Topics in Japanese and

Contrastive Linguistics
Spring W3
Writing System

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 1

“One reason why Japanese script deserves its
place in this book is as an illustration of just how
cumbersome a script can be and still serve in
practice.”

Hasegawa p43, quoting Sampson (1985, p.173)

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 2

 Writing Systems
• Phonographic writing systems record speech sounds

• Ideographic writing systems represent ideas, rather

than sounds

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 3

 Languages with multiple writing systems
• Serbian, Kazakh, Uzbek :
Latin & Cyrillic alphabets

• Shilha (Berber): Arabic,

Latin and Tifinagh
alphabet

Source: https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/supporting-languages-with-multiple-writing-systems-204da5c2d2c4
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 4
Languages which have/had mixed writing systems

• Korean
(logographic/phonographic)

• Mayan languages
(logographic/syllabic)

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 5

bʼalam 'jaguar'

Logogram Syllables bʼa, la, and ma Mixed

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 6

Transliteration of Chinese characters

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 7

How is Japanese written?

• Japanese is written in three scripts:

• hiragana & katakana syllabary（音節文字）
• Kanji ideograms/logograms （表意文字/表語文字）
• Roman alphabet i.e. segmental script（音素文字）

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 8

Other writing systems
• Abjad: segmental script for consonants only, with
vowel marking optional
• e.g. Arabic, Hebrew

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 9

Other writing systems
• Abugida: segmental script where vowels are
written secondary to consonants
• e.g. Tamil, Devanagari, Ge’ez (Ethiopia)

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 10

 Other writing systems
• Featural writing system:
represents particular
phonological features
(combined into segments,
syllables etc.)

• e.g. Hangul (Korean)

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 11

Sound symbolism (shapes of letters)

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 segmental script

音素文字
phonograms Roman alphabet
表音文字 syllabary

音節文字
script
(kana)
ideograms /
logograms kanji
表意文字 /表語文字

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 13

Linear B Syllabary

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 14

“The man and the cow are walking near
the water under the starry sky.”

Moravcsik (2013, p177)

The shift from logographic to phonographic
writing systems

Moravcsik (2013, p180)

“Kanji is often characterized as logographic; that is,
each kanji represents a word, rather than an idea.
When used for Chinese, kanji can be logographic.
However, for recording Japanese, considering them as
ideographs is deemed more appropriate. That is, the
same kanji frequently appears in different, but
conceptually related, words, e.g. 食堂, 食べる”
(Hasegawa 2015, p.43)
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 17
“While it is true that a number of the more basic characters
are pictographic in nature, all Chinese characters represent
both sound and meaning and thus living, breathing words –
not simply detached ideas. It is more appropriate, therefore,
to use the term ‘logogram’ (a character representing a
word) than ideogram (a character representing a concept)
when describing Chinese characters.”

(Irwin & Zisk 2019, p. 102)

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 18

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) Irwin & Zisk, 2019, p.102 19
Introduction of Kanji
• Introduced in 4th-5th century from mainland,
together with Sino-Japanese vocabulary
• Also used to represent native Japanese vocabulary

• No direct relation to sounds:

/a/-/ɕita/ /aɕita/
明 日 明日
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 20
 Kanji
Type Examples
1. Pictographic characters（象形文字） 山、川、口、月、
手
2. Ideographs（指事文字） 上、下、中、一、
ニ
3. (compound) ideographs（会意文字） 林、男、明、炎
4. phono-semantic compounds（形声文字） 草、紙、花、園
5. Derivative characters（転注文字） 楽
6. Phonetic loans（仮借文字） 米
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 21
 Readings
• 音読み on-yomi ‘sound reading’: approximate the
Middle Chinese pronunciation

• 訓読み kun-yomi ‘meaning reading’: Japanese

native equivalents for the words expressed by a
character

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 22

 Multiple strata of on-yomi
Character 呉音 漢音 唐音 慣用音
‘Wu ‘Han ‘Tang ‘customary
readings’ readingsʼ readings’ readings’
C5th-6th C7th-8th C12th-17th
行 gyō kō an
明 myō mei min
和 wa ka o
石 shaku / jaku seki (shi / shitsu) koku
茶 (ja) (ta) (sa) cha

