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208
Notices of Japan, No. Vlll.
APRIL,
Books intended for the instruction of either children or the lower orders are invariably printed in hira-kana letters; but we are told that, in those designed for
These characters are frequently mixed up with those of the two other syllabaries; it has the same order, and is composed of complete Chinese characters, written both in the common and in the running hand, and many characters are frequently employed to represent the same syllable. The following list contains the proto- types, but others are as frequently used as these; and it should be observed that the Chinese characters which compose this syllabary, as likewise of all the others, do not always represent the Chinese sound of the words that they designate. Thus, the Chinese character keang I a river represents the syllable ye, which in Japanese has the same signification; also neu a female is called me, mean- ing the same thing."
THE SYLLABARY CALLED
MANYO-KANA.
惠
ye
sa
EL ke
hwuy
tso
ke
佐 計 爲 津
tsu
和
vei isin Falling Di
wa
ho
豋
to
tăng
ki ke
飛ˊˊ幾 ㄏㄨㄩㄝˊ 不 乃補
不乃?
ne
ne
迦知呂
chi
ro
che
loo
mo
maou yew
由
ko
ke
yu
毛已於奈與利ㄐㄩㄥˊ 波
na
yo
ha
nae
yu
le
po
se
me
she
neu
世女江久良
ra
ta
tae
太奴仁鑒
nu
ni
jin
寸美
mi
te
tsun
me
teën
天也武
ya
mu
re
yay
le
禮留保hoto
ru
fo
lew
po
che
之安
si, shi
a gan
萬字
ma
man
yu
會
SO
遠
0, Wo
Úll he, fe
tsängyuen
heuě
This syllabary commences on the right, and reads in the Chinese manner. The syllables in italic are the sounds of the characters according to the court dialect of China, as given in Morrison's Dictionary; the others are their Japanese sounds, written as they are expressed in a table given in the VIIth volume of the Repository, page 496.
"There is still another syllabary, made of Chinese characters considerably
contracted, which is call Yamato-kana 倭假名 or Japanese writing.” One
of the modes of employing Chinese characters in Japanese is here exhibited.
Yamato-kana is formed of three characters; the first one 倭 is an old name for Japan, and is read Yamato, though its sound is i; of the other two 假名,the
first is called according to its sound ka, the other according to its meaning in Japanese na, i. e. a name, and by the combination of the two is derived kana, a syllable or a character. The Chinese characters for hira-kana, kata-kana, and manyo-kana are all used in the same manner.
It may be added, that with the exception of the kata-kana, these various sylla baries are seldom used alone. Ordinarily, the characters of two or three are mixed together, without any rule, which renders the decyphering of the whole much more troublesome. And as if it was not already sufficiently difficult, Chinese characters are interspersed here and there, sometimes with and sometimes without the meaning or sound given on the side, just according to the whim of the writer. So that if we take into consideration the number of signs in each of the five sylla-