is the present official ''

kanazukai are the orthographic rules for spelling Japanese in kana. All phonographic systems (of which kana is an example) attempt to account accurately the pronunciation in their spellings. However, pronunciation and accents change over time and phonemi ...

'' (system of spelling the Japanese syllabary). Also known as , it is derived from historical usage.

History

As long ago as the

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

, there had been dissatisfaction regarding the growing discrepancy between

spelling Spelling is a set of conventions that regulate the way of using graphemes (writing system) to represent a language in its written form. In other words, spelling is the rendering of speech sound (phoneme) into writing (grapheme). Spelling is one ...

and speech. On November 16, 1946, soon after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the cabinet instituted the modern Japanese orthography as part of a general orthographic reform. The system was further amended in 1986.

General differences

There were no small kana in the pre-reform system; thus, for example, would be ambiguous between ''kiyo'' and ''kyo'' while could be either ''katsuta'' or ''katta''. The pronunciation of medial ''h''-row kana as ''w''-row kana in the pre-reform system does not extend to compound words; thus, was pronounced ''nihon'', not ''nion'' (via **''niwon''). There are a small number of counterexamples; e.g., "duck", pronounced ''ahiru'' rather than ''airu'', or , pronounced Fujiwara, despite being a compound of Fuji (

wisteria ''Wisteria'' is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, Fabaceae (Leguminosae), that includes ten species of woody twining vines that are native to China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Southern Canada, the Eastern United States, and north ...

) + hara (field). The h-row was historically pronounced as ''fa, fi, fu, fe, fo'' (and even further back, ''pa, pi, pu, pe, po''). Japanese ''f'' () is close to a voiceless ''w'', and so was easily changed to ''w'' in the middle of a word; the ''w'' was then dropped except for ''wa''. This is also why ''fu'' is used to this day and has not become ''hu''. The vowel + ''(f)u'' changes do not apply between elements of compound words, for example, the name was ''Terauchi'' not ''Terōchi'', as it is ''Tera'' (temple) + ''uchi'' (inside, home). The ''-fu'' of the modern ''-u'' series of verbs (that is, those verbs using the actual kana う, such as ''kau'' or ''omou'') was not affected by the sound changes on the surface; however, some reports of

Edo era The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional ''daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characte ...

Japanese indicate that verbs like ''tamau'' and ''harau'' were pronounced as ''tamō'' and ''harō'' instead. In contrast, the -ō in ''darō'' and ''ikō'' is a product of the sound change from au to ō. Furthermore, the topic particle ''wa'' , the direction particle ''e'' and the direct object particle ''o'' were exempted from spelling reform. In contemporary Japanese, the を-character is used only for the particle.

Examples

Here, for example, (''a'') includes ''all'' kana using the /a/ vowel, such as (''ka'') or (''ta''). Regarding – these four morae are distinguished or merged to varying degrees in different

Japanese dialects The dialects of the Japanese language fall into two primary clades, Eastern (including Tokyo) and Western (including Kyoto), with the dialects of Kyushu and Hachijō Island often distinguished as additional branches, the latter perhaps the most ...

, with some dialects ( Tōhoku and Okinawan, for example) merging all four into one, while other dialects ( Tosa and Satsugū, for example) distinguish among the four. Standard spelling reflects the pronunciation of standard Japanese, which merges these into two sounds.

History

General differences

Examples

See also