are the orthographic rules for spelling Japanese in

kana are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , wh ...

. All phonographic systems (of which kana is an example) attempt to account accurately the

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. To This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or all language in a specific dialect—"correct" or "standard" pronunciation—or si ...

in their

spelling Spelling is a set of conventions for written language regarding how graphemes should correspond to the sounds of spoken language. Spelling is one of the elements of orthography, and highly standardized spelling is a prescriptive element. Spelli ...

s. However, pronunciation and accents change over time and

phonemic A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

distinctions are often lost. Various systems of ''kanazukai'' were introduced to deal with the disparity between the written and spoken versions of Japanese.

Historical systems

The former mainstream kana usage, or the '' Kyū-Kanazukai'' (, ‘old kana usage’), is based on classical texts, especially ''

man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of t ...

''. Created by Keichū in the early

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

, it is also known as the ''Keichū Kanazukai''. It was the mainstream ''kanazukai'' until the '' Gendai Kanazukai'' was introduced in 1946. There were other minor systems throughout history that are now defunct: * '' Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai'' (): a modified ''

Man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of t ...

'' where /e, je/ are distinct. * ''Teika Kanazukai'' (): created by Fujiwara no Teika, it distinguishes between /wo, o/, /i, hi, wi/, /e, we, he/, and also (to a lesser degree) /e, je/. /wo, o/ were used to express high and low accent, respectively. * ''Gyōa Kanazukai'' (), also known as ''Kanamojizukai'' (): created by and his grandson , which expanded on the ''Teika Kanazukai'' by distinguishing between /ho/, /wa, ha/, /u, hu/, and /mu/. /wo, o/ are still used to distinguish between high and low accent. However, the distinction between /e, je/ is obliterated.

''Gendai Kanazukai''

Derived from the ''Kyū-Kanazukai'', ''gendai kanazukai'' is a revision to more approximate modern pronunciation that is still used currently. As an adaption of the ''Kyū-Kanazukai'', it is still not entirely phonetic, especially in respect to long vowels and

particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...

Historical systems

''Gendai Kanazukai''

References

See also