Probably a dumb question, but I'm wondering how certain sounds would be
represented in Man'yōgana. Places like Wikipedia have charts that show the
normal Kana and their kanji equivalents, but they don't show how sounds like
ん, っ, or voiced consonants (d-, z-, b-, g-, etc.) would be represented. Would
the か and が moras be represented by the same kanji? How would 促音 be
represented?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-06-18T06:47:03.610
94994
2022-06-19T05:43:22.157
51637
question
kanji orthography manyōgana
Special Kana in Man'yōgana?
Note the following is based on web searches.

**濁点**

Mostly different kanjis were used for those pairs. E.g.
か：加、迦、訶、下、日、賀、河、鹿、甲、川、蚊、乎、家、香、華、可、夏、化 and が：賀、之、髪、何、加、鹿、迦、我

See the full list below.

  * [万葉仮名一覧](http://www1.kcn.ne.jp/%7Euehiro08/contents/kana/1ran.htm)

**ん(撥音)**

There was no fixed notation for ん.

A simple description is that up to Heian period (- late 12C) there were
fluctuation in writing ん, which was expressed by ム/二/ウ/イ or just left out.

> 平安時代には撥音の表記法が不安定で ①無表記 ②厶を宛てる ③二を宛てる ④ウを宛てる ⑤イを宛てる
> の五通りの表記が行われたことが知られていますが、その一部は上代にまで遡るということでしょう。

  * [万葉仮名で「ん」に相当するものはないのでしょうか。](https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q13219979388)
  * [万葉仮名に「ん」はなかったのでしょうか？](https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q13155683788)

**小書き文字/拗音**

It is said these did not exist in native Japanese, and as such there was no
notation for them in 万葉仮名.

  * [万葉仮名で「ちゃ」の「ゃ」とか、「しゅ」の「ゅ」の様な「小文字」の表記はどの様になるか教えてください](https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q12169947092)

Also note that even just 100 years ago 小書き文字 was not used: E.g., 帰った was
written 帰つた although this is a matter of notation, not of existence of sounds.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-06-18T22:24:46.893
95003
2022-06-18T22:24:46.893
45489
94994
answer
Actually the Wikipedia article (at least the Japanese and English versions)
does show voiceless and voiced consonants, though the distinction between them
was not always clear-cut in the actual usage. Generally speaking,

  * voiced consonants (濁音)
  * moraic consonants (撥音/ん, 促音/っ)
  * moraic prosody itself

were phonologically nonexistent in the times man'yōgana was used. Therefore,
they have no consistent means to spell them. They have been slowly developed
though the Middle Japanese period to be the features of today's Japanese.

By _phonologically nonexistent_ I don't mean people never uttered such sounds
at that time, but they were meaningless if heard, and incidental rather than
intentional. For example, English _thunder_ , unlike _under_ or _wonder_ ,
lacked _d_ in the older form ( _thonre_ ). But as people habitually articulate
as if there is _d_ between _n_ and _r_ , it finally gets fixated there. Today,
many speakers pronounce _chance_ as if _chants_ , but dictionaries don't
formally recognize the middle _t_. This is because people still don't intend
to make the sound, for the time being. It just optionally exists as a side
effect of English articulation.

As for voicedness, most man'yōgana literature does have good distinction, so
you can use the chart below as recommended man'yōgana spelling. However,
technically it just shows _whether a syllable's modern reflection is voiced or
not_ , and does not imply that independent voiced consonant existed at that
time.

[![実用万葉仮名一覧](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dps6v.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dps6v.jpg)

（『国史大辞典』実用万葉仮名一覧）

As you can see from the origin of most
[rendaku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku) words, the voiced series of
consonants derived from the contracted pronunciation taking the following
path.

> [nasal] + [vowel] + [consonant]  
>  → [nasal] + [(voiced) consonant]  
>  → [voiced consonant]

What man'yōgana tried to record is thought to be the second stage, or
[prenasalized](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenasalized_consonant)
syllables. This is why sometimes characters with nasal onset (我, 疑, 泥 etc.)
are used to spell voiced syllables.

The moraic nasal (撥音) ん shares most of the history with the dangling nasal
just explained above, so it has no consistent spelling, except characters for
む was sometimes used in place of it. And っ (促音) is a (very arbitrary)
abstraction of diverse geminations, conceptually completed no earlier than the
12th century, where its existence in man'yōgana is hard to imagine. They were
often left out unspelled even when their (phonetic) existence is conjectured.
Their statuses in Old Japanese could be compared to the modern English _lil_
or _li'l_ , which try to represent the glottalized pronunciation of _little_
[[lɪʔl]], but without proper way to render, the [[ʔ]] is omitted or replaced
by a vague placeholder.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-06-19T05:05:37.643
95008
2022-06-19T05:43:22.157
2022-06-19T05:43:22.157
30454
7810
94994
answer