Re: many and varied questions

Tristan McLeay wrote:
> Really? How did they do it before hand? Both as KIYO?
> And a big TSU for geminate consonants?
Yep.  So, there was an ambiguity between, for example, _kyo_ and _kiyo_
and between _atta_ and _atsuta_

> How much reform has Japanese writing gone through?
The pre-1946 orthography was fairly conservative, but still generally
easy to figure out (at least for a native or fluent foreigner).  The
rules, as I understand them:

The difference between hiragana and katakana was less systematic; and
hiragana was *never* used in official documents (the post-WW2
Constitution was, if I'm not mistaken, the first government document to
contain hiragana); katakana was also the first kana learned (today it's
hiragana).  Different writers used different conventions, some used
hiragana consistently in okurigana, most furigana, and words not written
in kanji, and katakana for furigana glosses (that is, a foreign word
written in katakana above kanji that give the meaning), for example, the
origin of the modern system.  While some even completely reversed the
current conventions!  As far as I can tell, it's quite plausible that,
in an alternate timeline that's otherwise indistinguishable from ours,
katakana is used for native words and hiragana for foreign.  :-)

Kana now written small were written big (as mentioned above)

kuwa/guwa = ka/ga (historically represented the syllable kwa/gwa in
certain Chinese loans; thus, same idea as kiyo = kyo)

-kk- and -ss- derived historically from -kuk- and -sus- were written
thus (e.g., _bokuken_ for _bokken_ "wooden practice sword"; boku = wood,
ken = sword).  Since /Vkuk/ and /Vsus/ are very rare in Japanese, there
was little opportunity for confusion in reading.

Use of wo in words (e.g., wotoko instead of otoko; presumably also the
origin of the spelling Iwo Jima for _Ioujima_) (1)

Existence of kana _we_ and _wi_ (pronounced identically to e/i)

Use of chi/tsu with voicing where historically derived from [di]/[du]
(not just in words of transparent etymology like _hanaji_)

Ha/hi/fu/he/ho = wa/i/u/e/o morpheme-medially and in inflections <--
this is why the particles wa and e are written the way they are.  Note,
all the verbs ending in the syllable -u in the modern orthography, e.g.,
iu, arau, etc., used -fu, and the rest of the h row in the various
inflections (2)
Also, since the use of kanji with furigana was *much* more common then
than it now (in most text, *every* kanji, even basic ones like "person"
or "one", had furigana over it; a shame that that was abandoned in the
1946 reform - the major reason being an intention to phase out kanji!),
the rule could be expressed in terms of kanji, e.g., ha/hi/fu/he/ho =
wa/i/u/e/o in the middle of a kanji and in inflections.

Other digraphs, does not apply across morpheme boundaries (3)
a(f)u = ou
i(f)u = yuu
e(f)u = you

Also, before the early 20th century, there was also no _n_ kana, that
was, instead, written with _mu_ (4).  There were also alternate kana,
called (nicknamed?) _hentaigana_, used, as far as I can tell, randomly
(thus, one had several options for writing, e.g., _ta_).
Some of the old hentaigana (as well as the forms for the now-obsolete we
and wi kana) can be found here
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/rose.jpg  Some of them, it's pretty
obvious why the modern forms won out.  :-)  Particularly look at ki, ke,
shi, so, ha, fu, he, mi, mu, re, and ro.

An example of the old orthography is the historical iroha kana order,
based on a poem:
(I'll put the modern orthography in parentheses in lines that differ)

Iro ha nihohedo
  (Iro wa nioedo)
Chirinuru wo
Waga yo tare zo
Tsune naramu
  (Tsune naran)
Uwi no okuyama
  (Ui no okuyama)
Kefu koete
  (Kyou koete)
Asaki yume miji
Wehi mo sezu
  (Ei mo sezu)

One fairly literal translation goes "Colors are fragrant, but they fade
away.  In this world of ours non lasts forever.  Today cross the high
mountains of life's illusions, and there will be no more shallow
dreaming, no more drunkenness"

Of 47 kana used, only 8 different than in the modern orthography (but
that includes one doozy, kefu = kyou :-))  Note, also, that in the
original orthography, every kana was used once and only once.  :-)
Probably the cleverest system for ordering a phonetic script ever (5).
:-)  Of course, it doesn't work in modern orthography, which is what
finally killed it off as a popular order, leading to the rather less
exciting aiueo order winning out (tho I bet it'd be possible to come up
with another poem using all 46 modern kana once and only once in modern
orthography).  It's a shame the Kassi grammar makes it difficult, if not
impossible, to do something similar :-(

So, not too terribly hard to *read*, but writing was another matter.
Still, since, with the exception of the little kana, all the modern
spellings existed pre-1946, it wasn't difficult to adjust to for those
brought up on the old script.  And the small kana were surely easy to
pick up.

(1) Incidentally, wo/o merged sometime in, if I'm not mistaken, the 9th
century, at the same time as ye/e.  I don't know why _wo_ was kept but
not _ye_.  we/e and wi/i merged a couple of centuries later.  Some of
the conventions in the historic kana usage was recreated in the Tokugawa
era when kana usage was standardized, based on historic precedents,
while others were logical at the time, but later sound changes have
eradicated the original justification (e.g., the merger between phonemic
di/zi, probably [dZi]/[Zi] and du/zu, probably [dzu]/[zu])

(2) This is due to a sound change in which /P/ (before some time in the
Tokugawa era, the h-row was /Pa Pi Pu Pe Po/) became /w/ or null
word-medially, depending on the following vowel.  Note, there were a few
exceptions to this rule, e.g., haha (mother), hoho (face), ahiru (duck),
afureru (overflow) kept /P/, while, in the opposite direction, the name
Fujiwara comes from Fuji + fara, thus, would be expected to be *Fujihara
in the modern language; however, in general, /h/ *is* very rare
morpheme-internally in Japanese vocabulary (foreign loans aside); thus
confusion would be very rare

(3) An exception - the volitional ending, -ou in modern orthography, was
-au in the old orthography, thus, in this case, it *did* apply across a
morpheme boundary.  -mashou, incidentally, is from -maseu, thus, simply
a different verbal base used for the volitional particle -u.
Morpheme-internal /au/, /iu/, and /eu/ are almost non-existent in native
and S-J morphemes, thus largely avoiding confusion in *reading*.
Spelling's another matter, of course.  :-)  For example, for the
syllable now written _kyou_, you'd have six options - kiyou, kiyofu,
kiyau, kiyafu, keu, kefu, and you'd just have to know which spelling was
used for a given word.  :-)

(4) The modern _n_ was originally a hentaigana of _mu_.  I suspect that
the addition of _n_ was merely codifying an earlier informal practice,
I've seen a couple of scans of 19th century texts, and they used few
hentaigana, except that _n_ was generally written as now, so I suspect
that many writers had already split the two forms into separate kana.

(5) In the early days, *several* poems competed to be used as an order.
One early Heian era one even used 48 kana - adding _ye_

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