Old Japanese - Phonology

Phonology

The study of Old Japanese phonology is based on the comparative study of synchronous pronunciation of Chinese, reverse analysis of diachronic change in Japanese pronunciation, and comparative study of the Ryukyuan languages. Although the majority of Old Japanese writing represents the language of the Nara court in central Japan, some poems in the Man'yōshū are from southern and eastern Japan, and represent different dialects of Old Japanese. Some of these dialectical differences are still found today.

Old Japanese differed phonetically from later periods of the language. An analysis of Man'yōgana reveals a peculiar system known as Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai. See the Syllables section for details.

The transcriptions of Old Japanese words given in Kojiki (712) differ from those found in Nihon Shoki (720) and Man'yōshū (c. 759) in that it distinguishes the syllables /mo₁/ and /mo₂/ whereas the latter two do not. This has been correlated with the historical record of Kojiki being compiled earlier than Nihon Shoki, and thus preserved an older distinction that soon vanished.

Other characteristic differences of Old Japanese as compared with its modern counterpart include:

• no long vowels or diphthongs
• words do not begin with /r/ or voiced plosives
• open syllables: no syllable-final consonants of any kind.

Some scholars have suggested that there might be a link between Old Japanese and some of the extinct languages of the Korean peninsula, including the Goguryeo language, but the relation of Japanese to any language other than Ryūkyūan remains undemonstrated. See Classification of Japanese for details.