Waiting for paint to dry.....

[Otagiri Tatsuzou]

I like the chouka. If I've got this right ...

5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7 ....

and closed by two tanka in a different voice than the body of the poem.

[Saionji Shonagon]

I like the chouka.

I confess it's not a form I've taken a stab at.

Not enough hours in the day, especially when somebody wants to memorize 14th century Spanish hymns.....

My name is Lisa and I suffer from Multiple Persona Disorder

[Please Delete]

Jehanne should get with Aine--she's listening preparing Spanish music for an upcoming event. Mostly 15th century, so about 100 years out, but still.

Don't you love the 5-beat?

-Ii

[Saionji Shonagon]

Mostly 15th century, so about 100 years out, but still.

Llibre Vermell, maybe? ;->

Don't you love the 5-beat?

Si!

Saionji/Jehanne

[Rei Shounagon]

makiwara said:

Things They Never Told Me When I Came To Court.

A list that never made it into Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book.

</lurk>Oh! Saionji-hime, this is truly wonderful! If I may, I would quote you in my signature.

Rei

[Saionji Shonagon]

</lurk>Oh! Saionji-hime, this is truly wonderful! If I may, I would quote you in my signature.

What? You're not going to make up your own list? Come on, I double dog dare you. It's fun!

S.

[Rei Shounagon]

makiwara said:

What? You're not going to make up your own list? Come on, I double dog dare you. It's fun!

Inu inu wai~!

I know still very little about the history of Japan, but I shall try to learn. I don't speak Japanese. I do speak a little otaku, though. This is where I come from:

In Kanagawa
when crickets sing in winter
many sorrows end.
Lake Ashinoko swells with
many tears, shed and unshed.

[Saionji Shonagon]

I don't speak Japanese.

Neither do I! I've acquired a lot of nouns, mostly to do with clothing and armor - can't not develop an armor vocabulary around this place. No verbs though. Can't speak a language without verbs. Everything I've read has been in translation. My "list" owes as much in style to Ivan Morris as it does to Sei.

In Kanagawa
when crickets sing in winter
many sorrows end.
Lake Ashinoko swells with
many tears, shed and unshed.

Lovely. I'm rushing to work, but hope to have a proper reply for you this evening.

S.

[Rei Shounagon]

I'm glad you liked my modest attempt. Giant robots/*/ and secret Illuminati-like organizations do not really belong on this board.

Rei

/*/ Not exactly robots, but that's what they look like.

[Nagamochi]

makiwara said:

Neither do I! I've acquired a lot of nouns, mostly to do with clothing and armor - can't not develop an armor vocabulary around this place. No verbs though. Can't speak a language without verbs. Everything I've read has been in translation. My "list" owes as much in style to Ivan Morris as it does to Sei.

I do not claim to be fluent in Japanese either, but I hope this helps.

wakarimasu = understand
desu = is
iru = want

Basic Sentence Structure
Subject/Object/Noun

Examples:

Watashi-wa Fujiwara no Dairo Nagamochi desu.
I am Fujiwara No Dairo Nagamochi.

Nihongo-ga wakarimasu-ka
(Do you) understand Japanese?

Anohito-wa cha-ga iru
S/he wants tea.

Oh Great Moderator! This give me an idea. What if we start a new area on here to teach some Japanese to the masses here; even if we only cover the basics?

Could help defend against those who attack us with friendly pleasantries, however unintentional that attack may be.

[AJBryant]

Can I toss in my two mon?

The problem is "WHAT Japanese"-- generally all the Japanese that is used today is .... well, modern Japanese. The grammar, syntax, structure and vocabulary are modern.

For example, "You can't drink that tea" in MJ is "sono ocha o nonde wa ikemasen" and in Classical it's "Sa ocha o nomu bekarazu". Even simple prononouns. You never see "watakushi" as a pronoun in the old stuff. And forget about "desu" entirely.

Simple sentences are totally reframed. Consider "the poem I read is interesting." MJ: "Watashi ga yonda shi wa omoshiroi." CJ: Ware ga yomiki shi/uta wa omoshiroshi." (And even then: in CJ, "omoshiroshi" didn't mean "interesting" so much as "funny, peculiar, etc."