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3)

based on Irwin & Zisk, 2019, p107
23
 Differences in the use of Kanji
Japanese Characters Chinese
rōba ‘old woman’ 老婆 lǎopo ‘wife’
jōbu ‘durable’ 丈夫 zhàngfu ‘husband’
aijin ‘lover’ 愛人／爱人 àiren ‘spouse’
tegami ‘letter’ 手紙／手纸 shǒuzhǐ ‘toilet paper’
yu ‘hot water’ 湯／汤 tāng ‘soup’
inoshishi ‘wild boar’ 猪 zhū ‘pig’
hashiru ‘run’ 走 zǒu ‘walk, go’
kiku ‘ask, hear’ 聞／闻 wén ‘smell’
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 24
Multiple readings for the same character

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 25

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 26
 当て字 ateji ‘arbitrary notationʼ
• Kanji can also be used idiomatically for
words/phrases with no standard kanji notation:
• phonographically, with meaning ignored: 沢山
• both phonographically and semantographically: 倶楽部
• purely semantically: 一寸、煙草 (also known as 熟字訓)

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 27

 国字: Characters created in Japan

• Relatively few in number: 10 listed in the 常用漢字表

• Majority are compound pictograms: 峠、躾、樫、麹、鱈

• Phono-semantic compounds: 塀、働

• 合字 ‘ligatures’: 麿、粂

• 国訓 ‘national meanings’: 鮨、拵

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 28
万葉仮名 Manʼyogana
• Using kanji phonetically: to express sounds
rather than meaning

• Expressing grammatical function (e.g. tense)

• Kana originally had several variants; katakana

variants were lost earlier than hiragana variants
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 29
 Adapting Kanji to Japanese Phonotactics
• Japanese typically requires open syllables

• Chinese had (and has) many closed syllables

 ignore final consonant: 天 /ten/
 add vowel to create second syllable:險 /kemu/

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 30

 Manʼyogana
• Creation of a mixed writing system: Use of kanji with kun
reading (ideographic), and with on reading (phonographic)

此川乃絶事奈久
‘This river never ceases flowing.’

• Use of kanji with no consideration of meaning (i.e.

phonographically), e.g. 夏樫 for natsukashi
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 31
Development of kana syllabaries (9 th century~)
• Hiragana: simplified cursive forms of kanji

• Katakana: based on abbreviated forms of kanji

• Voicing distinctions in man’yogana were lost

until the emergence of dakuten diacritics in the
Edo period
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 32
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 33
 Orthographic reforms
• Meiji onwards: proposals for abolishing kanji and/or
introducing Romanization

• Postwar: increased use of horizontal left-to right script

• 1946: 現代かなづかい (Modern Kana Usage)
• 1959: okurigana rules
• 1981/2010: 常用漢字表 (1945/2136 characters)
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 34
 Kana today
• 73 kana: 47 for seion, 20 for dakuon, 5 for han-
dakuon, and 1 for the mora nasal

• Dakuon and han-dakuon are shown using

diacritics゛& ゜

• These kana express the “core” sounds in Japanese;

they are also combined with ゃ／ゅ／ょ ／っ
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 35
Kana

• Generally, a vowel, or a vowel and a consonant

• Kana doesn’t show individual consonants (except ん)

Week 3 36
Vowel Insertion

s t ri ke

↑ ↑ ↑
u o u

ス ト ライ ク
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 37
 Kana Conventions
• Palatalized syllables（拗音 ようおん）and long
consonants（促音 そくおん）represented by smaller
characters

• Long vowels are shown through vowel repetition

• Orthography and phonology may not match for long

vowels in Sino-Japanese words 38
When kana doesnʼt match phonology

せんせい けいかん おうじ こうえん

se-n-sei kei-ka-n o-u-zi ko-u-e-n

[sense:] [ke:kan] [o:ji] [ko:en]

