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52-550: The existence and meaning of this system is a critical point of scholarly debate in the study of the history of the Japanese language. The following are the syllabic distinctions made in Old Japanese . Those syllables marked in gray are known as jōdai tokushu kanazukai . The two groups merged by the 9th century. It predates the development of kana , and the phonetic difference is unclear. Therefore, an ad hoc transcription system

104-523: A . Many scholars, following Shinkichi Hashimoto , argue that p had already lenited to [ɸ] by the Old Japanese period, but Miyake argues that it was still a stop. The Chinese characters chosen to write syllables with the Old Japanese vowel a suggest that it was an open unrounded vowel /a/ . The vowel u was a close back rounded vowel /u/ , unlike the unrounded /ɯ/ of Modern Standard Japanese. Several hypotheses have been advanced to explain

156-408: A compound was lexicalized as a single morpheme. The following fusions occurred: Adjacent vowels belonging to different morphemes, or pairs of vowels for which none of the above fusions applied, were reduced by deleting one or other of the vowels. Most often, the first of the adjacent vowels was deleted: The exception to this rule occurred when the first of the adjacent vowels was the sole vowel of

208-407: A few phonemic differences from later forms, such as a simpler syllable structure and distinctions between several pairs of syllables that have been pronounced identically since Early Middle Japanese. The phonetic realization of these distinctions is uncertain. Internal reconstruction points to a pre-Old Japanese phase with fewer consonants and vowels. As is typical of Japonic languages, Old Japanese

260-429: A monosyllabic morpheme (usually a clitic ), in which case the other vowel was deleted: Cases where both outcomes are found are attributed to different analyses of morpheme boundaries: Internal reconstruction suggests that the stage preceding Old Japanese had fewer consonants and vowels. Internal reconstruction suggests that the Old Japanese voiced obstruents, which always occurred in medial position, arose from

312-399: A number of different ways, some of which are straightforward and others which are less so. Shakuon kana ( 借音仮名 ) are based on a Sino-Japanese on'yomi reading, in which one character represents either one mora or two morae. Shakkun kana ( 借訓仮名 ) are based on a native kun'yomi reading, one to three characters represent one to three morae. Due to the major differences between

364-447: A single morpheme. Arisaka's Law states that -o 2 was generally not found in the same morpheme as -a , -o 1 or -u . Some scholars have interpreted that as a vestige of earlier vowel harmony , but it is very different from patterns that are observed in, for example, the Turkic languages . Two adjacent vowels fused to form a new vowel when a consonant was lost within a morpheme, or

416-459: Is a danger of circular reasoning . Additional evidence has been drawn from phonological typology , subsequent developments in the Japanese pronunciation, and the comparative study of the Ryukyuan languages . Miyake reconstructed the following consonant inventory: The voiceless obstruents /p, t, s, k/ had voiced prenasalized counterparts /ᵐb, ⁿd, ⁿz, ᵑɡ/ . Prenasalization was still present in

468-569: Is a strong possibility that the inscription of the Inariyama Sword may be written in a version of the Chinese language used in Baekje. Man'yōgana uses kanji characters for their phonetic rather than semantic qualities. In other words, kanji are used for their sounds, not their meanings. There was no standard system for choice of kanji, and different ones could be used to represent the same sound, with

520-515: Is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language . It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this type of kana is not clear, but it was in use since at least the mid-7th century. The name "man'yōgana" derives from the Man'yōshū , a Japanese poetry anthology from

572-724: Is employed. Syllables written with subscript 1 are known as type A ( 甲 , kō ) and those with subscript 2 as type B ( 乙 , otsu ) (these are the first two celestial stems , and are used for such numbering in Japanese). There are several competing transcription systems. One popular system places a diaeresis above the vowel: ï, ë, ö. This typically represents i 2 , e 2 , and o 2 , and assumes that unmarked i, e, and o are i 1 , e 1 , and o 1 . It does not necessarily have anything to do with pronunciation. There are several problems with this system. Another system uses superscripts instead of subscripts. The "Yale System" writes

