa Diaries, Hojoki, and Tsurezure-gusa (not sure about that), but even just a bit from those pieces would be fine, as I doubt they'd be too much of a departure from Classical Japanese, assuming they don't fall into that category.

Anyway, there are lots of works to choose from even from as far back as Kojiki, Nihonshoki, and as far forward as the writing of Miyamoto Musashi. I know they don't all technically fall under "Classical Japanese", but I'm thinking mostly in terms of "not modern Japanese", I guess. If there's interest in learning the older grammar, I'd like to get something started here, since I'd actually like to understand it better myself. If we can get an idea of who's interested and what level everyone's at, it will help to get things started. Of course, we'd probably need lots and lots of help from Toritoribe, so this will also depend on how much he's willing to get into this (although I have a feeling it's going to end up just being me, and I'm going to have to search things out on my own, but whatever. It's worth asking).

Also, getting into kambun would be cool too, but that's a different topic. So, anyone interested?

This idea was inspired by 「飛行ありき」.

I have been using "Classical Japanese" as the translation of 文語体. It's based on 中古日本語, but was used until WWⅡ as the official written language.

Classical Japanese language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


I like 漢文.

It seems that 中古日本語 is also known as 和文体, or rather, that's the style it was written in. I find 宣命体 interesting. The precursor to how Japanese is written nowadays goes all the way back to 697? Fascinating. It's also kind of crazy that the language is based on the way the nobles in Kyoto spoke during the Heian Period. We don't have any records of how the common folk talked to each other, I guess, most likely due to them being illiterate.

By the way, your links got me reading a lot of Wikipedia, and I ended up reading about 神代文字 and the argument about how many vowels Old Japanese had (上代特殊仮名遣). Interesting stuff.

敬語 got its start with 中古日本語? Interesting. I also found this interesting:

日本語の語彙には、その出自によって和語・漢語の違いがあるが、和語の中にも用いる文章によって偏りが見られる。「和文特有語」「漢文訓読特有語」、それから記録体（変体漢文）特有の語彙も指摘されている。例えば和文で「とく（疾く）」と言うところで漢文訓読では「スミヤカニ」と言い、記録体では「早」（ハヤク）と言う。このように「和文体」「漢文訓読文体」「記録体」という3つの文体によって用いる語彙が少しずつ異なり、用途によって文章を書き分けていた。

Lots of interesting stuff there. I guess I'm going to have to read up on 漢文 now...

I always enjoyed the 旧仮名遣い when reading pre-1945 stuff. Do either of you know of a comprehensive list comparing old style with modern kana usage?

This web site might be interesting.
歴史的仮名遣い教室

Most of it I think is pretty cool, but it would be nice if 促音 were shown with っ like in modern usage. Also, it can be tricky figuring out how to read は, although oddly, I don't recall having problems with the 拗音. I kind of like 歴史的仮名遣ひ, though, partly because it's interesting to see where some words came from (like とお from とを or おんな from をんな (originally をみな from what I've heard)).

Here's the backgraund of 歴史的仮名遣い.
歴史的仮名遣 - Wikipedia

And here's the confrontation between the two 仮名遣い by MEXT.
現代仮名遣い：文部科学省


I like 丸谷才一, and I found I can read his novels/essays unexpectedly with no difficulty.

undrentide said:

This web site might be interesting.
歴史的仮名遣い教室

Click to expand...

I just took the tests. I guess I'll know if I passed within 12 hours.

---------- Post added at 20:27 ---------- Previous post was at 19:55 ----------

Toritoribe said:

And here's the confrontation between the two 仮名遣い by MEXT.
現代仮名遣い：文部科学省

Click to expand...

This is a real winner of a sentence: 助詞の「は」は，「は」と書く。

Well, I passed 7級, but not 8級. Ha.