The origins of Japanese syllabaries
The origins of Japanese syllabaries
Both Japanese syllabaries (kana), hiragana (for native words) and katakana (for words of foreign origin) result from the 5th century syllabary man'yōgana (万葉仮名), which is built from chinese characters (called hanzi in Chinese and kanji in Chinese). Japanese also makes extensive use of chinese characters (used with the same or similar meaning but different pronunciation), and can be rendered into latin alphabet thanks to a fourth system: romaji. Chinese can do the same with 2 systems: piyin, in Mainland China, and Wade-Giles in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
This same appropiation of Chinese (non-phonetic) writing system to build a phonetic writing system is found in Cantonese (in Hong Kong, for instance ). Chinese writing system associate meaning to caracters and groups of characters, so speakers of different languages would understand eachother by writing and reading, but not by speaking and listening. For instance, Mandarin speakers would read aloud chinese words as they say in mandarin, but cantonese speakers would read them as they say in Cantonese, that can be very different. Imagine a word 房子, pronounced casa in Spanish, house in English, and maison in French. Languages in China can be as different as French, Spanish and English, so you can imagine the situation.
In this way, the pronunciation of China's standard language, Putonghua, is associated to chinese hanzi. Therefore, Chinese (written) sign is composed of three parts: signifier (房子), signified 'house' and pronunciation, which depends on the speaker's language (fáng zi in Mandarin). Note the contrast with Saussure's dichotomy of the sign. So, what happens when you want to register the pronunciation of a non-mandarin speaker? Are you wondering why you would want to do so? Imagine the police wanting to record the exact words of a felon, and not only the meaning; suppose you want to leave track of a speaker's accent: you need a writing system with a fixed relationship between pronunciation and signifier, a phonetic writing system. Mandarin speakers can do it from 1913 thanks to their phonetic system zhùyīn fúhào or Bopomofo.
What do you use to do before Bopomofo? You build a syllabary. Take a character and associate it to its pronunciation in your language, which gives place to a different (topolectal) pronunciation: in this way, cantonese speakers, which pronounce 房子 as fong-zi , will create a syllabe 房, pronounced fong and a syllabe 子, pronounced zi, and combine them to make other words. As a result, the new writing system will have words that are not associated with any meaning outside cantonese. Therefore, anyone knowing the phonetic values of the caracters in cantonese syllabary can read it, and by pronouncing it, they can understand it, only if they speak Cantonese. The number of caracters to be learnt decreases dramatically, but the ability of being understood by the speakers of another language is lost. The resulting syllabary would contain a reasonable number of symbols, corresponding to the possible syllables in the language. Cantonese, for instance, has around 630 syllables, corresponding to 630 characters, which come from hanzi or sinograms, but are now different in everything except their shape. Japanese, in contrast, makes use of only 46 hiragana (and other 46 katakana), but relies heavily on kanji.
So, to form the cantonese syllabary, take, for instance, the 6 syllables formed by the sound /fɐn/ and their 6 corresponding tones (upper level, upper rising, upper going, lower level, lower rising, lower going respectively), and associate each syllable to a existing chinese character. These caracters are the following: 分 粉 訓 焚 奮 份. Note that not all conbinations are possible. That is, not all consonants can form a syllable with all vowels. Japanese syllabaries derive from Chinese just in the same way.
Both Japanese syllabaries (kana), hiragana (for native words) and katakana (for words of foreign origin) result from the 5th century syllabary man'yōgana (万葉仮名), which is built from chinese characters (called hanzi in Chinese and kanji in Chinese). Japanese also makes extensive use of chinese characters (used with the same or similar meaning but different pronunciation), and can be rendered into latin alphabet thanks to a fourth system: romaji. Chinese can do the same with 2 systems: piyin, in Mainland China, and Wade-Giles in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
This same appropiation of Chinese (non-phonetic) writing system to build a phonetic writing system is found in Cantonese (in Hong Kong, for instance ). Chinese writing system associate meaning to caracters and groups of characters, so speakers of different languages would understand eachother by writing and reading, but not by speaking and listening. For instance, Mandarin speakers would read aloud chinese words as they say in mandarin, but cantonese speakers would read them as they say in Cantonese, that can be very different. Imagine a word 房子, pronounced casa in Spanish, house in English, and maison in French. Languages in China can be as different as French, Spanish and English, so you can imagine the situation.
In this way, the pronunciation of China's standard language, Putonghua, is associated to chinese hanzi. Therefore, Chinese (written) sign is composed of three parts: signifier (房子), signified 'house' and pronunciation, which depends on the speaker's language (fáng zi in Mandarin). Note the contrast with Saussure's dichotomy of the sign. So, what happens when you want to register the pronunciation of a non-mandarin speaker? Are you wondering why you would want to do so? Imagine the police wanting to record the exact words of a felon, and not only the meaning; suppose you want to leave track of a speaker's accent: you need a writing system with a fixed relationship between pronunciation and signifier, a phonetic writing system. Mandarin speakers can do it from 1913 thanks to their phonetic system zhùyīn fúhào or Bopomofo.
What do you use to do before Bopomofo? You build a syllabary. Take a character and associate it to its pronunciation in your language, which gives place to a different (topolectal) pronunciation: in this way, cantonese speakers, which pronounce 房子 as fong-zi , will create a syllabe 房, pronounced fong and a syllabe 子, pronounced zi, and combine them to make other words. As a result, the new writing system will have words that are not associated with any meaning outside cantonese. Therefore, anyone knowing the phonetic values of the caracters in cantonese syllabary can read it, and by pronouncing it, they can understand it, only if they speak Cantonese. The number of caracters to be learnt decreases dramatically, but the ability of being understood by the speakers of another language is lost. The resulting syllabary would contain a reasonable number of symbols, corresponding to the possible syllables in the language. Cantonese, for instance, has around 630 syllables, corresponding to 630 characters, which come from hanzi or sinograms, but are now different in everything except their shape. Japanese, in contrast, makes use of only 46 hiragana (and other 46 katakana), but relies heavily on kanji.
So, to form the cantonese syllabary, take, for instance, the 6 syllables formed by the sound /fɐn/ and their 6 corresponding tones (upper level, upper rising, upper going, lower level, lower rising, lower going respectively), and associate each syllable to a existing chinese character. These caracters are the following: 分 粉 訓 焚 奮 份. Note that not all conbinations are possible. That is, not all consonants can form a syllable with all vowels. Japanese syllabaries derive from Chinese just in the same way.
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