Kwabun

Kwabun (Shirakawan: 華文 くゎぶ む, "Hua writing"), also known as Kabun (: かぶん) or Hapun (Saramosiri: はぷ む ), is a form of used in Chisei, and historically Yamatai and Hinomoto until the 18th and 19th centuries respectively. As a purely literary language, it is entirely divorced from any of the modern, but it can be read aloud in a Yashimic (or Saramosiri) approximation of. It is comparable to Yeongseonin (화문) and Songese  (華文).

Much of historical Yamataian literature and Chiseian literature was written in the kwabun style, and it was the general writing style for official and intellectual works throughout the premodern and early modern periods. As a result, Hua-Yashimic vocabulary makes up a large portion of the lexicon in the Yashimic languages and much classical Huaxian literature is accessible to modern readers in some semblance of the original. However, the use of kabun began to decline in Yamatai during the late 18th century, and it was actively shunned in favour of and vernacular yashiman by the nationalistic Senbonzakura Movement of the 1820s. It continued to be utilised in Hinomoto until the Yamataian annexation in 1867, after which it was banned. It was briefly reintroduced via the Chiseian Occupation of Hinomoto from 1944 to 1974, before once again falling out of use following the formation of the Hinomoto SAR.

Today, Kwabun/Hapun is used primarily in Chisei, and its consistent, continued usage can largely be attributed to the State Language Policy introduced in the early 19th century, which established Shirakawan and Saramosiri as mutually equal official languages in all matters of state. The requirement for all laws, edicts and other critical state documents to be drafted and translated into both of the state languages meant there was the possibility of ambiguity or confusion between translations, making objective interpretation by judicial authorities difficult, and thus there was a need for a third language to serve as the 'true law' (真法 Shinpō). As kwabun was the predominant literary language of the official class, and was already used in almost all state documents, its use was retained in the judicial sphere, even as it was gradually replaced by the official vernaculars in other formal contexts, such as newspapers and communiques.

Most Chiseian laws at the federal level, such as the constitution, are written and interpreted in kwabun. It is taught at the highschool and college levels as part of civic and literary studies, and is also an integral part of the curriculum for Chiseian civil servants, officials and barristers.

Modern Standard Kwabun
Modern Standard Kwabun (現代標準華文) or MSK is a standardised form of the language maintained by the Educational Standards Office of the Kōshīn, for governmental usage. Unlike Traditional Kwabun (舊華文), which is used in classical literary studies, the characters used in MSK are strictly limited to an approved list of 5,251 'common-use characters', with officially defined meanings and readings in both Shirakawan and Saramosiri that generally reflect modern pronunciation over historical readings.

First developed in the 1860s, elements of MSK have since been adopted in many other countries which still utilise Classical Huaxian in some capacities, such as Chanha and Liang, albeit with local variations in permitted characters.