Man'yōgana

Common card · No. 212795

Man'yōgana (万葉仮名; Japanese pronunciation: [maɰ̃joꜜːɡana] or [maɰ̃joːɡana]) is an ancient Japanese writing system that uses Chinese characters to phonetically represent Old Japanese. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to phonetically transcribe the Japanese language. Dating of the earliest man'yōgana usage is not clear, but it was in use at least since the mid-7th century, during the Nara period. The name derives from Man'yōshū, a Japanese poetry anthology written in man'yōgana, which was compiled after 759 AD. Although Japanese texts have always used imported Chinese characters (kanji) logographically for semantic expressions, man'yōgana only borrows the characters' on'yomi pronunciations as an approximate syllabary to represent Japanese syllabuses. The phonetic values were derived from the Middle Chinese variants of Jianghuai Mandarin (i.e. the go-on pronunciations), but native Japanese readings (kun'yomi) of the character were also sometimes used. For example...

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