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624-567: Is general agreement that word-initial p had become a voiceless bilabial fricative [ɸ] by Early Modern Japanese , as suggested by its transcription as f in later Portuguese works and as ph or hw in the Korean textbook Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ . In Modern Standard Japanese, it is romanized as h and has different allophones before various vowels. In medial position, it became [w] in Early Middle Japanese and has since disappeared except before

676-614: Is only made in the oldest text: Kojiki . After that, they merged into /mo/. In later texts, confusion between types A and B can be seen. Nearly all of the A/B distinctions had vanished by the Classical Japanese period. As seen in early Heian Period texts such as Kogo Shūi , the final syllables to be distinguished were /ko 1 , go 1 / and /ko 2 , go 2 /. After the merger, CV 1 and CV 2 became CV. Old Japanese language Old Japanese ( 上代日本語 , Jōdai Nihon-go )

728-482: Is the iron Inariyama Sword , which was excavated at the Inariyama Kofun in 1968. In 1978, X-ray analysis revealed a gold-inlaid inscription consisting of at least 115 Chinese characters, and this text, written in Chinese, included Japanese personal names, which were written for names in a phonetic language. This sword is thought to have been made in the year 辛亥年 (471 AD in the commonly-accepted theory). There

780-604: Is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language , recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period , but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial. Old Japanese was an early member of the Japonic language family. No genetic links to other language families have been proven. Old Japanese was written using man'yōgana , using Chinese characters as syllabograms or (occasionally) logograms . It featured

832-409: Is very little Japonic evidence for them. As seen in § Morphophonemics , many occurrences of the rare vowels i 2 , e 1 , e 2 and o 1 arise from fusion of more common vowels. Similarly, many nouns having independent forms ending in -i 2 or -e 2 also have bound forms ending in a different vowel, which are believed to be older. For example, sake 2 'rice wine' has

884-543: The Fudoki (720) and the 21 poems of the Bussokuseki-kahi ( c.  752 ). The latter has the virtue of being an original inscription, whereas the oldest surviving manuscripts of all the other texts are the results of centuries of copying, with the attendant risk of scribal errors. Prose texts are more limited but are thought to reflect the syntax of Old Japanese more accurately than verse texts do. The most important are

936-596: The Nara period written with man'yōgana. Texts using the system also often use Chinese characters for their meaning , but man'yōgana refers to such characters only when they are used to represent a phonetic value. The values were derived from the contemporary Chinese pronunciation, but native Japanese readings of the character were also sometimes used. For example, 木 (whose character means 'tree') could represent /mo/ (based on Middle Chinese [məwk] ), /ko/ , or /kwi/ (meaning 'tree' in Old Japanese ). Simplified versions of man'yōgana eventually gave rise to both

988-598: The Nihon Shoki , the Chinese characters appeared to have been chosen to represent a pitch pattern similar to that recorded in the Ruiju Myōgishō , a dictionary that was compiled in the late 11th century. In that section, a low-pitch syllable was represented by a character with the Middle Chinese level tone, and a high pitch was represented by a character with one of the other three Middle Chinese tones . (A similar division

1040-477: The Suiko period (592–628). Those fragments are usually considered a form of Old Japanese. Of the 10,000 paper records kept at Shōsōin , only two, dating from about 762, are in Old Japanese. Over 150,000 wooden tablets ( mokkan ) dating from the late 7th and early 8th century have been unearthed. The tablets bear short texts, often in Old Japanese of a more colloquial style than the polished poems and liturgies of

1092-506: The hiragana and katakana scripts, which are used in Modern Japanese. Scholars from the Korean kingdom of Baekje are believed to have introduced the man'yōgana writing system to the Japanese archipelago . The chronicles Kojiki and the Nihon shoki both state so; though direct evidence is hard to come by, scholars tend to accept the idea. A possible oldest example of man'yōgana

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1144-636: The 27 Norito ('liturgies') recorded in the Engishiki (compiled in 927) and the 62 Senmyō (literally 'announced order', meaning imperial edicts) recorded in the Shoku Nihongi (797). A limited number of Japanese words, mostly personal names and place names, are recorded phonetically in ancient Chinese texts, such as the " Wei Zhi " portion of the Records of the Three Kingdoms (3rd century AD), but

