Old Japanese

is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

.

This stage in the development of Japanese is still actively studied and debated, and key Old Japanese texts, such as the Man'yōshū, remain obscure in places.

Dating

Linguistic changes are gradual, and the periodization of Japanese is "both delicate and controversial", with multiple competing methods and criteria for division.

For both practical and conventional reasons, these divisions often correlate to political events. As such, the accepted upper bound (end date) for Old Japanese is 794 CE, when the capital Heijō-kyō

Heijo-kyo

Heijō-kyō , was the capital city of Japan during most of the Nara period, from 710–40 and again from 745–84. The Palace site is a listed UNESCO World Heritage together with other places in the city of Nara Heijō-kyō (平城京, also Heizei-kyō, sometimes Nara no miyako), was the capital city of Japan...

 moved to Heian-kyō

Heian-kyo

Heian-kyō , was one of several former names for the city now known as Kyoto. It was the capital of Japan for over one thousand years, from 794 to 1868 with an interruption in 1180....

. However, it is difficult to fix a lower bound. A limited number of Japanese words, mostly personal names and place names, are recorded phonetically in ancient Chinese texts such as the Book of Wei in the Records of Three Kingdoms (3rd century CE). Wooden tablets and relics with fragments of text written on them have also been excavated.

However, without discounting this fragmentary early evidence, the lower bound is generally placed circa 712 for practical reasons: 712 is the traditional date of composition of the Kojiki

Kojiki

is the oldest extant chronicle in Japan, dating from the early 8th century and composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Gemmei. The Kojiki is a collection of myths concerning the origin of the four home islands of Japan, and the Kami...

, the oldest extant written OJ text of substantial length. A lower bound circa 712 also coincides well with the Nara period

Nara period

The of the history of Japan covers the years from AD 710 to 794. Empress Gemmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō . Except for 5 years , when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the capital of Japanese civilization until Emperor Kammu established a new capital, Nagaoka-kyō, in 784...

 (710-794). A more formal dating methodology might simply date OJ as "through 794", without recognizing a lower bound at all.

Besides the Kojiki, some other literary sources include the songs of the various Fudoki

Fudoki

are ancient records of the culture and geography of provinces of Japan. They contain agricultural, geographical, historical and mythological records, as well as folklore.Compilation of Fudoki began in 713 and was completed over a 20-year period....

 (713-737), the songs of the Nihon Shoki

Nihon Shoki

The , sometimes translated as The Chronicles of Japan, is the second oldest book of classical Japanese history. It is more elaborate and detailed than the Kojiki, the oldest, and has proven to be an important tool for historians and archaeologists as it includes the most complete extant historical...

 (720), and many poems from the Man'yōshū (ca. 759), and portions of the Senmyō (679-789).

Writing system

Japanese words written in Chinese characters are attested as early as the latter half of the 5th century CE (see Inariyama Kofun

Inariyama Kofun

The is a keyhole-shaped kofun , zenpō-kōen-fun, located in Gyōda, Saitama. It is one of the nine kofun clustered in the city. To avoid confusion, it is occasionally called the Saitama Inariyama Kofun, for kofun with the same name are found in other regions....

). However, most of the earliest texts found in Japan are written in Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...

, although they may have been meant to be read as Japanese by the kanbun

Kanbun

The Japanese word originally meant "Classical Chinese writings, Chinese classic texts, Classical Chinese literature". This evolved into a Japanese method of reading annotated Classical Chinese in translation . Much Japanese literature was written in literary Chinese using this annotated style...

 method. Some of these Chinese texts show the influences of Japanese grammar, such as word order

Word order

In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...

 placing the verb after the object (as in Japanese) rather than before (as in Chinese). In these "hybrid" texts, Chinese characters are occasionally used phonetically to represent Japanese particles

Japanese particles

Japanese particles, or , are suffixes or short words in Japanese grammar that immediately follow the modified noun, verb, adjective, or sentence. Their grammatical range can indicate various meanings and functions, such as speaker affect and assertiveness....

.

