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The modern Japanese vowels /e,o/ each represent two Old Japanese vowels,
arbitrarily written _e ë o ö_ in romaji. I assume that Japanese philologists
don't all use romaji, so is there a convention for distinguishing these vowels
in kana?
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2019-07-28T00:37:22.967
69744
2019-07-28T08:47:52.947
34824
question
kana old-japanese vowels
Old Japanese vowels in kana
Good question. The poster is referring to the reconstructed 8-vowel system for
Old Japanese (上代特殊仮名遣) which is inferred from the presence of two ways of
transcribing /e/ and two ways of transcribing /o/ with man'yōgana.

According to the [Wikipedia article on
上代特殊仮名遣](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%8A%E4%BB%A3%E7%89%B9%E6%AE%8A%E4%BB%AE%E5%90%8D%E9%81%A3),
there was no consistent way of indicating these in kana (naturally, since at
the time the sound changes were still current, "kana" in their current form
didn't exist), but that the notation 甲 or 乙, or an underline to the left or
right, or katakana, or the diacritics used in transcription, may be used.

>
> 上代特殊仮名遣が廃れてから「かな」が発達したため、これを表現する仮名文字は存在しない。そのため、文字上で甲乙の区別をする必要がある時は「甲」「乙」等といった明記、右左の傍線、外国語で使われるウムラウト等の流用、カタカナ化などで対応している。

Later on in the article, 甲エ or 乙エ are used to refer to each vowel.
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2019-07-28T06:51:52.123
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2019-07-28T08:47:52.947
2019-07-28T08:47:52.947
816
816
69744
answer