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Old Japanese texts are hard. | ||
Tags: Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Yrek Pentaglot Newbie Poland Joined 3532 days ago 34 posts - 37 votes Speaks: Polish*, Japanese, Korean, English, Mandarin Studies: Vietnamese Studies: Hungarian, Mongolian | Message 1 of 5 27 June 2015 at 12:32pm | IP Logged |
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I tried to read some books from aozora bunko (a free Japanese online library), but a
lot of stuff there seems so different in style than the modern Japanese. For example 言う → 言ふ そう → さう and some strange punctuation symbols like ゝ or ／＼ I know ゝ was used to double hiragana (そのまま → そのまゝ） but what does ／＼ mean? Also, the kanji are not simplified and they looks more traditional Chinese. 戰爭 instead of 戦争 I wonder, can modern Japanese read those? Should I bother with trying to read them, or would it be too hard? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4717 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes  Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 2 of 5 28 June 2015 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
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The 〳〵 symbol serves the same function as ゝ for groups of two kana characters: そろそろ → そろ〳〵; さまざま → さま〴〵.
The Japanese do learn about the older kana orthography at school as part of their introduction to Japanese Classics, but as far as I know Traditional characters (known in Japan as 旧字体) aren't part of the school programme. This is why a lot of the older texts on Aozora Bunko are marked 新字旧仮名 - using the modern Japanese kanji set while preserving the original kana usage. Japanese speakers are familiar with many older kanji through personal names and seeing older signs and documents, and can also figure out a lot of unsimplified kanji forms they've never seen via visual cues and context, but for someone who hasn't specifically studied traditional characters reading 旧字旧仮名 texts is still pretty difficult and not worth the effort. If you personally have no interest in Classical Japanese literature and/or the history of the Japanese language, then trying to read those texts is probably not worth it. Even if you are interested in those things, due to 新字旧仮名 being the standard in modern studies of Classical Japanese, it might not even be worth it to learn the older kanji set. I'm learning to read 旧字旧仮名-style simply because I find it interesting (I'm also reading Dostoevsky in the original orthography and a German textbook in Fraktur). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4613 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 3 of 5 28 June 2015 at 4:46pm | IP Logged |
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Even modern haiku is hard because older grammar patterns are preferred. Edited by Medulin on 28 June 2015 at 4:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Yrek Pentaglot Newbie Poland Joined 3532 days ago 34 posts - 37 votes Speaks: Polish*, Japanese, Korean, English, Mandarin Studies: Vietnamese Studies: Hungarian, Mongolian | Message 4 of 5 30 June 2015 at 7:08pm | IP Logged |
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Hmm, I see, thank for the info.
The traditional characters aren't that much of a problem for me, because I am also learning traditional Chinese, but the grammar... I guess I will just stick to modern literature. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4717 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 5 of 5 30 June 2015 at 7:40pm | IP Logged |
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I'd also like to point out that not all texts written in the older orthography are actually in Classical Japanese. Until the post-war orthographic reform texts in modern Japanese were written in the same orthography as classical texts, while using essentially the same grammar and vocabulary as modern Standard Japanese. In fact some works from the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century (those by Natsume, Akutagawa, Miyazawa, etc.) are available on Aozora Bunko in two editions - the original and the orthographically modernized one.
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