Timeline for Hiragana chart: yi, ye, wu - where and how?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 3, 2021 at 14:43 | comment | added | Ninj0r | @EiríkrÚtlendi (@LinguistCat) No, I am not aware of actual usage of these characters. However, I think a Japanese textbook showing the characters is a good answer to: "where can I find them?". It's in that context I offered the links. | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 8:42 | comment | added | aguijonazo | Saying /wu/ in Chinese is pronounced as /bu/ in Japanese is also misleading. It’s most likely because the Chinese character for that /wu/ sound is read as /bu/ in Japanese, as in the case of 武漢. | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 8:38 | comment | added | aguijonazo | Yet another minor point. Saying “gim” in Korean is pronounced as “kim” (or “kimu” to be more precise...) in Japanese is a bit misleading, at least in this context. It’s not that Japanese has no /g/ sound. /g/ in Korean represents an unaspirated sound, as opposed to aspirated /k/, and it could be either voiced or unvoiced. /k/ in Japanese represents an unvoiced sound, as opposed to voiced /g/, and it could be either aspirated or unaspirated. The Korean /g/ at the beginning of a word tends to be unvoiced and sounds more like the Japanese /k/ than the Japanese /g/. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 21:42 | comment | added | LinguistCat | Spring boarding from what @Eiríkr Útlendi said, there's no evidence that Japanese has ever had /ji/ <yi> or /wu/ <wu> as sounds separate from /i/ and /u/ as far back as linguists can reconstruct. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 17:15 | comment | added | Eiríkr Útlendi | @Ninj0r, to my knowledge, there has never been an accepted and used kana for either //ji// or //wu//. Kana for these were invented during the Meiji period, apparently out of some kind of completionist movement to "fill in" the apparent gaps in the 五十音表, but I think these were never really used outside of rare texts in academia. Have you read differently? | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 14:35 | history | edited | Tom Kelly ケリー・トム | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 28 characters in body
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| Jun 2, 2021 at 7:13 | comment | added | Tom Kelly ケリー・トム | Thank you both for your kind feedback. I didn’t know there were older characters no longer used. I’ve updated the answer to reflect this. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 7:12 | history | edited | Tom Kelly ケリー・トム | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 15 characters in body
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| Jun 2, 2021 at 7:07 | comment | added | Ninj0r | Minor point -- "these hiragana characters never existed" isn't technically true as historical textbooks do have hiragana for them (see my answer and the Wikipedia page there is a link to). Otherwise, I think your answer is excellent. | |
| Jun 1, 2021 at 21:14 | comment | added | Eiríkr Útlendi | Minor point -- in Old Japanese, //e//, //we//, and //je// were apparently distinct phonemes. See also え#発音の歴史 on the Japanese Wikipedia. In brief, //e// and //je// merged into //je// around the 900s. Then //je// flattened out to just //e// during the Edo Period, with //je// persisting in certain cases until the first half of the 1800s. Thus, 円 was probably pronounced as yen when it was borrowed into English. | |
| Jun 1, 2021 at 15:16 | history | answered | Tom Kelly ケリー・トム | CC BY-SA 4.0 |