Over time, the phonetic usage of Chinese characters became more and more prevalent, until Man'yōgana, a system of using the Chinese characters phonetically to record Japanese, was born. This system was already in use for poems and some proper nouns in Kojiki, and was used in a highly sophisticated manner in Man'yōshū.

On the other hand, Chinese characters were also used semantically to represent Japanese words with no phonetic connection to the Chinese. For example, 谷 was used to represent the Japanese word /tani/ ("valley"). Later, this extended to using the same Chinese characters to represent Japanese words with the same (or closely related) pronunciations as the semantically related Japanese words originally represented by the character. For example, using 谷 to represent the particle /dani/ ("even", "at least").

Consider the following example from the Man'yoshu:

夢尓谷   不見在之物乎
yume ni dani/ mizu arishi mono wo
"A thing unseen even in dreams"

Here, /yume/ ("dream") is represented by 夢 (semantic but no phonetic relationship), /ni/ and /-si/ and /wo/ by 尓 and 之 and 乎 (phonetic but no semantic relationship), and /dani/ by 谷 (semantic but no direct phonetic relationship; however, there is a secondary phonetic relationship via /tani/ meaning "valley", which is in turn connected to 谷 by semantics.)

Furthermore, /mizu/ ("see" + NEG) is represented as 不見 (NEG + "see"); the two-character compound as a whole is semantically equivalent to the Japanese, but the order of the characters is different.

More extreme examples of compound semantic relationships include such representations as 八十一 ("eighty-one") for the Japanese phrase /kuku/ ("nine nines"), and, similarly, 十六 ("sixteen") for /sisi/ ("four fours" but meaning "").

Limitations of Writing system

Using Chinese characters to write other languages created the following limitations.

• Only one liquid consonant: /l/
• Limited ability to represent closed syllables

Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...

 allowed open syllables and the codas /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/ and /ŋ/. Old Chinese

Old Chinese

The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at a site near modern Anyang identified as Yin, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1200 BC....

 had more closed syllables (some reconstructions, such as Li Fang-Kuei's and Akiyasu Tōdō's, eliminate open syllables entirely).

However, some written Old Japanese seems to include attempts to represent closed syllables. For example, sö (so₂) and its vowel alternation sa, originally a binding particle (係助詞), are often written as 曽 (tsǝŋ) and 左 (tsar), suggesting a final consonant sound at the end of the syllable. (Etymologically those are thought as same as demonstrative söre (so₂re) and saru.)

Another example of evidence for closed syllables (although not necessarily in Old Japanese) is the fact that 原 ("plain, field") is read hara (or bara) in standard Japanese, but paru/baru in southwestern and far western Japan. Combined with words like harappa, which has been analyzed as a reduplication: par(ar)par, this suggests that there may have been a proto-Japanese */par/ or */pal/.

In the opposite case, speakers of Old Chinese heard and wrote proto-Japanese. For example, in 3rd century, there was a queen named 卑弥呼 /pieg miěr hag/.

The word kana(-gana)(仮名) itself came from kari-na(loan-name/character) > karna > kanna > kana.

Kojiki distinguished and . Those are thought as which

• vowel length: long or short
• pitch accent: high or low

Phonology

The study of Old Japanese phonology is based on the comparative study of synchronous pronunciation of Chinese

Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...

, reverse analysis of diachronic change in Japanese pronunciation, and comparative study of the Ryukyuan languages

Ryukyuan languages

The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, and make up a subgroup of the Japonic, itself controversially a subgroup of Altaic....

. Although the majority of Old Japanese writing represents the language of the Asuka

Asuka, Yamato

was one of the Imperial capitals of Japan during the Asuka period , which takes its name from this place. It is located in the present-day village of Asuka, Nara Prefecture....

 and the Nara

Nara, Nara

is the capital city of Nara Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. The city occupies the northern part of Nara Prefecture, directly bordering Kyoto Prefecture...

 court in the then central Japan, some poems in the Man'yōshū are from southern and eastern Japan, and represent different dialects of Old Japanese. Some of these dialectical differences are still found today.

