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I've always wondered why「ん」is the only kana without having a vowel sound
attached to it. The only thing I've ever heard is that 「ん」 is a special kana
that can be the last kana in some words.

I've also heard something about a discrepancy between ん and む regarding 変体仮名.
Does this factor into the reason at all?
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2012-07-20T19:13:24.670
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2012-07-21T18:46:50.057
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question
etymology kana
Why is「ん」the only kana without a vowel?
Japanese only allows gemination and nasal as the coda of a syllable. The two
kanas っ and ん correspond to them, and are the kanas without a vowel. Also,
when a kana is followed by a glide such as in ゃ, ゅ, or ょ, it loses the vowel.
For example, In きゃ, き only represents k, not ki.

In general, languages disfavor coda, and nasal is among the sounds that can
easily become a coda because the mouth is closed. For example, Chinese and
Korean also allow a limited variety of coda, among which are nasal sounds.

In Classic Japanese, the vowel u in mu often dropped.

> 風吹かむとす → 風吹かんとす
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2012-07-20T22:18:17.590
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2012-07-21T01:27:59.863
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I think Sawa nailed it, I just want to add a few things that I think are
interesting. There is apparently controversy in the syllable-based model of
Japanese prosody. This paper [Questioning the universality of the syllable :
evidence from Japanese* (Labrune,
2012)](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8538016)
where, just taking from the abstract:

> whereas the mora and the foot are indisputably present and active, the
> evidence for the syllable is inconspicuous and disputable. Building on this
> observation, I claim that Tokyo Japanese makes no use of the syllable.
> Instead, two types of mora are distinguished: regular CV moras and weak
> (deficient) moras. Weak moras include the moraic nasal, the first part of a
> geminate and the second part of a long vowel, as well as moras containing an
> onsetless vowel, a devoiced vowel or an epenthetic vowel.

Then taking from her paper:

> The linguistic tradition among Japanese has never had the need to refer to a
> unit such as the syllable in opposition to the mora in accounts of Tokyo
> Japanese. A number of modern Japanese phonologists belonging to the
> traditional mora-model school of Japanese linguistic analysis continue this
> tradition. Some of them (for instance [現代日本語方言辞典(Hirayama,
> 1992)](http://www.meijishoin.co.jp/book/b97516.html) and [現代日本語の発音分布(Sato,
> 2002)](http://karaimobooks.shop-pro.jp/?pid=22261336)) even operate with an
> explicit distinction between mora-based and syllable-based dialects.
> Dialects such as Aomori and Akita (North Honshu), and Kagoshima (South
> Kyushu), are held to be indisputably syllabic, while others, for instance
> the Osaka dialect and the Izu dialect (south of Tokyo) are clearly moraic,
> and are considered to be such even by some advocates of a syllabic analysis
> of Tokyo Japanese.

> It is actually Tokyo Japanese (Standard Japanese), the most extensively
> studied dialect, which poses a problem with regard to classification as a
> mora or syllable dialect, as it has been analysed both as only moraic and as
> syllabic with moras.

And I think most importantly:

> Moreover the linguistic facts that support the relevance of the syllable in
> Tokyo Japanese can always receive an alternative, syllable-free account,
> which works at least as well as the syllabic analysis.

I haven't really read into this topic, so I don't have much opinion on the
matter. Just thought it would be interesting to point out.

Also, the geminate /Q/ and nasal /N/ consonants are not the only vowelless
mora-long segments in Japanese. [だめっ]! has the transcription /dameQ/ where
/Q/→[ʔ] the glottal stop consonant. /Q/ is a phoneme and has mora-long
duration, but [ʔ] is not distinctive.
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