Hentaigana

Hentaigana (Japanese変 体 仮 名, dt "deviant Kana [- Script ]") are historical, rarely used Japanese syllabary characters ( kana ). As the Hiragana they were developed from the grass script forms the Man'yōgana, ie from Chinese characters were used phonetically to write grammatical elements of the Japanese language.

Before the standardization of hiragana around 1900 around the Hentaigana were used more or less a personal preference, and in any combination with Hiragana.

The hiragana syllableんn is originally a Hentaigana form of the syllable mu, derived from the Chinese character无( The u is in Japanese syllables almost voiceless ). Before certain consonants (m, b, p ) n is read in modern Japanese than m.

In modern Japanese the Hentaigana are gone, they are found only as decorative elements on shop signs, such as traditional restaurants serving Japanese cuisine. Tradition -conscious groups such as schools struggle, etiquette schools or religious groups use the Hentaigana partly still in handwritten texts. The Hentaigana are not standardized in Unicode.

The long s (s ), the partially until the middle of the 20th century in Germany until about the 18th century in other European languages ​​also in roman text was used and still in the fracture rate is the rule, can not be a perfect equivalent be considered the Hentaigana, since the selection of a variant Hentaigana all the personal taste of the writer is left to the discretion, while the selection between ordinary and long s precise rules exist which may make any deviation from the standard as a spelling error. Rather let the various optional write technical variations of some number of characters (eg, the 3 (square top or round), 4 ( as shown or without the top half of the diagonal stroke, 7 ( with or without horizontal slash ), some punctuation (eg, & ) and letters equate (eg, g) with Hentaigana.

Example list

江(え) e

于(お) o

可(か) ka

记(き) ki

古(こ) ko

志(し) shi

春(す) su

多(た) ta

奈(な) na

能(の) no

者(は) ha

由(ゆ) yu

连(れ) re

路(ろ) ro

王(わ) wa