Old Japanese differed phonetically from later periods of the language. An analysis of Man'yōgana reveals a peculiar system known as Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai

Jodai Tokushu Kanazukai

is an archaic kanazukai used to write Japanese during the Nara period. Its primary feature is to distinguish between two groups of syllables as discussed below that later merged together.-Syllables:Following are the syllabic distinctions made in Old Japanese....

. See the Syllables section for details.

The transcriptions of Old Japanese words given in Kojiki (712) differ from those found in Nihon Shoki (720) and Man'yōshū (c. 759) in that it distinguishes the syllables /mo₁/ and /mo₂/ whereas the latter two do not. This has been correlated with the historical record of Kojiki being compiled earlier than Nihon Shoki, and thus preserved an older distinction that soon vanished.

Other characteristic differences of Old Japanese as compared with its modern counterpart include:

• no long vowels or diphthongs (criticized, see #Limitations of Writing system)
• words do not begin with /r/ or voiced plosives
• open syllables: no syllable-final consonants of any kind (criticized, see #Limitations of Writing system)

Some scholars have suggested that there might be a link between Old Japanese and some of the extinct languages of the Korean peninsula, including the Goguryeo language

Goguryeo language

The Goguryeo language was spoken in the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo , one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. The language is also known as Old Koguryo, Koguryoic, and Koguryoan....

, but the relation of Japanese to any language other than Ryūkyūan

Ryukyuan languages

The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, and make up a subgroup of the Japonic, itself controversially a subgroup of Altaic....

 remains undemonstrated. See Classification of Japanese for details.

Syllables

Old Japanese distinguished between 88 syllables.

Sokuon

Sokuon

The is a Japanese symbol consisting of a small hiragana or katakana tsu. In less formal language it is called or , meaning "little tsu". Compare to a full-sized tsu:The sokuon is used for various purposes...

 (促音), that is a long/double/geminated

Gemination

In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....

 consonant represented as /Q/, and hatsuon (撥音), that is independent /ɴ/, were not (or could not be) written. However, 奈能利曽-奈能僧 pair (762CE) suggested nanössö(nano₂sso₂), 意芝沙加-於佐箇 pair (720CE) and a middle-heian copy's boukun(傍訓) オムサカ suggested össaka(o₂ssaka) or öɴsaka(o₂ɴsaka).

Neither sokuon nor hatsuon represented morae

Mora (linguistics)

Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...

 yet.

a	i		u	e		o
ka	ki1	ki2	ku	ke1	ke2	ko1	ko2
ga	gi1	gi2	gu	ge1	ge2	go1	go2
sa	si		su	se		so1	so2
za	zi		zu	ze		zo1	zo2
ta	ti		tu	te		to1	to2
da	di		du	de		do1	do2
na	ni		nu	ne		no1	no2
pa	pi1	pi2	pu	pe1	pe2	po
ba	bi1	bi2	bu	be1	be2	bo
ma	mi1	mi2	mu	me1	me2	mo1	mo2
ya			yu	ye		yo1	yo2
ra	ri		ru	re		ro1	ro2
wa	wi			we		wo

Shortly after the Kojiki, the distinction between mo₁ and mo₂ is quickly lost reducing the total syllable count to 87.

Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain the syllable doublets, including:

• an eight-vowel system
• palatalization of the initial consonant
• a six-vowel system

This issue is still hotly debated, and there is no general consensus.

Transcription

Keep in mind that the transcription does not necessarily represent either hypothesis and that the subscript 1 or 2 could apply to either the consonant or the vowel.

There are several competing transcription systems. One popular system places a dieresis above the vowel: ï, ë, ö. This typically represents i₂, e₂, and o₂, and assumes that unmarked i, e, and o are i₁, e₁, and o₁. There are several problems with this system.

• It implies a particular pronunciation, indirectly on the vowel.
• it neglects to distinguish between words where the 1 / 2 distinction is not clear, such as the /to/ in /toru/ as well as in /kaditori/.

