Brief History and Analysis of Kana

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ORIGIN POINT

It is said that the word “kana” is a derivative of the word “karina”, which is defined as “a name that has been borrowed”. Kana symbols find their origin point in certain variations of particular Chinese characters, that were typically taken on account of their sound. While these symbols are meant to be simplified versions of these characters, these very same characters paradoxically are used to mean something else, in other contexts.

The first part of the word – “hira” – translates either to “ordinary”, with a hint of “informal”, “easy” and in relations to the context in which the used is currently meant to be used – “cursive”. This means that when put together, the word “hiragana” would translate to “ordinary (cursive) kana”. Between hiragana and katakana, hiragana tends to be more utilized historically over katakana, and is also a more cursive script. The letter for the kana ‘A’ for example, which is ‘あ’, and is pronounced like the letter ‘a’ in the word “car”, originates from the character “安”, which is pronounced as “an”. The word “kata” is defined as “one side” or “partial”, hinting at the fact that katakana take part of their symbols from Chinese letters. The katakana letter ‘イ’, which is pronounced like the ‘ee’ in “meet”, would be the transliteration for the English word ‘i’, and is a derivative of the left part of the characters ‘イ伊’, also pronounced as ‘ee’.

Both hiragana and katakana began to develop around the later parts of the 8th century. Around that time it was common for women to use the hiragana style, while the more jagged katakana style was used by men. Since then, these preferences among the sexes have been considered to have dissipated for some time.

The Sounds of Kana

Since the kana symbols are supposed to represent syllables, kana systems would be more reminiscent of syllabaries in spite of actual alphabets. The syllables are designed to be clear and crisp sounding combination of one consonant followed by a vowel, or just a vowel alone in itself. Only one kana symbol exists as both a consonant and a syllable and that is the letter ‘n’.

If we were to use English letters when referring to Japanese sounds and symbols, there exists the possibility for a wide array of errors. For one, using consonants together with vowels in Japanese would not always carry the same pronunciation in English. The letter ‘ふ’ for example, even though it is typically associated with the letter ‘h’, would actually be pronounced as ‘fu’ in English rather than ‘hu’. The Hepburn system allows for the transliteration of ‘ふ’ as ‘fu’ instead of ‘hu’ through romanization, and despite this confusing fact, the learner would be relieved to know that there is no equivalent in the Japanese language of the English letter ‘f’.

Another example of somewhat rather confusing yet convenient romanization can be located within the ‘s’ and ‘t’ groups of the kana chart. Even though by this point it might seem a bit complicated, ultimately the ease of tying together the spelling and pronunciation in Japanese kana makes it easier to learn than the English alphabet. Some loan words used in katakana would seem difficult to express, although this is not the fault of the kana system but instead more of a fault of the Japanization of these non-Japanese words.