1196-613: The 6th century. Southern Ryukyuan varieties such as Miyako , Yaeyama and Yonaguni have /b/ corresponding to Old Japanese w , but only Yonaguni (at the far end of the chain) has /d/ where Old Japanese has y : However, many linguists, especially in Japan, argue that the Southern Ryukyuan voiced stops are local innovations, adducing a variety of reasons. Some supporters of *b and *d also add *z and *g, which both disappeared in Old Japanese, for reasons of symmetry. However, there

1248-643: The A/B distinctions made in man'yōgana . The issue is hotly debated, and there is no consensus. The traditional view, first advanced by Kyōsuke Kindaichi in 1938, is that there were eight pure vowels, with the type B vowels being more central than their type A counterparts. Others, beginning in the 1930s but more commonly since the work of Roland Lange in 1968, have attributed the type A/B distinction to medial or final glides /j/ and /w/ . The diphthong proposals are often connected to hypotheses about pre-Old Japanese, but all exhibit an uneven distribution of glides. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2

1300-403: The Japanese language (which was polysyllabic ) and the Chinese language (which was monosyllabic ) from which kanji came, man'yōgana proved to be very cumbersome to read and write. As stated earlier, since kanji has two different sets of pronunciation, one based on Sino-Japanese pronunciation and the other on native Japanese pronunciation, it was difficult to determine whether a certain character

1352-451: The Korean peninsula. For example, Several different notations for the type A/B distinction are found in the literature, including: There is no consensus on the pronunciation of the syllables distinguished by man'yōgana . One difficulty is that the Middle Chinese pronunciations of the characters used are also disputed, and since the reconstruction of their phonetic values is partly based on later Sino-Japanese pronunciations, there

1404-575: The adnominal form of the verb uwe 'to plant'. Alexander Vovin argues that the non-initial syllables i and u in these cases should be read as Old Japanese syllables yi and wu . The rare vowel i 2 almost always occurred at the end of a morpheme. Most occurrences of e 1 , e 2 and o 1 were also at the end of a morpheme. The mokkan typically did not distinguish voiced from voiceless consonants, and wrote some syllables with characters that had fewer strokes and were based on older Chinese pronunciations imported via

1456-605: The bound form and a suffix *-i. The origin of this suffix is debated, with one proposal being the ancestor of the obsolescent particle i (whose function is also uncertain), and another being a weakened consonant (suggested by proposed Korean cognates). There are also alternations suggesting e 2 < *əi, such as se 2 / so 2 - 'back' and me 2 / mo 2 - 'bud'. Some authors believe that they belong to an earlier layer than i 2 < *əi, but others reconstruct two central vowels *ə and *ɨ, which merged everywhere except before *i. Other authors attribute

1508-450: The choice made on the whims of the writer. By the end of the 8th century, 970 kanji were in use to represent the 90 morae of Japanese. For example, the Man'yōshū poem 17/4025 was written as follows: In the poem, the sounds mo ( 母, 毛 ) and shi ( 之, 思 ) are written with multiple, different characters. All particles and most words are represented phonetically ( 多太 tada , 安佐 asa ), but

1560-408: The form saka- in compounds such as sakaduki 'sake cup'. The following alternations are the most common: The widely accepted analysis of this situation is that the most common Old Japanese vowels a , u , i 1 and o 2 reflect earlier *a, *u, *i and *ə respectively, and the other vowels reflect fusions of these vowels: Thus the above independent forms of nouns can be derived from

1612-401: The highly cursive sōsho ( 草書 ) style popularly used by women; meanwhile, katakana was developed by Buddhist monks as a form of shorthand, utilizing, in most cases, only fragments (for example, usually the first or last few strokes) of man'yōgana characters. In some cases, one man'yōgana character for a given syllable gave rise to a hentaigana that was simplified further to result in

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1664-492: The influence of Japanese grammar , such as the word order (for example, the verb being placed after the object). Chinese and Koreans had long used Chinese characters to write non-Chinese terms and proper names phonetically by selecting characters for Chinese words that sounded similar to each syllable. Koreans also used the characters phonetically to write Korean particles and inflections that were added to Chinese texts to allow them to be read as Korean ( Idu script ). In Japan,

