Gojūon
In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed. Each kana, which may be a hiragana or katakana character, corresponds to one sound in Japanese. As depicted at the right using hiragana characters, the sequence begins with,,,,, then continues with,,,,, and so on and so forth for a total of ten rows of five columns.
Although nominally containing 50 characters, the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a moraic chart in modern Japanese is therefore 46. Some of these gaps have always existed as gaps in sound: there was no or even in Old Japanese, with the kana for and doubling up for those phantom values. persisted long enough for kana to be developed for it, but disappeared in Early Middle Japanese, having merged with. Much later, with the spelling reforms after World War II, the kana for and were replaced with and, the sounds they had merged with. The kana for moraic is not part of the grid, as it was introduced long after the ordering was devised.
The contains all the basic kana, but it does not include:
- versions of kana with a such as or, or kana with such as or,
- smaller kana, such as the or in the .
Other systems used are the ordering, and, for kanji, the radical ordering.
History
The arrangement is thought to have been influenced by both the Siddhaṃ script used for writing Sanskrit and the Chinese system.The monk Kūkai introduced the Siddhaṃ script to Japan in 806 on his return from China. Belonging to the Brahmic family of scripts, the Sanskrit ordering of letters was used for it. Buddhist monks who invented katakana chose to use the word order of Sanskrit and Siddham, since important Buddhist writings were written with those alphabets.
In an unusual set of events, although it uses Sanskrit organization, it also uses the Chinese order of writing.
The order of consonants and vowels, and the grid layout, originates in Sanskrit , and Brahmi script, as reflected throughout the Brahmic family of scripts. Specifically, the consonants are ordered from the back to the front of the mouth.
The Sanskrit was written left-to-right, with vowels changing in rows, not columns; writing the grid vertically follows vertical writing in [East Asian scripts|Chinese writing convention].
| k- | kh- | g- | gh- | ṅ- | c- | ch- | j- | jh- | ñ- | ṭ- | ṭh- | ḍ- | ḍh- | ṇ- | t- | th- | d- | dh- | n- | p- | ph- | b- | bh- | m- | y- | r- | l- | v- | ś- | ṣ- | s- | h- | |
| Brahmi | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Devanagari | क | ख | ग | घ | ङ | च | छ | ज | झ | ञ | ट | ठ | ड | ढ | ण | त | थ | द | ध | न | प | फ | ब | भ | म | य | र | ल | व | श | ष | स | ह |
| Hiragana | か | が | か゚ | さ | ざ | た | だ | な | は | ば | ぱ | ま | や | ら | ら゚ | わ | |||||||||||||||||
| Rōmaji |
Discrepancies
There are three ways in which the grid does not exactly accord with Sanskrit ordering of Modern Japanese; that is because the grid is based on Old Japanese, and some sounds have changed in the interim.''s'' /
What is now s / さ was previously pronounced either or, hence its location corresponding to Sanskrit ; in Sanskrit appears towards the end of the list.''h'' /
Kana starting with h, b and p are placed where p/b are in Sanskrit and the diacritics do not follow the usual pattern: p/b is the usual unvoiced/voiced pattern, and has different articulation. This is because was previously, and pronouncing as is recent.. In Old Japanese
/
Moraic was not present in Old Japanese, does not fit with other characters due to having no vowel, and thus is attached at the end of the grid, as in Sanskrit treatment of miscellaneous characters.Examples
The earliest example of a -style layout dates from a manuscript known as dated –1028. In contrast, the earliest example of the alternative ordering is from the 1079 text.ordering was first used for a dictionary in the 1484 ; following this use, and were both used for a time, but today is more prevalent.
Today the system forms the basis of input methods for Japanese mobile phones – each key corresponds to a column in the, while the number of presses determines the row. For example, the '2' button corresponds to the -column, and the button is pressed repeatedly to get the intended kana.
