"In the beginning, the kami bestowed the creation of heaven and earth."

$5 at our pusher (also known as the local used book store chain) yields this amusing find: a slipcased copy of 舊新約聖書 (Kyûshinyakuseisho), being the Bible, Old* and New Testament, in a bungo translation so formal it's halfway to classical Japanese. Every word possible is kanji, even ones ordinarily written with kana, and every single one has furigana to help even the basic modern reader along. Not that the last necessarily helps as this is, oddly, the sloppiest printing I've met in Japanese book, with ink thick enough on the type that it can be hard to make out -- like an Nth generation photostat. Not to mention, this is one of those texts where the rubi-gloss doesn't necessarily match the pronunciation of the word as written, but instead sometimes translates it to a common modern word. Still, this ought to be amusing material to practice on.

It begins 元始(はじめ)に神(かみ)天地(てんち)を創造(つくり)たまへり

......

Right -- time to actually study those archaic honorific verbs I've been avoiding.


* It took me a while to work out that 舊 is the pre-spelling-reform version of 旧.

---L.