Manyogana
Encyclopedia
is an ancient writing system
that employs Chinese character
s to represent the Japanese language
. The date of the earliest usage of this type of kana
is not clear, but it was in use since at least the mid seventh century. The name "man'yōgana" is from the Man'yōshū, a Japanese poetry
anthology from the Nara period
written in man'yōgana.
that was excavated at the Inariyama Kofun in 1968. In 1978, X-ray analysis revealed a gold-inlaid inscription consisting of more than 115 Chinese characters and this text, written in Chinese, included Japanese personal names which were supposedly phonetically written. This sword is thought to have been made in year of 辛亥年 (which is 471 C.E. in commonly accepted theory) and it is postulated that the metal used in the sword was refined from magnetite
found in the eastern region of China and imported into Japan, and the sword was forged there by the analysis of the rust of the sword. There is a possibility that the inscription of Inariyama sword is written in the Chinese language that an ancient Korean used. A scholar wrote in his article that most scholars in Japanese studies tend to accept in one form or another the ancient legend
that Man'yōgana came from Baekche. However this hypothesis is denied by other scholars.
for their phonetic value ( shakuon; "borrowed sound") rather than their meaning ( shakkun; "borrowed meaning"). Several kanji can represent the same sound, the choice of which to use often being decided for stylistic reasons. For example, the Man'yōshū poem 17/4025 was written as follows:
The sounds mo and shi are written with multiple characters. While all particles and most words are represented phonetically ( tada, asa), the words umi and funekaji are rendered semantically.
In some cases, specific syllables in particular words are consistently represented by specific characters. This usage is known as Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai
. It has led historical linguists to conclude that certain sounds in Old Japanese
, represented by differing sets of man'yōgana characters, may have merged since then.
Shakuon kana are based on Sino-Japanese on'yomi reading, in which one character represents either one mora
or two morae.
Shakkun kana are based on native kun'yomi reading, one to three characters represent one to three morae.
and katakana
. Hiragana developed from man'yōgana written in the highly cursive
sōsho style; katakana is based uponman'yōgana, and was developed by Buddhist monks as a form of shorthand. In some cases, one man'yōgana character for a given syllable gave rise to the current hiragana equivalent, and a different one gave rise to the current katakana equivalent. For example, the hiragana る (ru) is derived from the man'yōgana , the katakana ル (ru) is derived from the man'yōgana .
The use of multiple kanji for a single syllable also led to hentaigana
, alternate letterforms for hiragana. Hentaigana were officially discouraged in 1900.
Man'yōgana continues to appear in some regional names of present-day Japan, especially in Kyūshū
. A phenomenon similar to man'yōgana, called ateji
(当て字), still occurs, where words (including loanword
s) are spelled out using kanji for their phonetic value: for example, (kurabu, club), or (kōhii, coffee).
Writing system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
that employs Chinese character
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
s to represent the Japanese language
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
. The date of the earliest usage of this type of kana
Kana
Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
is not clear, but it was in use since at least the mid seventh century. The name "man'yōgana" is from the Man'yōshū, a Japanese poetry
Japanese poetry
Japanese poets first encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For...
anthology from the Nara period
Nara period
The of the history of Japan covers the years from AD 710 to 794. Empress Gemmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō . Except for 5 years , when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the capital of Japanese civilization until Emperor Kammu established a new capital, Nagaoka-kyō, in 784...
written in man'yōgana.
Origin
A possible oldest example of Man'yōgana is the iron Inariyama SwordInariyama Sword
The iron or was excavated at the Inariyama Kofun in 1968. Inariyama Kofun is located in Saitama Prefecture. In 1978, X-ray analysis revealed a gold-inlaid inscription that comprises more than 115 Chinese characters. This sword was described as the discovery of the century for the study of...
that was excavated at the Inariyama Kofun in 1968. In 1978, X-ray analysis revealed a gold-inlaid inscription consisting of more than 115 Chinese characters and this text, written in Chinese, included Japanese personal names which were supposedly phonetically written. This sword is thought to have been made in year of 辛亥年 (which is 471 C.E. in commonly accepted theory) and it is postulated that the metal used in the sword was refined from magnetite
Magnetite
Magnetite is a ferrimagnetic mineral with chemical formula Fe3O4, one of several iron oxides and a member of the spinel group. The chemical IUPAC name is iron oxide and the common chemical name is ferrous-ferric oxide. The formula for magnetite may also be written as FeO·Fe2O3, which is one part...
found in the eastern region of China and imported into Japan, and the sword was forged there by the analysis of the rust of the sword. There is a possibility that the inscription of Inariyama sword is written in the Chinese language that an ancient Korean used. A scholar wrote in his article that most scholars in Japanese studies tend to accept in one form or another the ancient legend
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...
that Man'yōgana came from Baekche. However this hypothesis is denied by other scholars.
Principles
Man'yōgana usually employ kanjiKanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
for their phonetic value ( shakuon; "borrowed sound") rather than their meaning ( shakkun; "borrowed meaning"). Several kanji can represent the same sound, the choice of which to use often being decided for stylistic reasons. For example, the Man'yōshū poem 17/4025 was written as follows:
| Man'yōgana | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Katakana | シヲヂカラ | タダコエクレバ | ハクヒノウミ | アサナギシタリ | フネカヂモガモ |
| Modern | |||||
| Romanized | Shiojikara | Tadakoekureba | Hakuhinoumi | Asanagishitari | Funekajimogamo |
The sounds mo and shi are written with multiple characters. While all particles and most words are represented phonetically ( tada, asa), the words umi and funekaji are rendered semantically.