Table
In each entry, the top entry is the hiragana, the second entry is the corresponding katakana, the third entry is the Hepburn romanization of the kana, and the fourth entry is the pronunciation written in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Please see Japanese phonology for more details on the individual sounds.| Ø | /k/ | /s/ | /t/ | /n/ | /h/ | /m/ | /y/ | /r/ | /w/ | /N/ | |
| /a/ | あ ア | か カ | さ サ | た タ | な ナ | は ハ | ま マ | や ヤ | ら ラ | わ ワ | ん ン etc. |
| /i/ | い イ | き キ | し シ | ち チ | に ニ | ひ ヒ | み ミ | り リ | ゐ | ん ン etc. | |
| /u/ | う ウ | く ク | す ス | つ ツ | ぬ ヌ | ふ フ | む ム | ゆ ユ | る ル | ん ン etc. | |
| /e/ | え エ | け ケ | せ セ | て テ | ね ネ | へ ヘ | め メ | れ レ | ゑ | ん ン etc. | |
| /o/ | お オ | こ コ | そ ソ | と ト | の ノ | ほ ホ | も モ | よ ヨ | ろ ロ | を ヲ | ん ン etc. |
- ^ These kana are no longer in common use, and are normally replaced with the plain vowel kana いうえ in Japanese publications; however, that has not been done here to avoid ambiguity. and kana were included in the 1900 standard for kana but removed by subsequent orthographic reforms. Kana for writing explicit, and sounds were given by some nineteenth century textbooks but were not included in the 1900 standard. Since and existed as different phonemes in Old Japanese literature, some specialised scholarly works use え / ? to transcribe and ? / エ to transcribe. To avoid confusion with the modern use of the character, エ is also sometimes distinguished as ?, to make it explicitly clear that it stands for.
Kana classes
Meiji writers, including grammarians and phonologists, often grouped kana into classes. The word they used was, but their descriptions were based largely on Japanese orthography and the organization of the table:- : the five kana of the あ行 of the table, namely あ, い, う, え, お. Since these kana represented vowels, this term came to mean "vowel" in Japanese, and is now pronounced instead. Also known as.
- : these are actual sounds, the consonants of Japanese. Since they were impossible to write with kana, some writers tentatively used the kana of the う段, namely く, す, つ, ぬ, ふ, む, ゆ, る to represent them. This term is no longer in use.
- : all the kana of the table except the あ行. The popular phonological analysis was that 父音 were combined with 母音 to create 子音. This term came to mean "consonant", and is now pronounced instead.
- : all the kana of the table, spelt without the or. Collectively, 母音 and 子音. The concept of "clearness" comes from Middle Chinese phonology, in which it meant "voiceless consonant", although the consonants , , , and are better described with the term 濁音 below.
- : all the kana spelt with the, such as が, じ, づ, べ. The concept of "muddiness" comes from Middle Chinese phonology, in which it meant "voiced consonant". These were considered part of derived 行, and not part of the table.
- : the kana of the ぱ行, spelt with the, namely ぱ, ぴ, ぷ, ぺ, ぽ. The ぱ行 is not part of the table either. Some writers also called them 次清音, although this meant "aspirated consonant" in Middle Chinese phonology. Phonologically speaking, the consonant is more accurately described with the term 清音 above.
- : kana used to spelt consonant-vowel sequences. Collectively, 子音, 濁音 and 半濁音.
- : the small kana っ, used to represent the moraic obstruent. Dictionaries lists as a synonym, suggesting its origin in Middle Chinese phonology, where refers to a checked tone, or a syllable ending in an unreleased plosive consonant.
- : the kana ん, used to represent the moraic nasal.
- : collectively, 母音, 子音, 濁音 and 半濁音.
- : kana digraphs, consisting of a 直音 and a small kana, such as きゃ or くゎ, although in historical kana orthography, small kana were simply 直音 as well.
Ordering of variant kana
In the ordering based on the, smaller versions of kana are treated in the same way as full-size versions:- The, the small kana, is ordered at the same position as the large. When the words are otherwise identical, it goes after them. For example,
- :
- sounds are ordered in the same positions as the full-sized sounds. When the words are otherwise identical, they collate after them. For example,
- :.
and
Mnemonics
To remember the, various mnemonics have been devised. For example,The first letters in such phrases give the ordering of the non-voiced initial sounds.
For vowel ordering, the vowel sounds in the following English phrase may be used as a mnemonic:
The vowel sounds in the English words approximate the Japanese vowels:,,,,.