Historical kana orthography

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The historicalkanaorthography ( 歴史的仮名遣い , rekishiteki kanazukai), or old orthography (旧仮名遣い, kyū kanazukai), refers to the kana orthography (正仮名遣い, sei kana-zukai ) in general use until orthographic reforms after World War II; the current orthography was adopted by Cabinet order in 1946. [1] By that point the historical orthography was no longer in accord with Japanese pronunciation. It differs from modern usage ( Gendai kana-zukai ) in the number of characters and the way those characters are used. There was considerable opposition to the official adoption of the current orthography, on the grounds that the historical orthography conveys meanings better, and some writers continued to use it for many years after.

Contents

The historical orthography is found in almost all Japanese dictionaries, such as Kōjien. In the current edition of the Kōjien, if the historical orthography is different from the modern spelling, the old spelling is printed in tiny katakana between the modern kana and kanji transcriptions of the word. Ellipses are used to save space when the historical and modern spellings are identical. Older editions of the Kōjien gave priority to the historical orthography.

The historical orthography should not be confused with hentaigana, alternate kana that were declared obsolete with the orthographic reforms of 1900.

General differences

This section uses Nihon-shiki romanization for づ, ず, ぢ, じ, ゐ, and ゑ.
A 1940 Japanese Empire propaganda slogan: paamanentohayamemaseu (Pamanento wa yamemasho, "Stop the permanent wave"), with yamemasho written as yamemaseu. Stop the Permanent wave.JPG
A 1940 Japanese Empire propaganda slogan: パアマネントハヤメマセウ (Pāmanento wa yamemashō, "Stop the permanent wave"), with yamemashō written as yamemaseu.

In historical kana usage:

Most of the historical kana usage has been found to accurately represent certain aspects of the way words sounded during the Heian period. As the spoken language has continued to develop, some orthography looks odd to the modern eye. As these peculiarities follow fairly regular patterns, they are not difficult to learn. However, some of the historical kana usages are etymologically mistakes. For example,

或いはaruiwa (or) might be found written incorrectly as 或ひは*aruhiwa or 或ゐは*aruwiwa
用ゐるmochiwiru (use) might be found written incorrectly as 用ひる*mochihiru
つくえtsukue (desk, table) might be found written incorrectly as: つくゑ*tsukuwe

Those familiar with Japanese writing may notice that most of the differences apply to words which are usually written in Kanji anyway, and so would require no changes to switch from one Kana system to another (unless furigana are employed). In particular, yōon sounds occur almost exclusively in the Chinese-derived readings that are usually only seen in Kanji compounds (although not entirely; 今日kyō "today," written けふkefu in the old system, is a native Japanese word), and therefore do not look any different (without furigana). The relative lack of difference in appearance in practice between the two systems was a major reason the spelling reform succeeded, and also why the three grammatical particles o, e, wa continue to be written as をwo, へhe, and はha instead of おo, えe, and わwa; many felt that changing these exceedingly common spellings would unnecessarily confuse readers. It is also for this reason that many character dictionaries continue to include the historical spellings, since they are relevant there.

Some forms of unusual kana usage are not, in fact, historical kana usage. For example, writing どじょう (泥鰌/鰌)dojō (loach, a sardine-like fish) in the form どぜうdozeu is not historical kana usage (which was どぢやうdodiyau), but a kind of slang writing originating in the Edo period.

Examples

Here are some representative examples showing the historical and modern spellings and the kanji representation.

Historical usageCurrent usageNewOldTranslation
けふkefuきょうkyō今日today
かはkahaかわkawa川river
こゑkoweこえkoe声聲voice
みづmiduみずmizu水water
わうwauおうō王king (Sino-Japanese)
てふtefuちょうchō蝶butterfly (Sino-Japanese)
ゐるwiruいるiru居るthere is/are (animate)
あはれahareあわれaware哀れ sorrow; grief; pathos
かへるkaheruかえるkaeru帰る歸るto return home
くわしkuwashi (kwashi)かしkashi菓子sweets
とうきやうToukiyau (Toukyau)とうきょうTōkyō東京 Tokyo
せうseuしょうshō笑laughter (Sino-Japanese)

The table at the bottom gives a more complete list of the changes in spelling patterns.

Current usage

Historical kana usage can be used to look up words in larger dictionaries and dictionaries specializing in old vocabulary, which are in print in Japan. Because of the great discrepancy between the pronunciation and spelling and the widespread adoption of modern kana usage, historical kana usage is almost never seen, except in a few special cases. Companies, shrines and people occasionally use historical kana conventions such as ゑびす (Ebisu), notably in Yebisu beer, which is written ヱビスwebisu but pronounced ebisu. Also, some long-standing company names retain yōon in full-sized kana, like キヤノン (Canon) or stamp manufacturer シヤチハタ (Shachihata).

In addition, alternate kana letterforms, known as hentaigana (変体仮名), have nearly disappeared. A few uses remain, such as kisoba, often written using obsolete kana on the signs of soba shops.

