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te create account log in contents move to sidebar hide top 1 sources and dating 2 writing system toggle writing system subsection 2 1 syllables 2 2 transcription 3 phonology toggle phonology subsection 3 1 consonants 3 2 vowels 3 3 accent 3 4 phonotactics 3 5 morphophonemics 3 6 pre old japanese 3 6 1 consonants 3 6 2 vowels 4 morphology toggle morphology subsection 4 1 nominals 4 1 1 pronouns 4 1 2 numerals 4 1 3 classifiers 4 1 4 prefixes 4 1 5 suffixes 4 2 verbs 4 2 1 inflected forms 4 2 2 conjugation classes 4 2 3 copulas 4 2 4 verbal prefixes 4 2 5 verbal auxiliaries 4 3 adjectives 5 syntax toggle syntax subsection 5 1 focus construction 5 2 nominalization 5 3 coordination 6 dialects 7 see also 8 notes 9 references toggle references subsection 9 1 works cited 10 further reading 11 external links toggle the table of contents old japanese 23 languages العربية asturianu تۆرکجه català deutsch español فارسی bahasa indonesia italiano 日本語 ქართული 한국어 bahasa melayu norsk nynorsk norsk bokmål русский simple english sunda türkçe اردو tiếng việt 粵語 中文 edit links article talk english read edit view history tools tools move to sidebar hide actions read edit view history general what links here related changes upload file permanent link page information cite this page get shortened url switch to legacy parser print export download as pdf printable version in other projects wikifunctions wiktionary wikidata item appearance move to sidebar hide from wikipedia the free encyclopedia oldest attested stage of the japanese language not to be confused with old javanese old japanese rubbing of bussokuseki kahi poems carved c 752 recording old japanese using chinese characters region japan era 8th century language family japonic insular old japanese early form proto japonic writing system man yōgana language codes iso 639 3 ojp glottolog oldj1239 this article contains ipa phonetic symbols without proper rendering support you may see question marks boxes or other symbols instead of unicode characters for an introductory guide on ipa symbols see help ipa old japanese 上代日本語 jōdai nihon go 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 old japanese is an early member of the japonic language family no genetic links to other language families have been proven the bulk of the old japanese corpus consists of poetry especially the man yōshū with a smaller number of formal prose works these texts were written using man yōgana a writing system that employs chinese characters as syllabograms or occasionally logograms the language featured a few phonological 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 is primarily an agglutinative language with a subject object verb word order adjectives and adverbs preceding the nouns and verbs they modify and auxiliary verbs and particles appended to the main verb unlike later forms of japanese old japanese adjectives can be used uninflected to modify following nouns old japanese verbs have a rich system of tense and aspect suffixes sources and dating edit 11th century annotated manuscript of the man yōshū old japanese is usually defined as the language of the nara period 710 794 when the capital was heijō kyō now nara 1 2 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 3 4 shorter samples are 25 poems in 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 5 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 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 4 6 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 the transcriptions by chinese scholars are unreliable 7 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 8 9 such inscriptions became more common from the suiko period 592 628 10 those fragments are usually considered a form of old japanese 11 of the 10 000 paper records kept at shōsōin only two dating from about 762 are in old japanese 12 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 their language is more colloquial in style than the polished poems and liturgies of the primary corpus 13 writing system edit main articles man yōgana and jōdai tokushu kanazukai 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 14 the earliest texts found in japan were written in classical chinese probably by immigrant scribes later hybrid texts show the influence of japanese grammar such as the word order for example the verb being placed after the object 15 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 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 16 this system was already in use in the verse parts of the kojiki 712 and the nihon shoki 720 17 18 for example the first line of the first poem in the kojiki was written with five characters 19 20 夜 久 毛 多 都 middle chinese a yae kjuw maw ta tu old japanese ya kumo 1 tatu eight cloud rise adn many clouds rising this method of writing japanese syllables by using characters for their chinese sounds ongana was supplemented with indirect methods in the complex mixed script of the man yōshū c 759 21 22 23 syllables edit 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 24 25 syllables in early old japanese with common man yōgana b a 阿 ka 加 迦 ga 賀 sa 佐 za 邪 ta 多 da 陀 na 那 pa 波 ba 婆 ma 麻 ya 夜 ra 良 wa 和 i 伊 ki 1 岐 gi 1 芸 si 斯 志 zi 士 ti 知 di 遅 ni 爾 迩 pi 1 比 bi 1 毘 mi 1 美 ri 理 wi 韋 ki 2 紀 gi 2 疑 pi 2 斐 bi 2 備 