Historical kana usage Totally Explained

Everything about Historical Kana Usage totally explained

The refers to a kanazukai (system of spelling the Japanese syllabary) that's antiquated, because it's no longer in accord with the Japanese pronunciation nowadays. It differs from modern usage (Gendai Kanazukai) in the number of characters and the way those characters are used.
Historical kana spellings were widely used until after World War II. The modern system was adopted by Cabinet order in 1946. Now also known as the, it was known as the during the time it was employed.
The historical kana for words can be found in most Japanese dictionaries such as Kōjien. In the current edition of Kōjien, if the historical kana usage is different, it's printed in tiny katakana between the modern kana and kanji forms of the word. Previous editions of the dictionary gave priority to the historical kana usage.

General differences

ť This section uses Nihon-shiki romanization for づ, ず, ぢ, and じ.

In historical kana usage:

Two kana are used that are obsolete today: ゐ/ヰ wi and ゑ/ヱ we. These are pronounced as i and e. Words that formerly contained those characters are now written using い i and え e respectively.
Outside of its use as a particle, the を wo kana is used to represent the o sound.
Yōon sounds, such as しょう shō or きょう kyō, are not written with a small kana (ゃ, ゅ, ょ), but a full sized one (や, ゆ, よ).
The series of kana ha hi hu he ho are used to represent the sounds wa, i, u, e, o, respectively.
Precedence is given to grammar over pronunciation. For example, the verb warau (to laugh), is written わらふ warahu, and in accordance with Japanese grammar rules, waraou, the volitional form of warau, is written わらはう warahau.
The kana づ du and ぢ di, which are mostly only used in rendaku in modern kana usage, are more common. Modern kana usage replaces them with the identically pronounced ず zu and じ zi in most cases. For example ajisai (hydrangea) is written あぢさゐ adisawi.

Most of the historical kana usage has been found to accurately represent the way words sounded during the Heian era. As the spoken language has continued to develop, some orthography looks odd to the modern eye. As these peculiarities follow fairly regular patterns, they're not difficult to learn. However, some of the historical kana usages are simply mistakes. For example, ť aruiwa (or) should be,

mochiiru (use) should be, and ť tsukue (desk, table) should be, according to the old pronunciations.

Some forms of unusual kana usage are not, in fact, historical kana usage. For example, writing dojō (loach, a sardine-like fish) in the form dozeu isn't historical kana usage (which was 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 usage	romaji	current usage	romaji (kanji)	Translation
けふ	kefu	きょう	kyō (今日)	today
てふ	tefu	ちょう	chō (蝶)	butterfly
ゐる	wiru	いる	iru (居る)	to be, exist
あはれ	ahare	あわれ	aware (哀れ)	to be helpless, sad
かへる	kaheru	かえる	kaeru (帰る)	to return home
ゑびす	webisu	えびす	ebisu (夷)	barbarian, savage
くわし	kuwashi	かし	kashi (菓子)	sweets
とうきやう	toukyau	とうきょう	Tōkyō (東京)	Tokyo, the city of

The table at the bottom gives a more complete list of the changes in spelling patterns.
   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).
   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 (historically pronounced /wo/), へ, and は for sentence particles instead of お, え, and わ is a remnant of historical kana usage.

Romanization

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

Inouye (Inoue): a Japanese family name

Yen (En): the basic unit of Japanese currency

Tokugawa Iyeyasu (Ieyasu)

Uyeno (Ueno): a place name

Yedo (Edo): a former name of Tokyo

Kwannon (Kannon): A Bodhisattva

(Kaidan), meaning ghost story, the title of a collection of Japanese ghost stories compiled by Lafcadio Hearn

Kwansei Gakuin University (Kansai): A university in Kobe and Nishinomiya

Iwo Jima (Iō-jima): An island known as the site of a battle during World War IIFurther Information

Get more info on 'Historical Kana Usage'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://historical_kana_usage.totallyexplained.com">Historical kana usage Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.