Another system uses superscripts instead of subscripts.

Vowel alternation

• /a/ ↔ /o₂/ (not allomorphic)
• /i₁/ ↔ /u/

There was an affix 斎 i- or yu- (sacred). This supposes that there was /*yi/.

Consonants

Old Japanese had the following reconstructed consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...

 inventory:

	Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	Coronal Coronal consonant Coronal consonants are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical , laminal , domed , or subapical , as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such...			Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
Voiceless Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...  obstruent Obstruent An obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract, such as [k], [d͡ʒ] and [f]. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes: obstruents and sonorants....	}	}	(})	}		}
Prenasalized Prenasalized consonant Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent that behave phonologically like single consonants. The reasons for considering these sequences to be single consonants is in their behavior, not in their actual composition...  voiced Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...  obstruent Obstruent An obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract, such as [k], [d͡ʒ] and [f]. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes: obstruents and sonorants....	}	}		}		}
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	}		}
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... /Flap Flap consonant In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.-Contrast with stops and trills:...	}		}		}

Obstruent

The voiceless obstruents /p, t, s, k/ had corresponding voiced consonants which were prenasalized. This prenasalization is seen through Late Middle Japanese.

Voiceless labial obstruent

Modern Japanese /h/ was phonetically realized as [p] in Old Japanese. This assumption is predicated upon the following textual and phonological analyses:

• The modern /h/ causes a discrepancy in the pairing of voiceless
  Voice (phonetics)
  Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
  
   vs. voiced
  Voice (phonetics)
  Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
  
   consonants. Thus, /k, ɡ/, /s, z/, /t, d/, and finally /h, b/. The pair /h, b/ does not fit. The voiceless version of /b/ is /p/.
• Comparison with Ryukyuan language shows [p] where mainland Japanese has [h]. As these two languages split at some point in history, this can be taken as evidence that the Japanese [h] was once pronounced identically to the Ryukyuan [p] (although the comparison alone does not directly address the issue of what its pronunciation was in Old Japanese).
• A look at /h/ in modern Japanese shows that it becomes [ɸ] when followed by /u/. Looking further back, Portuguese missionaries visiting Japan in the early 17th century wrote the entire /h/-row of kana
  Kana
  Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
  
   as "fa, fi, fu, fe, fo". Korea
  Korea
  Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
  
  n visitors in the same century suggested a voiceless bilabial fricative
  Voiceless bilabial fricative
  -See also:* List of phonetics topics...
  
   sound, i.e. [ɸ].
• In 842, the monk Ennin
  Ennin
  Ennin , who is better known in Japan by his posthumous name, Jikaku Daishi , was a priest of the Tendai school.- Birth and origin :...
  
   writes in Zaitōki a description in which he states that Sanskrit
  Sanskrit
  Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
  
   "p" is more labial
  Labial consonant
  Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...
  
   than Japanese. This is taken as evidence that Japanese /h/ was pronounced [ɸ] rather than [p] by that time. This was after the Old Japanese period, however.

There is general agreement that between the 9th and 17th century /h/ was [ɸ]. The dialectal and distributional evidence suggest that at some point it must have been [p]. Recent scholarship reconstructs this as *[p] for Old Japanese.

Voiceless coronal obstruents

• synchronical allophone
  • /s/ = [s, ʃ, t͡ʃ, t͡s, c] in western
  • /t/ as /ts/ = [t, t͡s, c] in eastern
• diachronical allophone
  • /s/ = [t͡s] > [t͡ʃ] > [ʃ] > [s]

Approximant/Flap

• diachronical allomorph
  • /ju/ > /ru/
• synchronical allomorph
  • /wo/ = /pa/

Phonological rules

In 1934, Arisaka Hideyo

Arisaka Hideyo

was a Japanese linguist. Born in Kure, Hiroshima, he received his education in Tokyo. He graduated from the Tokyo Imperial University, now University of Tokyo in 1931. He specialized in Historical Japanese phonology and Historical Chinese phonology, making important contribution to the studies of...

