The linguistic ghost haunting modern Japanese writing
In short: For centuries, the Japanese written word existed in a state of diglossia, a split between a living spoken tongue and a frozen literary standard. Even as the spoken language evolved, the classical style persisted in official documents and poetry, preserving a phonetic history that modern speakers can no/longer hear.
Known as bungo (written language) or kobun (old writing), Classical Japanese served as the literary standard until the Shōwa period (1926–1989). While the spoken language (kōgo) drifted significantly from its roots by the Edo period, the written form remained anchored in the grammar of the Heian period (794–1185). This created a linguistic diglossia, where two distinct forms of the same language coexisted for generations.
The decline of this classical standard began during the late Meiji period (1868–1912) through the Genbun Itchi movement, which sought to unify speech and writing. A pivotal moment arrived in 1887 with Futabatei Shimei’s novel, The Drifting Cloud, one of the first to utilize the vernacular. By 1908, novelists had largely abandoned the old style, and by the 1920s, newspapers had followed suit. However, the transition was not instantaneous; government documents maintained the classical style until 1946.
The legacy of this era survives in two major orthographic differences: kyūjitai (old character forms) and rekishi-teki kana-zukai (historical kana usage). The old characters are often simplified versions of traditional Chinese forms, while the historical kana usage reflects Heian-era pronunciations. For instance, certain modern sounds like /wa/, /i/, /u/, /e/, and /o/ were historically written using the 'h' row (ha, hi, fu, he, ho) because those sounds originally possessed a 'p' or 'f' consonant. While the sounds have since shifted, the classical spellings remain as etym'ological fossils in modern grammar and traditional arts like haiku and waka.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Classical Japanese
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