I have spent a few hours directly studying 漢文（かんぶん）. Who is familiar with 漢文, or knows what it is?　It is only a general question about your experience or knowledge of it.

I've taken a kanbun class and two classical Chinese classes, and I can read it OK; I have to read it for my research but I'm not as good as I need to be. Although most of the kanbun I have to read is Classical Chinese rather than kanbun written by Japanese people, but I do need to read both.

I want to learn this too. Is it hard?? I haven't looked into it much at all to be honest... but I know you can get a DS soft called 古文漢文 which teaches you how to do both 古文 and 漢文.

It's fairly difficult, although the path to get there depends on exactly what you want to do. Honestly I wouldn't recommend learning it if you don't have to.

If you're going to learn the 訓読-style reading of kanbun (rather than reading it as Chinese, which isn't an option with some Japanese-written kanbun (変体漢文)), you first have to learn regular classical Japanese. Then you can use a kanbun-specific book to learn about the 返り点 and other marks on the kanbun and how to jump around in the sentences to get the Japanese reading.

Kanbun is really a mess and I wish I didn't have to deal with it at all. You have these stupid 再読文字 that you have to read twice at different places, for instance 当which you first have to read as マサニ and then you also put a ベシ at the end of the sentence. Complicated sentences with causatives and such have you jumping around the sentence not only with numerals but with 上 and 下. Kanji have all kinds of bizarre meanings that you've never even heard of before (i.e. 悪 read as イズクンゾ meaning "why").

And also, if the kanbun work is something well-known or a Chinese classic, it will be available in an addition that has a 書き下し so you don't actually have to be able to read the raw kanbun.

I heartily endorse learning some classical Japanese, but stay away from 漢文 if you don't need it for something.

If you want to see an example, I uploaded a picture of the first few lines of the 長恨歌 by Bai Juyi. This is a Japanese edition of the work so it has both the 返り点 on the top and the 書き下し on the bottom.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y158/ch...G_0261.jpg

The only 返り点 used here are fairly simple ones -- レ after a character means to invert the order of the two characters, and 二 means to skip the previous character until you see an 一 and then come back to it. The bottom part (the 書き下し) is what you get when you "apply" all the 返り点 and add the okurigana and such.

The fourth line has one of the saidoku-moji I was talking about; 未識 is read as 未（いま）だ識（し）らず (= まだ知らない)

The readings of the kanji also differ from edition to edition; because this poem was originally classical Chinese there's no one correct way to read everything -- other editions of this poem I have read the 女 as むすめ rather than じょ, and one edition I have uses much more kun-yomi in the whole thing (i.e. 御宇 is read as あめのしたををさむること rather than the on-yomi of ぎょう, and 長成 is ひととなれり rather than ちゃうせいす)

The edition has detailed notes and a modern Japanese translation but those are on other pages. This is also "standard" 漢文 (純漢文) rather than the later texts written by Japanese people that can't be completely read as classical Chinese (変体漢文).

Classical Japanese looks so cool. I really want to study it eventually. Of course, it's probably easier to find resources on it in Japanese than in English, so I'll be content waiting until I have a good grasp of normal Japanese literature.

mezbup Wrote:I want to learn this too. Is it hard?? I haven't looked into it much at all to be honest... but I know you can get a DS soft called 古文漢文 which teaches you how to do both 古文 and 漢文.

You are translating Chinese to Japanese. It is hard, but Such as 「国破山河在」　to 「国破れて山河在り」. I have started using 百人一首 and other items. I originally wanted to learn Chinese after mastering Japanese. When I discovered　漢文, I decide to do that instead. Especially, after I found out about 三国.