(有坂秀世) and Ikegami Teizou(池上禎造) independently proposed a set of phonological restrictions permitted in a single morpheme. These are known as the "Arisaka-Ikegami Laws".

• in a word root, -o₁ and -o₂ do not co-exist (5 instances)
• in two syllable words, -u and -o₂ generally do not co-exist (13 instances)
• there is a tendency to -a and -o₁ more co-exist, to -a and -o₂ less co-exist

These rules suggest two groups of vowels: /-a, -u, -o₁/ and /o₂/. Vowels from either group do not mix with each other; -i₁ and -i₂ can co-exist with either group. Some take this phenomenon as evidence that Old Japanese had vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....

 as found in Altaic languages

Altaic languages

Altaic is a proposed language family that includes the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe...

.

Syllable structure

The Old Japanese syllable was CV (consonant-vowel).

• A bare vowel does not occur except for word-initially.
• /r/ is not found word-initially (with the exception of two foreign loans: /rikizimahi₁/ and /rokuro/).
• Voiced plosives do not occur word-initially.

Vowel elision occurred to prevent vowel clusters:

• Second vowel is dropped: /hanare/ + /iso₁/ → /hanareso₁/
• First vowel is dropped: /ara/ + /umi₁/ → /arumi₁/
• Two continuous vowels merge into a separate vowel: i₁ + a → e₁, a + i₁ → e₂, o₂ + i₁ → i₂, u + i₁ → i₂ and probably a + u → o₁, u + a → o₁
• /s/ is inserted between the two vowels: /haru/ + /ame₂/→/harusame₂/ (It is possible that /ame₂/ was once */same₂/)

Grammar

Old Japanese was more synthetic than 20th century Japanese, and was both agglutinative and incorporative like the neighboring Ainu language

Ainu language

Ainu is one of the Ainu languages, spoken by members of the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō....

. For example, na...mo₂ or na...so₂ pair could contain a very long phrase:

• na omopitokimipaipedo mo₂
• pito na itakuwabisasemawirasetamapi so₂

The e...zu pair survived in the western dialect as yō...(se)ɴ as of 20th century.

Typologically

Linguistic typology

Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages...

, Old Japanese was similar in word order (and some aspects of phonology

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

) to Ainu and, according to some scholars, to Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

.

Old Japanese had a canonical word order SOV, though the subject was often omitted. Plurals were indicated by a suffix. There was no grammatical gender

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

. Sex could be explicitly marked with the suffixes -mi (female) and -ki (male) in the early language; later these became me₁ (female) and -ko₂, wo- (male), suffixed for humans and prefixed for animals or plants.

Numbers

0(zero) is adjective nasi. From 1 to 10 has banalism of vowel alternation:

1 pito2	3 mi1 (*mi1t)	4 yo2 (*yo2t)	5 itu (*ta)
2 puta	6 mu (*mut)	8 ya  (*yat)	10 to2wo2

Odd number 7 is nana, 9 is ko₂ko₂-no₂.

20 has a special name pata. 30 is mi-so₂, 40 yo₂-so₂, 50 i₁-so₂ or i₁(*i₁s), 60 mu-so₂(-di), 70 nana-so₂(-di), 80 ya-so₂(-di), 90 ko₂ko₂-no₂-so₂-di and 100 is mo₂mo₂.

99 has a special name tuku-mo₂.

800 is ya-po₂ (< *yat-mo₂), 1,000 is ti₁, 10,000 is yo₂ro₂du http://infux03.inf.edu.yamaguchi-u.ac.jp/~manyou/ver2_2/manyou_kekka2.php?kekka=20/4408.

82 is read ya-so₂ amari puta.

Sacred number is 4 and 8 (cf. FYI: Ainu's is 6).