1716-520: The language of the Nara period (710–794), when the capital was Heijō-kyō (now Nara ). That is the period of the earliest connected texts in Japanese, the 112 songs included in the Kojiki (712). The other major literary sources of the period are the 128 songs included in the Nihon Shoki (720) and the Man'yōshū ( c.  759 ), a compilation of over 4,500 poems. Shorter samples are 25 poems in

1768-456: The late 17th century (according to the Korean textbook Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ ) and is found in some Modern Japanese and Ryukyuan dialects, but it has disappeared in modern Japanese except for the intervocalic nasal stop allophone [ŋ] of /ɡ/ . The sibilants /s/ and /ⁿz/ may have been palatalized before e and i . Comparative evidence from Ryukyuan languages suggests that Old Japanese p reflected an earlier voiceless bilabial stop *p. There

1820-540: The practice was developed into man'yōgana , a complete script for the language that used Chinese characters phonetically, which was the ancestor of modern kana syllabaries. This system was already in use in the verse parts of the Kojiki (712) and the Nihon Shoki (720). For example, the first line of the first poem in the Kojiki was written with five characters: This method of writing Japanese syllables by using characters for their Chinese sounds ( ongana )

1872-537: The primary corpus. Artifacts inscribed with Chinese characters dated as early as the 1st century AD have been found in Japan, but detailed knowledge of the script seems not to have reached the islands until the early 5th century. According to the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki , the script was brought by scholars from Baekje (southwestern Korea). The earliest texts found in Japan were written in Classical Chinese , probably by immigrant scribes. Later "hybrid" texts show

1924-505: The pronunciation. There are many hypotheses to explain the distinction. However, it is not clear whether the distinction applied to the consonant, vowel, or something else. There is no general academic agreement. A word is consistently, without exception, written with syllables from a specific group. For example, /kami 1 / "above" and /kami 2 / "god". While both words end in /mi/ in later Japanese, mi 1 cannot substitute for mi 2 or vice versa. This strict distinction exists for all of

1976-576: The syllable count to 87. Some authors also believe that two forms of po were distinguished in the Kojiki . All of these pairs had merged in the Early Middle Japanese of the Heian period. The consonants g , z , d , b and r did not occur at the start of a word. Conversely, syllables consisting of a single vowel were restricted to word-initial position, with a few exceptions such as kai 'oar', ko 2 i 'to lie down', kui 'to regret' (with conclusive kuyu ), oi 'to age' and uuru ,

2028-416: The syllables marked in gray. This usage is also found in the verb morphology. The quadrigrade conjugation is as follows: The verb /sak-/ "bloom" has quadrigrade conjugation class. Thus, its conjugation is as follows: Before the jōdai tokushu kanazukai discovery, it was thought that quadrigrade realis and imperative shared the same form: -e. However, after the discovery, it became clear that realis

2080-436: The system has gaps where yi and wu might be expected. Shinkichi Hashimoto discovered in 1917 that many syllables that have a modern i , e or o occurred in two forms, termed types A ( 甲 , kō ) and B ( 乙 , otsu ) . These are denoted by subscripts 1 and 2 respectively in the above table. The syllables mo 1 and mo 2 are not distinguished in the slightly later Nihon Shoki and Man'yōshū , reducing

2132-630: The transcriptions by Chinese scholars are unreliable. The oldest surviving inscriptions from Japan, dating from the 5th or early 6th centuries, include those on the Suda Hachiman Shrine Mirror , the Inariyama Sword , and the Eta Funayama Sword . Those inscriptions are written in Classical Chinese but contain several Japanese names that were transcribed phonetically using Chinese characters. Such inscriptions became more common from

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2184-588: The type A vowels i 1 , e 1 , o 1 as yi, ye, wo, and writes i 2 , e 2 , o 2 as iy, ey, o̠ . When vowels lack the Type A vs. Type B distinction they are given unmodified spellings (i e o). Consequently, the type C syllables are distinguishable from both A and B type without any presumption of which, if any, of the other types they shared pronunciations with. These spellings are despite their appearance not intended as reconstructions, but as abstract notations that represent Old Japanese spelling without any commitment to

