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The historical kana orthography (歴史的仮名遣い, rekishiteki kanazukai), or old orthography (旧仮名遣い, kyū kanazukai), refers to the kana orthography (正仮名遣い, sei kana-zukai) in general use until orthographic reforms after World War II; the current orthography was adopted by Cabinet order in 1946. [1]
Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai (上代特殊仮名遣, lit. Special kana orthography of the early era) is an archaic kana orthography system used to write Old Japanese during the Nara period.
'Kana' is a compound of kari (仮, 'borrowed; assumed; false') and na (名, 'name'), which eventually collapsed into kanna and ultimately 'kana'. [3]Today it is generally assumed that 'kana' were considered "false" kanji due to their purely phonetic nature, as opposed to mana which were "true" kanji used for their meanings.
There are several differences between historical kana usage—which is also referred to as "old kana usage" (旧仮名遣, kyū kana-zukai) —and the modern kana orthography, called "modern kana usage" (現代仮名遣, gendai kana-zukai) or "new kana usage" (新仮名遣, shin kana-zukai).
In the 1900 kana usage reforms, hentaigana (old variant forms of kana) were eliminated, though historical kana orthography (dating to the Heian period, a millennium before) was retained. A separate character for n ん was also prescribed; previously it had been written as む (the same as mu ) and ん was a hentaigana for both these sounds.
Kanazukai (仮 (か) 名 (な) 遣 (づか) い, ‘kana usage’) 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 phonemic distinctions are often lost.
In some cases, specific syllables in particular words are consistently represented by specific characters. That usage is known as Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai and usage has led historical linguists to conclude that certain disparate sounds in Old Japanese, consistently represented by differing sets of man'yōgana characters, may have merged since then.
Shiranui (不知火, unknown fire, Shiranuhi in the historical kana orthography) is an atmospheric ghost light told about in Kyushu. They are said to appear on days of the noon moon such as the kaijitsu [ Wikidata ] (29th or 30th day) of the seventh month of the lunisolar Japanese calendar when the wind is weak, in the Yatsushiro Sea and the ...