Pronouns

• First person: wa, a, ware, are
• Second person: na, nare
  • beloved: mo, i-mo, i-mo-ko₂; se, se-ko₂
  • lower to higher: masi, mi-masi, i-masi
  • higher to lower/vulgar: o₂re
• Third person:
  • proximal: ko₂, ko₂re, ko₂-ko₂, ko₂-ti
  • mesial: so₂, sa, si, so₂-ko₂
  • distal: ka, kare
• Interrogative:
  • living: ta, tare
  • neutral: na, na-ni, ika, ika-ni, ika-na, iku-da
  • unliving: idu, idure, idu-ti, idu-tsi, idu-ku, idu-pe₁, idu-ku-pe₁, idura(interj.)

Ta(re) is who. Na(-ni) is why. Ika(-ni/na) is how, what way. Iku-da is how many. idu-(re/ti/tsi/ku/pe₁/ra) is generally where. Idure is which. Idu-ti/tsi is which direction. Idu(-ku)-pe₁ is around where. Itu(when) is attested middle-old, idure-no₂-to₂ki, instead.

Verbs

Old Japanese distinguished between eight verbal conjugations: quadrigrade, upper monograde, upper bigrade, lower bigrade, k-irregular, s-irregular, n-irregular, and r-irregular. Lower monograde does not exist yet.

Conjugation

Verb Class	Irrealis	Adverbial	Conclusive	Attributive	Realis	Imperative
Quadrigrade	-a	-i1	-u	-u	-e2	-e1
Upper monograde	-	-	-ru	-ru	-re	-(yo2)
Upper bigrade	-i2	-i2	-u	-uru	-ure	-i2(yo2)
Lower bigrade	-e2	-e2	-u	-uru	-ure	-e2(yo2)
K-irregular	-o2	-i1	-u	-uru	-ure	-o2
S-irregular	-e	-i	-u	-uru	-ure	-e(yo2)
N-irregular	-a	-i	-u	-uru	-ure	-e
R-irregular	-a	-i	-i	-u	-e	-e

Consonant / vowel stem

Verbs having a base that ends in a consonant are known as consonant-stem. These are exhibited by the Quadrigrade, the R-irregular and N-irregular verb classes.

There are only three N-irregular verbs, which were originally verbs in the Adverbial conjugation combined with the negative auxiliary -nu, but which were later reinterpreted as verbs in their own right.

Verbs having a base that ends in a vowel are known as vowel-stem. Upper Monograde represents monosyllabic vowel stems ending in -i.

Upper Bigrade is made up of polysyllabic roots ending in the vowel -i, while Lower Bigrade represents polysyllabic roots ending in -e. This ending vowel was elided in the conclusive, attributive, and realis conjugations.

K-irregular and S-irregular represent verbs whose stems appear to be composed of only one consonant each. These verbs behave as verbs with consonant stems, but they are originally vowel stems whose irregular conjugations are the result of vowel mutation and elision.

Irregular verbs

There are several verbs with irregular conjugations.

• K-irregular: k- "come"
• S-irregular: s- "do, make"
• N-irregular: i-n- "go away, die; pass away", sin- (< }+(i)n-) "die"
• R-irregular: ar- "be, exist", wor- "be, exist"

The conjugation class for each is named after the final stem consonant.

Adjectives

There were two types of adjectives: regular adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

s and adjectival noun

Adjectival noun

An adjectival noun or sometimes just adjectival is a noun that functions as an adjective by taking the particle 〜な -na...

s.

The regular adjective is sub-classified into two types: those where the adverbial form (連用形) ends in -ku and those that end in -siku. However, note that -si of -siku is the part of stem.

• -ku is objective
• -siku is subjective

This creates two different types of conjugations:

Adjective Class	Irrealis	Adverbial	Conclusive	Attributive	Realis	Imperative
-ku	-ke1	-ku	-si	-ki1	-ke1 -ke1re
	-kara	-kari	-si	-karu	-kare	-kare
-siku	-sike1	-siku	-si	-siki1	-sike1 -sike1re
	-sikara	-sikari	-si	-sikaru	-sikare	-sikare

The -kar- and -sikar- forms are derived from the verb ar- "be, exists". The adverbial conjugation (-ku or -siku) is suffixed with ar-. The conjugation yields to the R-irregular conjugation of ar-. As Old Japanese avoids vowel clusters, the resulting -ua- elides into -a-.

