Kanbun

Kanbun (汉文, German " Han script ", also called " Han - text (s)" ) called in Chinese characters written fiction in Japan. It also involves classical Chinese.

Very old texts in Japan were completely or mostly written in Chinese, although the show with Man'yōgana very early attempts to use only the characters with the phonetic value to indicate the pronunciation of the then Japanese. Later Kanbun was used almost exclusively in religious contexts, but it was still important to communicate with Chinese people. Since the Japanese Kanji largely correspond to the Chinese characters, these texts can (theoretically) be read by Japanese. However, the Japanese grammar is completely different from the Chinese. This also applies to the word order in Japanese is the verb at the end of the sentence.

Historical development

Earliest traditional Japanese art, such as the Nihon Ryoiki (around 820) and the Empire stories are written entirely in Chinese style (so-called Hakubun白文"white text "). Later, reading aids, of which several systems formed out came. Initially, the kaeriten (返点, " turn points " ), to determine the word order. With the th Okoto (ヲコト 点) were mainly the symbols " -", "丨" "•" and " └ " arranged in a certain way to the character around or between them. Then they represented a certain Japanese syllable, primarily grammatical particles. Furthermore Kuntenbun (训 点) - texts with instruction signs, of which there were several variants again. A uniform Kanbun as such did not exist. In addition, signs were reproduced even after their phonetic value, eg陀罗尼as -ran -ni for the derived from the Sanskrit Dharani ( = Mantra ).

Still in the Meiji era Japanese attributed scholars Kanbun. Legal texts were still published until the end of World War II in this style.

Variants

To put the words in the Japanese order, markings are added to the characters that identify the reading sequence. The following sentence of Han Fei:

To read him after kanbun kundoku (汉文 训 読) principle, lighter Japanese, it is marked as follows:

Use the markers as the characters are mentally rearranged so that they correspond to the Japanese word order. Here, the Vertauschungsmarkierung (レ) is considered first. It positions the character before the character与矛. Now is the mark " down" (下) behind the character有that these characters migrates to the designated "up" (上) position. Likewise migrates with "two" (二) highlighted character鬻to the designated with "one" (一) position. Conceptually, this results in the following order:

And in the end, the text is read in alignment with the traditional Japanese letters like this:

Unicode

Since the published 1993 version 1.1 Kanbun marks are part of the Unicode standard. This is a coding of Annotationszeichen described above, which show the Japanese reading order of the Chinese text. The characters are two kaeriten, the Verknüfungsmarker ( ㆐ ) and the Vertauschungsmarkierung ( ㆑ ) as well as 4 different nummerierende groups of Kanji:

The signs are to U 319 F coded in the block of U 3190: