Gendai Kanazukai

The nihongo|Gendai Kanazukai|現代仮名遣|"modern kana usage" is the present official "kanazukai" (system of spelling the Japanese syllabary). Also known as "shin-kanazukai" (新仮名遣い, "new "kanazukai"), it is derived from the historical kana usage.

History

As long ago as the Meiji Restoration, there had been dissatisfaction regarding the growing discrepancy between the spelling and speech. It was on November 16, 1946, immediately following World War II that the modern orthography was instituted by the cabinet as part of a general orthographic reform. It was later amended in 1986.

General differences

There were no small kana like in the pre-reformed system; thus, for example, きよ would be ambiguous between "kiyo" and "kyo" while かつた could be either "katsuta" or "katta".

The pronunciations of medial "h"-row kana does not extend to compound words; thus, にほん was pronounced "nihon", not "nion." Note that there are a small number of counterexamples, e.g., あひる "duck", pronounced "ahiru" rather than "airu", or ふぢはら, pronounced Fujiwara, despite being a compound of Fuji (wisteria) + hara (field). The h-row was historically pronounced as "fa, fi, fu, fe, fo" (and even further back, "pa, pi, pu, pe, po"). Japanese "f" (IPA [ɸ] ) is close to a voiceless "w", and so was easily changed to "w" in the middle of a word. This is also why even today "fu" is used rather than "hu".

The vowel + "(f)u" compounds do not apply in compound words, for example, the name てらうち was "Terauchi" not "Terouchi", as it is "Tera" (temple) + "uchi" (inside, home). The "-fu" of the modern "-u" series of verbs (that is, those verbs using the actual kana う such as "kau" or "omou") were not affected by the sound changes on the surface, however, some reports of Edo era Japanese indicate that verbs like "tamau" and "harau" were pronounced as "tamō" and "harō" instead. In contrast, the -ō in "darō" and "ikō" is a product of the sound change from au to ō.

Furthermore, the topic particle "wa" (は) and the direct object particle "o" (を) were exempted from spelling reform. In contemporary Japanese, the を-character remains only in this usage.

Examples

Here, for example, あ ("a") includes "all" kana using the /a/ vowel, such as か ("ka") or た ("ta").