Talk:Hiragana
From Academic Kids
It would be nice to have some approximate years when Hiragana was invented, when it was used in novels, when it came to be used for okurigana, etc.
It would also be nice to show a sample of how words today written in hiragana used to be written in kanji. — Hippietrail 09:21, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Someone should move the portion from the kana article which mentions the time hiragana was invented. From what I understand hiragana was originally developed for okurigana and kanji replacement, while katakana was originally developed for rubi (aka furigana). Also I found the following sentence in the hiragana article to have a severely high "duh" factor: The presence of hiragana among Chinese characters is usually sufficient to identify a text as Japanese. Why even mention it?
- --69.212.98.38 09:40, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Your understanding is incorrect. Hiragana was not developed for okurigana, and in fact, was not used primarily for that purpose until the postwar era when a lot of orthographic reforms were introduced (reduced kanji set, formalization of katakana/hiragana roles, rationalized kana spellings): look at some pre-war printed matter and you'll see that most okurigana was in katakana. Hiragana was simply a natural evolution from manyogana, which was developed for writing Japanese poetry. adamrice 14:59, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Yes, now that I think of it, I might have made a mistake - I couldn't remember whether katakana was originally used for okurigana or furigana purposes, but it was definately one of the two, and I think okurigana would make more sense since it is more of a necessity. Hiragana was originally used to replace kanji for sure. By the way, Adamrice, you introduced the sentence "A small tsu っ indicates a glottal stop." but I believe this is either a misunderstanding of what a glottal stop is or what a small tsu is. With the exception of usage in modern literature such as manga which takes some liberties, the small tsu causes a gemination with the consonant that immediately follows it. --69.212.98.38 19:32, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I am not a linguist, so I cannot comment with authority on this stuff, but I must say that the article on gemination is very unsatisfying because it is explaining the vocal process in terms of the orthography, which is bass-ackwards. The article on glottal stops suggests to me that glottal stops really are what is happening in Japanese. If the "uh-oh" has a glottal stop, so does あった. I'll allow as how the location of the stop may move around in the mouth depending on the following sound, but that's some kind of stop, going by the definition given here in wikipedia. adamrice 19:49, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Hmm, there seems to be quite a lot of debate about this topic over at Talk:Japanese language. After googling, I also found other sites that say the small tsu is a glottal stop, however I have here a linguistics book 日本語音声学 (Nihongo Onseigaku) by 天沼 寧 (AMANUMA Yasushi), et al. published by くろしお出版 (Kuroshio shuppan) (http://member.nifty.ne.jp/kurosio/). Of the three authors, one works for the Japanese minstry of education, while the other two are foreign language professors. According to this book, the small tsu is never a glottal stop, and it is not even a stop/plosive when followed by /s/ or /S/ (e.g. isshō, assari) and as a native speaker I agree with the book. The small tsu is always supposed to precede a consonant, although nowadays some manga artists, for example, take artistic license to bend this rule. --69.212.98.38 23:48, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I'd say this confusion is based on how close the concepts of gemination and glottal stop are in some languages. I think the Danish "stod" (spelling?) is an example. I bet there is also a relationship in sound change as a language proceeds through history. — Hippietrail 00:40, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This confusion over っ seems to be over the difference between phonemic and phonetic levels of description. At the phonemic level Japanese doesn't distinguish between the glottal stop and a geminate consonant. So /ippŋ/ and /iʔpoŋ/ are both understood as 一本. So if we are describing Japanese phonemically we shouldn't make this distinction. (Just as a phonemic description of English shouldn't make the distinction between aspirated and unaspirated stops.) Only a phonetic description needs to make the distinction. Japanese language#Phonology says "/ʔ/ assimilates to the following consonant, resulting in a geminate (double) consonant. It is thus normally realized as something other than a glottal stop." Gdr 23:29, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)
How about a shortcut link to the table?
When I'm browsing the Web, I sometimes need to pull up a quick kana chart. I want to use this page, but since the chart is so far down on it, it's a bit inconvenient. So I wonder if it's possible to have one of those "#" links that scrolls directly to the appropriate section -- in this case, to the hiragana chart. Just an idea. -- Jaxxim 20:29, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)
- Headers have them automatically. Type the article name, then the "#" symbol, then the header. For example, Hiragana#Hiragana in Unicode. Hope this is what you wanted. Fg2 20:58, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)
- Thanks for the info. Actually, I was hoping for a link to the table entitled "Hepburn Romanization of Hiragana," which has hiragana with their romaji equivalents. But I guess I can keep using the other site I've been using. Thanks. -- Jaxxim 02:08, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
- Always wondered why the heburn table didn't have its own header, so gave it one. Heading name might want altering though. If no one objects loudly I'll do the same to Katakana later. -- Martin 13:20, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Possible external link?
Hi. I have a site with a Flash hiragana writing tutor:
http://www.japanese-name-translation.com/site/hiragana_symbols.html#05
Would this be a useful external link for this page? (I am new to editing Wikipedia, so I thought I should run it by you guys and see what you thought.) If you think it is good, would someone add it?
- Link added 18 Jan 2005
Unsatisfactory oversimplification
From the article: Each hiragana represents one syllable (technically, one mora), and is either a vowel on its own (such as a あ), a consonant followed by a vowel (such as ka か), or ん, which sounds like the English "m" or "n".
This doesn't account for pairs like きゃ, where the second character is hiragana that represents neither a syllable nor a mora. Unless we're defining the pair as "one hiragana", which strikes me as a rather idiosyncratic usage. Given that the claim the quoted sentence is trying to make can be boiled down to "hiragana represent Japanese sounds", I'm not sure the sentence is particularly necessary at all. I don't have any constructive suggestions, though, so I'll leave it to whoever's maintaining this article to decide whether to change anything.
- We all maintain this article--that's how wikipedia works. You (whoever you are--you can sign your posts by adding four tildes at the end, or clicking the next-to-last button in the icon bar above the editing field) make a reasonable point--the digraphs aren't a perfect fit. If you think of a better way to put it, by all means, put it in. adamrice 19:02, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