In some cases, specific syllables in particular words are consistently represented by specific characters. This usage is known as Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai
Jodai Tokushu Kanazukai
is an archaic kanazukai used to write Japanese during the Nara period. Its primary feature is to distinguish between two groups of syllables as discussed below that later merged together.-Syllables:Following are the syllabic distinctions made in Old Japanese....
. It has led historical linguists to conclude that certain sounds in Old Japanese
Old Japanese
is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language.This stage in the development of Japanese is still actively studied and debated, and key Old Japanese texts, such as the Man'yōshū, remain obscure in places.-Dating:...
, represented by differing sets of man'yōgana characters, may have merged since then.
Types
In man'yōgana, kanji are mapped to sounds in a number of different ways, some of which were straightforward and others which are less so.Shakuon kana are based on Sino-Japanese on'yomi reading, in which one character represents either one mora
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
or two morae.
| Morae | 1 character, complete | 1 character, partial |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | , , | , , |
| 2 | , , | |
Shakkun kana are based on native kun'yomi reading, one to three characters represent one to three morae.
| Morae | 1 character, complete | 1 character, partial | 2 characters | 3 characters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | , , | , , | , , , , | |
| 2 | , , | , | ||
| 3 | , , | |||
| – | K | S | T | N | F | M | Y | R | W | G | Z | D | B | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | ||||||||||||||
| i1 | ||||||||||||||
| i2 | ||||||||||||||
| u | ||||||||||||||
| e1 | ||||||||||||||
| e2 | ||||||||||||||
| o1 | ||||||||||||||
| o2 |
Development
Kanji that were used as man'yōgana eventually gave rise to hiraganaHiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
and katakana
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
. Hiragana developed from man'yōgana written in the highly cursive
Cursive
Cursive, also known as joined-up writing, joint writing, or running writing, is any style of handwriting in which the symbols of the language are written in a simplified and/or flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing easier or faster...
sōsho style; katakana is based uponman'yōgana, and was developed by Buddhist monks as a form of shorthand. In some cases, one man'yōgana character for a given syllable gave rise to the current hiragana equivalent, and a different one gave rise to the current katakana equivalent. For example, the hiragana る (ru) is derived from the man'yōgana , the katakana ル (ru) is derived from the man'yōgana .
The use of multiple kanji for a single syllable also led to hentaigana
Hentaigana
are historical variants of modern standard hiragana. They are a legacy of man'yōgana, where many different kanji could be used to represent the same sound value. As the man'yōgana became simplified into cursive forms, multiple hiragana, including the hentaigana, was the result...
, alternate letterforms for hiragana. Hentaigana were officially discouraged in 1900.
Man'yōgana continues to appear in some regional names of present-day Japan, especially in Kyūshū
Kyushu
is the third largest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands. Its alternate ancient names include , , and . The historical regional name is referred to Kyushu and its surrounding islands....
. A phenomenon similar to man'yōgana, called ateji
Ateji
In modern Japanese, primarily refers to kanji used phonetically to represent native or borrowed words, without regard to the meaning of the underlying characters. This is analogous to man'yōgana in pre-modern Japanese...
(当て字), still occurs, where words (including loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s) are spelled out using kanji for their phonetic value: for example, (kurabu, club), or (kōhii, coffee).
| – | |K | S | |T | N | H | M | Y | R | W | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | 阿 | 加 | 散 | 多 | 奈 | 八 | 末 | 也 | 良 | 和 | ||
| ア | カ | サ | タ | ナ | ハ | マ | ヤ | ラ | ワ | |||
| i | 伊 | 機 | 幾 | |之 | 千 | 仁 | 比 | 三 | 以 | 利 | 井 | |
| イ | キ | シ | チ | ニ | ヒ | ミ |  |
リ | ヰ | |||
| u | 宇 | 久 | 須 | 州 | 川 | 奴 | 不 | 牟 | 由 | 流 | 宇 | |
| ウ | ク | ス | ツ | ヌ | フ | ム | ユ | ル | 于 | |||
| e | 江 | 介 | 世 | 天 | 祢 | 部 | 女 | 衣 | 礼 | 恵 | ||
| エ | ケ | セ | テ | ネ | ヘ | メ |  |
レ | ヱ | |||
| o | 於 | 己 | 曽 | 止 | 乃 | 保 | 毛 | 與 | 呂 | 乎 | ||
| オ | コ | ソ | ト | ノ | ホ | モ | ヨ | ロ | ヲ | |||
| – | 尓 | |||||||||||
| ン | ||||||||||||
| – | |K | S | T | N | H | M | Y | R | W | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | 安 | 加 | 左 | 太 | 奈 | 波 | 末 | 也 | 良 | 和 | |
| あ | か | さ | た | な | は | ま | や | ら | わ | ||
| i | 以 | 機 | 幾 | 之 | 知 | 仁 | 比 | 美 | 利 | 為 | |
| い | き | し | ち | に | ひ | み | り | ゐ | |||
| u | 宇 | 久 | 寸 | 川 | 奴 | 不 | 武 | 由 | 留 | ||
| う | く | す | つ | ぬ | ふ | む | ゆ | る | |||
| e | 衣 | 計 | 世 | 天 | 祢 | 部 | 女 | 礼 | 恵 | ||
| え | け | せ | て | ね | へ | め | れ | ゑ | |||
| o | 於 | 己 | 曽 | 止 | 乃 | 保 | 毛 | 与 | 呂 | 遠 | |
| お | こ | そ | と | の | ほ | も | よ | ろ | を | ||
| – | 无 | ||||||||||
| ん | |||||||||||