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I'm learning a bit of Classical Japanese recently, and of course the spelling
of words is pretty different, due to sound changes over the centuries. For
example, きょう was spelled けふ. That I can understand, since no language has
static sounds.

I then went to YouTube and listened to a Japanese guy explain Classical
Japanese. In the first lesson what he did was explain "historical kana
orthography" and gave a whole bunch of ridiculous pronunciation rules. Yes, I
understand that was how Japanese pronunciation changed over the centuries, but
why should we emulate the sound shifts into Modern Japanese when we are
reading Classical Japanese? What bad is there in reading いろはにほへと、ちりぬるを as "i
ro fa ni fo fe to, ti ri nu ru wo" as it used to be pronounced?
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2012-12-03T17:38:04.220
9663
2021-08-03T04:23:46.360
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orthography kana hiragana classical-japanese
Why do Japanese people read Classical Japanese with a set of weird sound shifts?
As you pointed out, there is no single correct pronunciation of Classical
Japanese. It would be more accurate to teach different pronunciations used in
different periods, but it would be probably too complicated to teach at
schools. The pronunciation of Classical Japanese taught at high schools is the
newest one used in Meiji period and later. (I do not know if the same is true
for the YouTube courses which you watched.)

I do not know why this choice was made at schools. My guess would be that it
is more likely to encounter recent text in Classical Japanese than very old
text in Classical Japanese.

It is not only the pronunciation that varies over time. The grammar of
Classical Japanese is not static. I believe that the grammar taught at schools
also follows the newest part of Classical Japanese, but I would like someone
who knows better to give a more complete picture of the situation.
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2012-12-04T03:07:43.400
9670
2012-12-04T03:07:43.400
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First of all, I am also no expert, but I have been looking at classical
Japanese orthography recently and noticed that many of the "spelling-change
rules" seem to follow the same logic as some modern Japanese's
collocations/"slang".

For example the simplifying of words by seemingly merging sounds: わからない →
わかんない。If you take けふ and pronounce ふ as hu not fu, and try to "combine/merge"
the sounds, to me you can almost hear きょう. I think the language sounds might
have changed in a similar way. Just a thought. Again, I am NO expert.
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I realize that this is a very old question and you probably know the answer
already, but I'll put it here just for reference.

The answer is actually very simple. Because prior to 1946, historical kana
orthography was used for BOTH Modern Japanese AND Classical Japanese.

People who were reading Classical Japanese texts were reading Japanese spelled
in the same way they spelled their words in the present. So, they read the
Classical Japanese words in the same way with the same pronunciations as they
read their Modern Japanese words. The sound shifts and changes we use to
pronounce Classical Japanese in the present day are directly based off of the
sound shifts pre-1946 people pronounced the Modern Japanese language with.
Because up until the 1946 reform, the pronunciations and phonology changed but
the orthography stayed the same. As けふ changed into きょう, the people started
saying きょう yet they still wrote down けふ, all the way until 1946 until the kana
spelling was reformed to directly match the modern phonology (with the
exception of は -> わ / へ -> ゑ -> え / を -> お, which are the only remnants of the
sound shifts people regularly read Modern Japanese in prior to 1946 that still
exist in the language today).

Really up until the reform, nobody found them "weird sound shifts". It was
just the way everyone in Japan read and wrote text, that everyone had to learn
and everyone used naturally. People didn't really question it until around the
time of the reforms. When you were writing [今日]{きょう}, you were writing
[今日]{けふ}. 今日 was spelled けふ, and you just pronounced it as /kyou/. You didn't
spell 今日 as きょう or きよう, it was けふ. People were educated in the historical kana
orthography spellings as they learned how to read and write - because there
was no "modern kana orthography" at the time; this would just be the way
Japanese was read and written, with this set of sound changes. They would be
taught to you as you learned how to read.

It's like how "tough" in English is pronounced like "touf" but we still spell
it as "tough". The final "gh" is a remnant of a sound that is no longer
pronounced in the word in the modern day, but it was once there, and is the
way people have been spelling the word for centuries. You don't really
question why it's spelled "tough" or label it as a "weird sound change", you
just know it's pronounced "touf".

Historical kana orthography has stuck around for Classical Japanese but is no
longer used for Modern Japanese after the 1946 reform. There hasn't really
been an incentive to change the way Classical Japanese is pronounced; after
the reform, people who studied Classical Japanese just pronounced the
historical kana orthography used to write it the same way they always knew -
the way they learned and pronounced Modern Japanese written it it with.
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