The use of をwo, へhe, and はha instead of おo, えe, and わwa for the grammatical particles o, e, wa is a remnant of historical kana usage.

Table of differences

Pre-War sign for Gao Deng Xue Xiao Qian Kotogakkou-mae station in Toyama, spelled out as Kautoukakukaumahe. FG-Kotogakkou-mae Station 2.JPG
Pre-War sign for 高等学校前 Kōtōgakkou-mae station in Toyama, spelled out as Kautoukakukaumahe.

The following tables summarize every possible historical spelling for the syllables which were spelled differently under the historical system. When more than one historical spelling is given for a particular modern spelling, the various historical spellings were etymologically (and at one point phonetically) distinct and occurred in different words (i.e., are not merely different ways to spell the same word). The tables are sorted using the gojūon ordering system.

Note that the dakuten (voicing mark) was frequently omitted as well, as in the station sign at right.

Table references

[2] [3]

Notes

Romanization

Readers of English occasionally encounter words romanized according to historical kana usage. Here are some examples, with modern romanizations in parentheses:

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Katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kanji</span> Chinese characters used in Japanese writing

Kanji are the logographic Chinese characters adapted from the Chinese script used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived syllabic scripts of hiragana and katakana. The characters have Japanese pronunciations; most have two, with one based on the Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as shinjitai, by a process similar to China's simplification efforts, with the intention to increase literacy among the common folk. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characters that exist. There are nearly 3,000 kanji used in Japanese names and in common communication.

Nihon-shiki is a romanization system for transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. Among the major romanization systems for Japanese, it is the most regular one and has an almost one-to-one relation to the kana writing system.

In the Japanese writing system, hentaigana are variant forms of hiragana.

Okurigana are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to force a particular kanji to have a specific meaning and be read a certain way. For example, the plain verb form 見る inflects to past tense 見た, where 見 is the kanji stem, and る and た are okurigana, written in hiragana script. With very few exceptions, okurigana are only used for kun'yomi, not for on'yomi, as Chinese morphemes do not inflect in Japanese, and their pronunciation is inferred from context, since many are used as parts of compound words (kango).

The dakuten, colloquially ten-ten, is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Japanese writing system</span> Structure of the Japanese writing system

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Wi is an obsolete Japanese kana. The combination of a W-column kana letter with ゐ゙ in hiragana was introduced to represent [vi] in the 19th century and 20th century. It is presumed that 'ゐ' represented, and that 'ゐ' and 'い' represented distinct pronunciations before merging to sometime between the Kamakura and Taishō periods. Along with the kana for we, this kana was deemed obsolete in Japanese with the orthographic reforms of 1946, to be replaced by 'い/イ' in all contexts. It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia and foreign words, the katakana form 'ウィ' (U-[small-i]) is preferred.

ゑ in hiragana, or ヱ in katakana, is an obsolete Japanese kana. The combination of a W-column kana letter with "ゑ゙" in hiragana was introduced to represent [ve] in the 19th and 20th centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taiwanese kana</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Okinawan scripts</span>

Okinawan, spoken in Okinawa Island, was once the official language of the Ryukyu Kingdom. At the time, documents were written in kanji and hiragana, derived from Japan.

The Japanese script reform is the attempt to correlate standard spoken Japanese with the written word, which began during the Meiji period. This issue is known in Japan as the kokugo kokuji mondai. The reforms led to the development of the modern Japanese written language, and explain the arguments for official policies used to determine the usage and teaching of kanji rarely used in Japan.

Modern kana usage is the present official kanazukai. Also known as new kana usage, it is derived from historical usage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yotsugana</span> Four kana in Japanese that are pronounced the same in some regions

Yotsugana are a set of four specific kana, じ, ぢ, ず, づ, used in the Japanese writing system. They historically represented four distinct voiced morae (syllables) in the Japanese language. However, most dialects, such as Standard Japanese-speakers, have undergone mergers and now pronounce two sounds.

In contemporary Japanese writing, foreign-language loanwords and foreign names are normally written in the katakana script, which is one component of the Japanese writing system. As far as possible, sounds in the source language are matched to the nearest sounds in the Japanese language, and the result is transcribed using standard katakana characters, each of which represents one syllable. For example, America is written アメリカ (A-me-ri-ka). To accommodate various foreign-language sounds not present in Japanese, a system of extended katakana has also developed to augment standard katakana.

The Braille pattern dots-236 is a 6-dot braille cell with the middle left and both bottom dots raised, or an 8-dot braille cell with the upper-middle left and both lower-middle dots raised. It is represented by the Unicode code point U+2826, and in Braille ASCII with the number 8.

References

  1. ↑ Seeley, Christopher (2000). A History of Writing in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN   9780824822170.
  2. 1 2 Yaniv, Boaz (June 8, 2011). "How did "little tsu" become a lengthener?". StackExchange. Stack Exchange, Inc. Retrieved May 12, 2016.
  3. ↑ "Historical kana usage:How to read". BIGLOBE. Biglobe, Inc. 2016. Retrieved May 12, 2016.
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