 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
Man'yogana uses kanji strictly for their phonetic value, nominally without regard for their semantic value. Several kanji could be used to represent the same sound, and in practice writers would often choose kanji with felicitous associations. Kanji used in man'yogana eventually gave rise to hiragana and katakana. Hiragana is essentially manyogana written in a highly cursive, flowing style; katakana is based on individual elements extracted from the original manyogana, and was developed by Buddhist monks as a form of shorthand. In some cases, one man'yogana character for a given syllable gave rise to the current hiragana equivalent, and a different one gave rise to the current katakana equivalent; for example, the hiragana る is derived from the man'yogana 留, the katakana ル is derived from the man'yogana 流. The study of man'yogana reveals that it can represent more sounds than hiragana and katakana, including eight vowels as opposed to the present day usage of five vowels only.
The use of multiple kanji for a single syllable also led to hentaigana (変体仮名), alternate letterforms for hiragana. Hentaigana were officially discouraged in 1900.
Man'yogana continue to appear in some regional names of present-day Japan. A phenomenon similar to man'yogana called ateji (当て字) still occurs, where words (including loanwords) are spelled out using kanji for their phonetic value: for example, 倶楽部 (kurabu, club).
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|