2236-744: The variation to different reflexes in different dialects and note that *əi yields e in Ryukyuan languages. Some instances of word-final e 1 and o 1 are difficult to analyse as fusions, and some authors postulate *e and *o to account for such cases. A few alternations, as well as comparisons with Eastern Old Japanese and Ryukyuan languages, suggest that *e and *o also occurred in non-word-final positions at an earlier stage but were raised in such positions to i 1 and u , respectively, in central Old Japanese. The mid vowels are also found in some early mokkan and in some modern Japanese dialects. As in later forms of Japanese, Old Japanese word order

2288-416: The weakening of earlier nasal syllables before voiceless obstruents: In some cases, such as tubu 'grain', kadi 'rudder' and pi 1 za 'knee', there is no evidence for a preceding vowel, which leads some scholars to posit final nasals at the earlier stage. Some linguists suggest that Old Japanese w and y derive, respectively, from *b and *d at some point before the oldest inscriptions in

2340-514: The words ji ( 路 ), umi ( 海 ) and funekaji ( 船梶 ) are rendered semantically. In some cases, specific syllables in particular words are consistently represented by specific characters. That usage is known as Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai and usage has led historical linguists to conclude that certain disparate sounds in Old Japanese , consistently represented by differing sets of man'yōgana characters, may have merged since then. In writing which utilizes man'yōgana, kanji are mapped to sounds in

2392-482: Was -e 2 while imperative was -e 1 . Also, jōdai tokushu kanazukai has a profound effect on etymology. It was once thought that /kami/ "above" and /kami/ "god" shared the same etymology, a god being an entity high above. However, after the discovery, it is known that "above" is /kami 1 / while "god" is /kami 2 /. Thus, they are distinct words. The following chart lists syllable and man'yōgana correspondences. The distinction between /mo 1 / and /mo 2 /

2444-403: Was predominantly subject–object–verb, with adjectives and adverbs preceding the nouns and verbs they modify and auxiliary verbs and particles consistently appended to the main verb. nanipa Naniwa no 2 GEN mi 1 ya court ni Man%27y%C5%8Dgana Man'yōgana ( 万葉仮名 , Japanese pronunciation: [maɰ̃joꜜːɡana] or [maɰ̃joːɡana] )

2496-416: Was primarily an agglutinative language with a subject–object–verb word order, adjectives and adverbs preceding the nouns and verbs they modified and auxiliary verbs and particles appended to the main verb. Unlike in later periods, Old Japanese adjectives could be used uninflected to modify following nouns. Old Japanese verbs had a rich system of tense and aspect suffixes. Old Japanese is usually defined as

2548-491: Was seen only in Kojiki and vanished afterwards. The distribution of syllables suggests that there may have once been * po 1 , * po 2 , * bo 1 and * bo 2 . If that was true, a distinction was made between Co 1 and Co 2 for all consonants C except for w . Some take that as evidence that Co 1 may have represented Cwo . Although modern Japanese dialects have pitch accent systems, they were usually not shown in man'yōgana . However, in one part of

2600-426: Was supplemented with indirect methods in the complex mixed script of the Man'yōshū ( c.  759 ). In man'yōgana , each Old Japanese syllable was represented by a Chinese character. Although any of several characters could be used for a given syllable, a careful analysis reveals that 88 syllables were distinguished in early Old Japanese, typified by the Kojiki songs: As in later forms of Japanese,

2652-419: Was used in the tone patterns of Chinese poetry, which were emulated by Japanese poets in the late Asuka period .) Thus, it appears that the Old Japanese accent system was similar to that of Early Middle Japanese. Old Japanese words consisted of one or more open syllables of the form (C)V, subject to additional restrictions: In 1934, Arisaka Hideyo proposed a set of phonological restrictions permitted in

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2704-412: Was used to represent its pronunciation or its meaning, i.e., whether it was man'yōgana or actual kanji, or both. To alleviate the confusion and to save time writing, kanji that were used as man'yōgana eventually gave rise to hiragana , including the now-obsolete hentaigana ( 変体仮名 ) alternatives, alongside a separate system that became katakana . Hiragana developed from man'yōgana written in

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