mi 2 微 u 宇 ku 久 gu 具 su 須 zu 受 tu 都 du 豆 nu 奴 pu 布 bu 夫 mu 牟 yu 由 ru 流 e 亜 ke 1 祁 ge 1 牙 se 勢 世 ze 是 te 弖 de 傅 ne 泥 pe 1 弊 be 1 辨 me 1 賣 ye 延 re 禮 we 恵 ke 2 気 ge 2 宜 pe 2 閇 be 2 倍 me 2 米 o 淤 意 ko 1 古 go 1 胡 呉 so 1 蘇 zo 1 俗 蘇 to 1 斗 do 1 度 no 1 怒 po 富 本 bo 煩 mo 1 毛 yo 1 用 ro 1 漏 路 wo 袁 遠 ko 2 許 go 2 碁 so 2 曾 zo 2 叙 to 2 登 do 2 杼 no 2 能 mo 2 母 yo 2 余 與 ro 2 呂 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 24 26 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 the syllable count to 87 27 28 some authors also believe that two forms of po were distinguished in the kojiki 29 all of these pairs had merged in the early middle japanese of the heian period 30 31 the consonants g z d b and r did not occur at the start of a word 32 conversely syllables consisting of a single vowel were restricted to word initial position with very few exceptions 33 34 the traditional view is that the system has gaps where yi and wu might be expected as in later forms of japanese alexander vovin argues that the non initial syllables i and u in words such as kai oar ko 2 i to lie down kui to regret with conclusive kuyu oi to age and uuru the adnominal form of the verb uwe to plant should be read as old japanese syllables yi and wu 35 frequencies of old japanese syllables in the man yōshū 36 k g s z t d n p b m y r w a 4612 7616 3358 3473 255 5212 734 5891 6450 2195 6018 3184 4213 2581 i 1 3679 5771 762 8070 350 2195 335 7101 3489 585 5818 3901 270 i 2 690 404 756 140 589 u 1556 4855 444 2507 904 4417 1065 1449 2905 389 2692 2190 3656 e 1 45 1145 13 1220 210 2831 727 1425 1101 203 318 644 2598 342 e 2 1011 489 959 287 1406 o 1 2441 1995 138 536 8 485 269 583 1870 75 7788 871 215 3657 o 2 3407 436 1206 122 5848 882 9618 1312 1177 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 37 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 the korean peninsula for example ki 1 was written with the character 支 pronounced kje in old chinese and tsye in middle chinese and to 2 was written with the character 止 pronounced tjəʔ in old chinese and tsyi in middle chinese 38 transcription edit several different notations for the type a b distinction are found in the literature including 39 40 41 common notations for the type a b distinction index notation i 1 i 2 e 1 e 2 o 1 o 2 kindaichi miller tōdō i ï e ë o ö vovin i ï e ɛ o ə modified mathias miller î ï ê ë ô ö yale martin yi iy ye ey wo o̠ unger frellesvig and whitman i wi ye e wo o phonology edit there is no consensus on the pronunciation of the syllables distinguished by man yōgana 42 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 is a danger of circular reasoning 43 additional evidence has been drawn from phonological typology subsequent developments in the japanese pronunciation and the comparative study of the ryukyuan languages 44 consonants edit miyake reconstructed the following consonant inventory 45 old japanese consonants labial dental palatal velar obstruent voiceless p t s k voiced prenasalized ᵐb ⁿd ⁿz ᵑɡ nasal m n liquid r approximant w j the voiceless obstruents p t s k had voiced prenasalized counterparts ᵐb ⁿd ⁿz ᵑɡ 45 prenasalization was still present in 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 46 the sibilants s and ⁿz may have been palatalized before e and i 47 comparative evidence from ryukyuan languages suggests that old japanese p reflected an earlier voiceless bilabial stop p 48 there 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 a 49 many scholars following shinkichi hashimoto argue that p had already lenited to ɸ by the old japanese period but miyake argues that the choice of kanji indicates that it was still a stop 50 vowels edit the chinese characters chosen to write syllables with the old japanese vowel a suggest that it was an open unrounded vowel a 51 the vowel u was a close back rounded vowel u unlike the unrounded ɯ of modern standard japanese 52 several hypotheses have been advanced to explain the a b distinctions made in man yōgana the issue is hotly debated and there is no consensus 39 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 53 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 54 40 the diphthong proposals are often connected to hypotheses about pre old japanese but all exhibit an uneven distribution of glides 40 examples of reconstructions of type a b distinctions 39 i 1 i 2 e 1 e 2 o 1 o 2 author i wi e we wo o kikusawa 1935 i ï e ë o ö kindaichi 1938 miller 1967 i ïj e əj o ə arisaka 1955 ji i je e o ɵ hattori 1958 ji i je e wo o lange 1968 1973 i wi je e wo o unger 1977 frellesvig and whitman 2008 i ï e ɛ o ɵ ōno 1982 i ɨ e əj o ə miyake 2003 the distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 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 28 accent edit although modern japanese dialects have pitch accent systems pitch distinctions were usually not shown in man yōgana however in one part of the nihon shoki the chinese characters appeared to have been chosen to represent pitch patterns similar to those 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 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 55 phonotactics edit old japanese words consisted of one or more open syllables of the form c v subject to additional restrictions words did not begin with r or the voiced obstruents b d z and g with the exception of a few loa...