As for the examples, well, "iru" is *need*, not want. Although it's not as big a difference (culturally speaking) in English, where we frequently see people use "need" for something that's really a want, Japanese doesn't work that way.

CJ is interesting, but it's not very practically valuable unless, like me, you have a fondness for dusty literature . But MJ really does strike me as "out of place" in a historical Japanese context, despite the fact that it is the lingua franca (lingua iaponica?) over there with reenactors in much the same way as modern English is with us here. Still, Japanese historical dramas often throw in classical pronouns, verbal and adjectival declensions, the the odd classical formation (since all Japanese study the stuff for a year at least in high school, that level of CJ is nothing they can't understand). It's sort of like "speaking forsoothly."

All this being said -- You have to be careful with Japanese. I've never encountered a language (not even Chinese!) where the language as taught in the textbooks is SO at variance with the language as it is actually used. Part of that is due to the textbooks' stubborn insistance on using pronouns. In one classroom session I can hear more uses of pronouns than any given three or four DAYS of walking around in Japan. Another part of that is due to the incredible fluidity of Japanese to dance around levels of politeness and familiarity -- something that just can't be fully imbued by a textbook -- to subtlely change sentences. while both of the given examples were, grammatically, correct, neither of them sounds like a natural Japanese sentence.

Effingham

[Saionji Shonagon]

The problem is "WHAT Japanese"-- generally all the Japanese that is used today is .... well, modern Japanese. The grammar, syntax, structure and vocabulary are modern.

I've won bets by reading a computer textbook aloud in Middle English dialect. Grammatically not so different, but the pronunciation and vocabulary are.

The fact is that nobody expects me to speak Middle English at an SCA event when I'm being Jehanne.

My intial observation stems from the fact that I'm picking up bits of specialized Japanese vocabulary (names of clothing and armor bits). I probably COULD pick up a copy of "Japanese for Dummies," except trying to learn to speak a language out of a book is fraught with limitations of its own. Which syllable gets the stress? (Is there any way to tell or must I keep guessing?)

Saionji

[Ki no Kotori]

ajbryant said:

Still, Japanese historical dramas often throw in classical pronouns, verbal and adjectival declensions, the the odd classical formation (since all Japanese study the stuff for a year at least in high school, that level of CJ is nothing they can't understand). It's sort of like "speaking forsoothly."

To my sorrow, I know this to be true. Just when I think I'm starting to understand what the actors are saying in, say, a taiga drama, they start "forsoothing" and I completely lose my place and have to guess what they mean from the context. I can only hope they have the same problem with our thees and thous, etc when they are learning English!

But to look at it in another way--one needs to learn the modern Japanese to get to the classical Japanese, right? (Besides, I'm also interested in modern Japanese history/culture as well, so it's all good!)

--Ki no Torahime

[AJBryant]

Snuggled in on my "old English lit" shelf -- mixed in with half a dozen textbooks on Anglo-Saxon and a like number of OE readers and texts I have a really cool textbook of Middle English. Fun lingo.

As for MJ as a conduit to CJ -- well, yeah. I'm afraid there aren't any textbooks on CJ in English (well, there is one, but it sucks). Unlike Greek and Hebrew and other cool esoteric languages, you can actually study and learn (and buy books about) the ancient forms of the lingo without having to go through the modern first. Sigh.


Effingham

[Nagamochi]

You raise some good points that I didn't even scope to think about, Effingham-dono. My thoughts were to give some EXTREME nuts and bolts basics in modern Japanese, so that we as SCA Nihon-jins can verbally protect ourselves. That way when some less-than-mentally-savory SCAdian comes up to us and starts using the Japanese they learned in high school, we can potentially appease them, in lieu of the verbal berating some have received after said SCAdian became irrate, or so I've heard in some stories.
Having a forum like Tousando to teach and learn Japanese I feel would also have another advantage. Much as you said, textbooks teaching the useage of pronouns as they do is this side of blasphemous. I only used them in my examples to further elucidate. However, a regular and active post I think could help to clarify the nuiances you pointed out.
And though it would be fun to keep it all period, modern Japanese, at many levels, would be a great deal more useful for all of us, even though it's the equivalent of wearing a maru obi with suikan. Jeans and a surcote anyone?