Let's read the 百人一首

IceCream Wrote:This is awesome Yudan, thanks!!! i never thought i'd study classical, but i'm definately going to follow this thread with interest!!!

i have a couple of questions, sorry if they're dumb...

Don't worry, they're not dumb at all.

Quote:*About あらみ：　By -ku adjective, do you mean i-adj, or should i look it up? If so, is it normal then for i-adjectives not to have the extra い on the end in classical Japanese, or is it only some of them?

Also, some i-adjectives still conjugate with a み, like 重み. So, was that not around at that time, or was み ambiguous back then?

Rayath answered the first part well. The み in 重み is a different み than the one in this poem (although both existed in classical Japanese).

Quote:*The か and て　in わかころもては (second line in the text) you say are が and で. Didn't they use the little marks back then then? How did people know how to read it then, or would they have read it か and て too?

The voicing marks (dakuten) were not regularly used until the Meiji period, although they were used in some cases before then. Sometimes in older texts you see them added in a different color ink. As for how people knew how to read it, it's just context. Although there are some cases where we're still not sure today whether to voice it or not. (They would not have read it か and て; voiced syllables go back to the earliest written Japanese.)

pm215:

Quote:Does that correspond basically to "read the romanization as if it were romanization of modern Japanese" ?

Pretty much, although the romanization will follow old kana usage. The romanization method is normal in classical studies because it avoids having to take a position on how the syllables would actually have been pronounced. This is especially relevant for something like this -- the particle は in this poem would (probably) have been pronounced as "pa" when it was originally written, and probably something like "fa" when it was put in the Gosenshu in the 10th century, and by the Edo period it was "wa" although I don't know how Teika himself would have read it in the 13th century.

(If you're wondering why I'm using romanization instead of kana, I think it's easier to show the spacing and use dashes to show suffixes, which is helpful if you're not used to classical.)