Man'yōgana

Japanese writing
Components
Kanji Stroke order Radicals Kyōiku kanji Jōyō kanji Jinmeiyō kanji Hyōgai kanji List of kanji by stroke count List of kanji by concept
Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Man'yōgana Sogana Gojūon
Typographic symbols Japanese punctuation Iteration mark
Uses
Syllabograms Furigana Okurigana Braille
Romanization
Rōmaji Hepburn (colloquial) Kunrei (ISO) Nihon (ISO transliteration) JSL (transliteration) Wāpuro (keyboard)

Man'yōgana (万葉仮名) is an ancient writing system that employs Chinese characters 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.

Origin

A possible oldest example of Man'yōgana is the iron Inariyama Sword 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 the year 辛亥年 (471 A.D. in commonly accepted theory),^[1] and analysis of the rust on the sword implies that the metal used may have been refined from magnetite found in the eastern region of China, imported into Japan, and used to forge the sword there.^[2] There is a possibility that the inscription of Inariyama sword may be written in a version of the Chinese language used in the Korean-peninsula kingdom of Baekje.^[3]

Principles

Man'yōgana uses kanji characters for their phonetic^{[lower-alpha 1]} rather than semantic^{[lower-alpha 2]} qualities—in other words, they are used for their sounds and not their meanings. There was no standard system for choice of kanji; different kanji could represent a similar sound, 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.^[4] For example, the Man'yōshū poem 17/4025 was written as follows:

The sounds mo (母, 毛) and shi (之, 思) are written with multiple characters. While all particles and most words are represented phonetically (多太 tada, 安佐 asa), the words umi (海) and funekaji (船梶) 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.

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 (借音仮名) are based on 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 native kun'yomi reading, one to three characters represent one to three morae.

Development

Kanji that were used as man'yōgana eventually gave rise to hiragana and katakana. Hiragana developed from man'yōgana written in the highly cursive sōsho style; katakana is based upon man'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 留, the katakana ル (ru) is derived from the man'yōgana 流.

The use of multiple kanji for a single syllable also led to hentaigana (変体仮名), 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 loanwords) are spelled out using kanji for their phonetic value: for example, 倶楽部 (kurabu, club), or 仏蘭西 (Furansu, France).

Katakana with man'yōgana equivalents (segments of man'yōgana adapted into katakana highlighted)

Development of hiragana from man'yōgana

See also

• Idu script, Korean analogue

Notes

References

Works cited

External links

• An extensive list of man’yōgana arranged according to the characters, and not their readings
• Tomasz Majtczak: How are we supposed to write with something like that? Early employment of the Chinese script to write Japanese as exemplified by the Man’yōshū.

Look up Appendix:Comparison of hiragana and katakana derivations in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up man'yōgana in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.