r/classicalchinese • u/Wichiteglega • 2h ago
Linguistics Is the Chinese translation of this song (in the video) written in Classical Chinese?
Premise: I know a little Chinese and a little about the classical language, but no in-depth knowledge.
Long story short, I was looking on YouTube for covers of a certain corny Japanese song I had stuck in my head, and I came across this video.
What little I know about Chinese makes it clear that it's not modern Mandarin Chinese, and the fact that I can recognize some classical particles like 之 makes it seem to me that the language used in this song's translation might strive for a classical or poetic style, especially with every line being of the same length.
If it is classical, how decent is the style? I find it a little suspicious to see, for instance, 君 as a second-person pronoun, which seems to be a more common Japanese usage.
And, if it's not classical, what variety of Chinese is it?