ゐ and ゑ
- Thread starter Wladimir
- Start date
JimmySeal
Tubthumper
- 5 Mar 2006
- 1,516
- 78
ゐ and ゑ used to be used quite widely in Japanese vocabulary, but with kana reforms that took place around 1950, they have been completely replaced by い and え. You will still occasionally see them in brand names (such as ヱビス) and other places, but they are no longer a part of standard Japanese. They should be pronounced the same as い and え.
You left を and ん off your list. を has a similar history to ゐ and ゑ, but it has remained in one standard Japanese word - the particle を. ん is very much a part of modern standard Japanese.
You left を and ん off your list. を has a similar history to ゐ and ゑ, but it has remained in one standard Japanese word - the particle を. ん is very much a part of modern standard Japanese.
Glenn
一切皆苦
- 8 Jan 2004
- 7,842
- 200
I doubt it, because ん should have been around long enough for it to be counted. Anyway, it's called the 五十音図, which is a bit of a misnomer nowadays, but it also suggests that there actually used to be fifty sounds. I guess that means ye and wu existed at some point, but I'm not sure about that.
- 8 Mar 2005
- 2,139
- 89
The iroha (いろは) ordering is a kana ordering based around a Buddhist poem which contains each of the Japanese syllables exactly once. This ordering is still used today, and it is not unusual to see items numbered i, ro, ha where English would use A, B, C, etc. However, in dictionaries and other lists of words, it is much less common nowadays than the more regular gojuuon ordering. (See 4.1.4. What is the origin of the gojuuon kana ordering? )
There are actually several different versions of the ordering corresponding to different versions of the poem. The most common one is
i ro ha ni ho he to
chi ri nu ru (w)o
wa ka yo ta re so
tsu ne na ra mu
u (w)i no o ku ya ma
ke fu ko e te
a sa ki yu me mi shi
(w)e hi mo se su
Here's the i-ro-ha, order, which has I suppose a suggested n at the end...
The approximate reading is...
Colours are fragrant
But they fade away.
In this world of ours none lasts forever.
Today cross the high mountain of life's illusions,
And there will be no more shallow dreaming,
no more drunkenness.
link: here