The adjectival noun has a single conjugation:

	Irrealis	Adverbial	Conclusive	Attributive	Realis	Imperative
Adjectival noun	-nara	-nari	-nari	-naru	-nare	-nare

Do not confuse this with the main verb naru (naturally become). Naru never takes the particle tu(*ntu) but takes nu(*nnu) after itself. However, this -nari sometimes takes tu. It is similar to the R-irregular ari. This peculiarity suggests that etymologically -nari came from -n-ari.

Dialects

The Man'yōshū includes poems written in dialects in eastern Japanese (present Shizuoka

Shizuoka Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region on Honshu island. The capital is the city of Shizuoka.- History :Shizuoka prefecture was formed from the former Tōtōmi, Suruga and Izu provinces.The area was the home of the first Tokugawa Shogun...

, Nagano

Nagano Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of the island of Honshū. The capital is the city of Nagano.- History :Nagano was formerly known as the province of Shinano...

, Kantō region

Kanto region

The is a geographical area of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. The region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures: Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba, and Kanagawa. Within its boundaries, slightly more than 40 percent of the land area is the Kantō Plain....

 and southern Tōhoku region

Tohoku region

The is a geographical area of Japan. The region occupies the northeastern portion of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. The region consists of six prefectures : Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi and Yamagata....

). For example, the imperative form of verbs -ro instead of -yo; the attributive form of the Quadrigrade and R-irregular verbs -o instead of -u; the negative verb ending -napu instead of -zu; the attributive form of adjectives -ke instead of -ki.

Ryukyu

The Ryukyuan languages and Japanese diverged "not long before the first written evidences of Japanese appeared, that is to say, at some point before the 7th century" (See Ryukyuan languages

Ryukyuan languages

The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, and make up a subgroup of the Japonic, itself controversially a subgroup of Altaic....

). The following list shows an example of comparison between Old Japanese and Modern Okinawan language

Okinawan language

Central Okinawan, or simply Okinawan , is a Northern Ryukyuan language spoken primarily in the southern half of the island of Okinawa, as well as in the surrounding islands of Kerama, Kumejima, Tonaki, Aguni, and a number of smaller peripheral islands...

.

	Old Japanese	Modern Okinawan	Modern Japanese
North	kita	nisi	kita
West	nisi	iri	nishi
South	(mi)nami	(mi)nami	minami
East	pimukasi	agari	higashi

Nisi means where we passed away, where we came from (N-irregular (i)nu+si ("past tense, where"). Agari means (the sun) rose, and iri means (the sun) set. Pimukasi means pi₁ ("the sun") + muku ("look (forward)") + si [> fimgasi > higashi].

Four-vowel system

The following fusional reductions (in most instances these are monophthongizations) took place:

• *i₁a > /e₁/
• *ai₁ > /e₂/
• *ui₁ > /i₂/
• *o₂i₁ > /i₂/
• *au > /o₁/
• *ua > /o₁/

Thus, the proto vowel system can be reconstructed as /*a, *i, *u, *o₂/.

Co₁ as Cwo hypothesis

Distributionally, there may have once been *po₁, *po₂ and *bo₁, bo₂. Note that the distinction between /mo₁/ and /mo₂/ is only seen in Kojiki and vanished afterwards.
If this is true, then a distinction was made between Co₁ and Co₂ for all consonants C except for /w/. Some take this as support that Co₁ may have represented /Cwo/.

However, this hypothesis has some unreasonability. For example, Old Chinese study shows that one of ko₁ 古 had old – middle-old pronunciation /kag – ko/. It was kaikō(開口) and was not gōkō(合口). Gōkō means that there is /u/ before main vowel.

See also

• Bungo
  Classical Japanese language
  The is the literary form of the Japanese language that was the standard until the early Shōwa period . It is based on Early Middle Japanese, the language as spoken during the Heian era , but exhibits some later influences. Its use started to decline during the late Meiji period when novelists...
  
  
• List of extinct languages of Asia