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The Old Japanese language is the Japanese Language as used in the '' Kojiki '', '' Man'yōshū '', and other early records of Japanese history and poetry. It is the oldest uncontroversial attested form of Japanese. Earlier Chinese records about the Japanese islands have words that may or may not be related to Japanese. Much Japanese writing at the time was done using Chinese characters for their sound value and not their meaning—called Man'yogana —thus it is possible to describe the approximate sounds of the language but not to derive any certain conclusions. However, recent research has brought us to a much better understanding of what the sounds of Old Japanese probably were, largely through comparative study of synchronous pronunciation of Chinese, reverse analysis of diachronic change in Japanese pronunciation, and comparative study of the Ryukyuan Language s. Although the majority of Old Japanese writing represents the language of the Nara court in central Japan, some poems in the ''Man'yōshū'' are from southern and eastern Japan, and represent different dialects of Old Japanese. Some of these these dialectical differences are still found today. The most widely accepted phonemic theory is that Old Japanese had eight post-consonantal vocalic distinctions (i.e., Vowel s), as opposed to Classical Japanese and Modern Japanese, which have only five. This is argued on the basis that phonetic writing in Old Japanese distinguishes two different forms of some syllables, including the vowels <i>, <e>, and <o>, and does so consistently. In modern romanized transcription, the three additional vowels are usually indicated <ï>, <ë>, and <ö>, but this should not be taken to mean that these vowels were necessarily fronted or centralized. The transcriptions of Old Japanese words given in the ''Kojiki'' differ from those found in the ''Nihonshoki'' and ''Man'yōshū'' in that they discriminate between the syllables <mo> and <mö> whereas the latter two do not. This has been correlated with the historical record of the ''Kojiki'' being compiled earlier than the Nihonshoki, and thus probably indicates the preservation of the distinction between '' The Consonant inventory was also smaller in Old Japanese. For example, the and sounds did not exist, arising later out of Old Japanese's . Thus the honorific portion of the name of the sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami was written <öpomikamï>. By the Heian era the Old Japanese had been transformed into Classical Japanese (a bilabial fricative, often written ''f'') word-initially and between vowels, and it subsequently changed into medially and initially in Modern Japanese, with the exception of <fu> which retains the Classical pronunciation of . Later, was lost everywhere except before . Thus the Old Japanese word ''kapa'' "river" became ''kafa'' in Classical Japanese, and now is ''kawa'' in Modern Japanese; this same sound process explains why the particle ''wa'' is still written は <ha>. Similarly, Old Japanese 'upper' became Classical , which in turn became modern . This also explains why the directional particle ''e'' is written へ <he>, which in Classical Japanese was pronounced . The Modern Japanese syllable derives from Affrication of before in the Old Japanese , and Modern arises by the same process from Early Modern and Old . Certain modern dialects preserve the distinction between and , for instance in the Nagoya dialect for ''mizu'' "water". A similar process of palatalization resulted in Modern from Classical and Old . However, it cannot be ascertained when was palatalized; it may have already been an affricate in Old Japanese. Other characteristic differences of Old Japanese as compared with its modern counterpart include:
Some scholars have suggested there is a Link between Old Japanese and some of the extinct languages of the Korean peninsula, including the Goguryeo (a.k.a. Koguryo) language, but the relation of Japanese to any language other than Ryukyuan remains undemonstrated. See the Japanese Language Classification page for more. |