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 39

Pronouncing particles
私わたしははま寿司すしで揚あげ物ものを食たべたくないわ。

を、は、へ
[o] [wa] [e]

Week 3 40
 Differences between pronunciation and
orthography

Source: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Phonetic-Spelling-and-Heuristic-Search-Stein-Curatolo/018d7d639dfb5bacb0b5af1e6b1309d978f5fe19

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 41

 This
consonant is
written either
as [ɕ] or [ʃ]

The j is
expressing
palatalization

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 42

 [phones]（単音）& /phonemes/（音素）
/s/ [sa] [ɕi] [su] [se] [so]

/t/ [ta] [tɕi] [tsu] [te] [to]

/h/ [ha] [çi] [ɸu] [he] [ho]

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 43
The Status of /ʃ/ and /tʃ/ in Japanese
• ‘allophones’ in complementary distribution in
native vocabulary…

• …but not necessarily in Sino-Japanese or

foreign loanwords:
• 酌 [ʃakɯ] vs. 柵 [sakɯ]
• 茶 [tʃa] vs. 他 [ta] Kubozono (JHLL V.2) pp.6-7)
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W2) 44
 segmental script

音素文字
phonograms Roman alphabet
表音文字 syllabary

音節文字
script
(kana)
ideograms /
logograms kanji
表意文字 /表語文字

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 45

Advantages of each system in a Japanese context

Ideographic Phonographic
• Language-independent • Efficiency/simplicity:
(two vs. 2) smaller set of
• Processing time symbols required
• Saves space!

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 46

“granularity” (Hasegawa p.45)
• とる：

• 取る 執る
• 採る 盗る
• 捕る 撮る
• 摂る

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 47

What is each script used for?
• Major parts of speech are typically written in
kanji (if they have kanji notation)

• Verbal suffixes and minor parts of speech are

normally written in hiragana

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 48

 Irwin & Zisk, 2019, p. 100
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 49
 Numbers
• Chinese numerals: • Arabic numerals:
• Sino-Japanese words: 一様 • Newspapers & magazines
• Idioms: 十人十色 • Academic writing
• Formal contexts • Postcodes, product
• Vertical script numbers etc.

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 50

 Romanization Systems
• ヘボン式 (Hepburn)
• 日本式 (Nihon Shiki)
• 訓令式 (Kunrei Shiki / Cabinet Ordinance System)

• Kunrei-shiki is official system, but others permitted

(Hepburn dominates in practice)

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 51

Comparison of Romanization Systems

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) Source: HJLL p.xvii 52

 Characteristics of different systems

Hepburn Kunrei
• Intuitive for English native • Intuitive for Japanese native
speakers speakers
• ‘Phonetic’: closer to actual • Phonemic: often used by
pronunciation & reflects linguists
allophones • Preserves regularity of and
• Can distinguish new sounds, relations between kana(e.g.
e.g. chi and ti sya, tyo)
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 53
 Long Vowels
• Kunrei-shiki uses a circumflex: rômazi
• Modified Hepburn uses a macron: rōmaji

• Distinction between long vowels and adjacent

vowels:
• Long vowels: おばあさん obā-san; 勉強 benkyō; 数学
sūgaku
• Adjacent vowels: 邪悪 jaaku; 子牛koushi; 湖 mizuumi
Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 54
Particles
• Written as pronounced, rather than following
kana orthography:
• ここは *koko ha  koko wa
• ここを *koko wo  koko o
• ここへ *koko he  koko e

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 55

Moraic Nasal
• Written as either m or n in the original Hepburn system

• Modified Hepburn and Kunrei systems use only n

• Use of apostrophe to show correct division of syllables:

• man’yogana (not ma-nyo-ga-na)
• 簡易 kan’i (not ka-ni カニ); 禁煙 kin’en (not kinen 記念)

Japanese & Contrastive Linguistics (Spring W3) 56

Does Japanese need kanji?

Week 3 57
Does Japanese need kanji?

Week 3 58