What is Man'yōgana?
Q: What is Man'yōgana?
A: Man'yōgana is the oldest known sound-based writing system used for the Japanese language. It was created by using Chinese characters only for their pronunciation and not for the meaning of the word.
Q: When did kanji first come to Japan?
A: Kanji, or Chinese characters used to write Japanese, first came to Japan in around the 4th century AD through the Korean Peninsula.
Q: How were Chinese and Japanese different when it came to writing?
A: There were many differences between Chinese and Japanese when it came to writing. For example, Chinese has an SVO (subject-verb-object) word order while Japanese has an SOV word order. Also, while Chinese morphemes are usually monosyllabic, or having just one syllable, Japanese words often were polysyllabic, or having two or more syllables.
Q: What was done in order for kanji to be understood by native Japanese speakers?
A: The Chinese character system had to be changed to fit spoken Japanese in order for it to be understood by native Japanese speakers. This solution was called man'yōgana which consisted of roughly 970 Chinese characters that could be used to represent roughly 90 different morae used in the Japanese language.
Q: What replaced man'yōgana as a sound-based writing system?
A: Katakana and hiragana replaced man'yōgana as a sound-based writing system due their simplicity and ease of use compared with man'yōgana which was difficult even for native speakers ofJapanese understand due its heavy reliance on kanji characters.
Q: Are there any modern examples of words written using man’yōgana?
A: Yes, there are modern examples of words written using man’yōgana such as 寿司 sushi、亜細亜 Ajia (Asia)、亜米利加 Amerika (America)、仏蘭西 Furansu (France)、阿弗利加 Afurika (Africa)、沢山 takusan and 珈琲 kōhī (coffee). These are called ateji since they use old spellings before katakana became popular or because they are more recognizable than hiragana/katakana outside Japan since some may exist in other languages like Chinese too.
