Part 5: Hentaigana [Japanese Kana They Don't Teach You at School]

Hentaigana are old and obsolete variant kana, and this video explains what they are, why did they exist, why they're gone now, and how they were used in the past.
Recommended Extra Readings
Usage of hentaigana source: (Very good read if you can read Japanese)
www.jstage.jst...
Extras on Variant Katakana:
archive.wul.wa...
also a good read on variant katakana: daijirin.dual-d...
Sources of images used:
Hentaigana shop signs
www.nijl.ac.jp...
Records of The Three Kingdoms excerpt
read.nlc.cn/Out...
The Manyosyu excerpt is unfortunately lost to me -- I tried very hard to find it, but couldn't, sorry...
Examples from Chinese manuscripts from a caligraphy library:
www.shufazidian...
My Twitter: / xiaoschannel

[@Cherodar]

So, this is super interesting and I'm glad you're investigating it, but I feel like there's a little more to the story here, which admittedly I don't really understand, but I'm just going to put what I do know here so that the investigation can continue on. You're right that for all practical purposes, the hiragana standardization as we know it occurred as part of the language standardization in the Meiji Period. But it does seem that there was already some sense that a set of hiragana, quite like what we still use today, was already understood to exist before then! The thing that's bizarre about it though is that I've almost never seen it in pre-Meiji Japanese sources--I've seen it only in books that Europeans wrote about Japan. Look up "firocanna" (the way the Portuguese wrote the word "hiragana") and Engelbert Kaempfer's "History of Japan"--they seem to have been taught a version of hiragana that's weirdly similar to what was standardized in Meiji, suggesting that what we now call hentaigana were already less-standard variants to an extent. It's just that it didn't seem like any native Japanese writers really cared about that distinction before Meiji, and used it only when teaching foreigners, or something. In any case, would love to learn more about what exactly was going on there, and thanks again!

[@XiaosChannel]

You are right about this. But it depends on the kana, for some there is a dominance, for some it was more divided. In fact some hentaigana were considered the default in some books I found. I was going to have a page on that, but this got too long so I cut it out. Great comment, pinning this.

[@Cherodar]

@@XiaosChannel Thank you, and glad to be of some help! Yeah, there are some that don't reach consensus about their modern forms till considerably later, like え and お, and then I think ん wasn't differentiated from む until 1900!

[@GarrisonMorton]

Japanese people: "The differently shaped kana" People who don't speak Japanese: "The hen... WAT???"

[@jaym.7045]

When I heard the name, I almost thought it was a joke lol

[@Phroggols]

Same lol

[@sundog486]

Fascinating, as are all your videos. Thank you for your effort in producing this video. When I was a Japanese language student, the course material and senseis rather glossed over the derivation of the Kanas, so thank you for disseminating this knowledge. Identifying as English, I don't feel bad about being poor at reading Old English, I rely on scholars to do this, therefore I think that language revision is generally a good thing.

[@ChazColvin]

This was so much more interesting than I expected, thank you for making this presentation!

[@XiaosChannel]

ayy thanks for watching

[@MrDarklolZZ]

This is very interesting video! Thank you for creating it, i will show it my my japanese teacher at my university. I wonder if she can recognize hentaigana :)

[@Kato_Rin]

Very cool! I've gotten lazy with studying Japanese ever since graduating from university, but your videos keep me interested in the language

[@smudge8882]

This is really cool! It makes the language nerd in me excited :)

[@666dolphinsxXmiamiXx]

thanks so much for this series, I randomly happened upon it when searching for videos about man'yōgana, and ended up watching the whole thing

[@kirakiraboshi82]

OK, this has to be one of the best crafted video Ive come across. I LOVE the slides. It is so easy for me to follow along. Never subscribed so fast! (4real)

[@XiaosChannel]

thanks! :)

[@chrisiw.5300]

Tbh the same thing also applies in German with Kurrent or Sütterlin. 99% of people that are not 80-90 years old won't be able to read Kurrent.

[@XiaosChannel]

did they have a different script or something?

[@chrisiw.5300]

@@XiaosChannel It's a different style of cursive writing, that is not taught in school anymore. The letters are sometimes written/look completely different. The Kurrent-typeface is the cursive version of "Fraktur" which still can be read by most people. The current cursive handwriting style (that is still taught in school) is almost indistinguishable from cursive handwriting used in english speaking countries. Here's the wikipedia article: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurrent

[@XiaosChannel]

@@chrisiw.5300 wow that's so interesting! thanks so much for this comment

[@camibarn]

Thank you for sharing this! I just discovered your channel and this is the first video I saw from the whole serie. I can’t wait to watch the other ones. So valuable 😊

[@XiaosChannel]

it's coming any time now (tm)

[@charleslippert7843]

Explanation I was given as a child was that katakana was standardised far earlier than hiragana because katakana was used by Buddhist monks who used katakana as pronunciation key for Buddhist sutras written in Chinese. Consequently, there are far fewer hentaigana for katakana.

[@Palindox]

Really informative, thank you! 😊

[@theislander1230]

wow, so much informative share,,

[@apotheosis1660]

Amazing, I genuinely hope you cover more of hentaigana. Also was hentaigana used in conjunction with kanji, or was it just hentaigana.

[@XiaosChannel]

they were used like today's kana, mixed with kanji.

[@apotheosis1660]

@@XiaosChannel Were they ever used as furigana?

[@homerthompson416]

Pretty cool when I found an old document of my grandmother's from before she moved to the US listing her name as ちゑ and not ちえ when I always thought it was the latter, as that's how she pronounced her name.

[@XiaosChannel]

that's not quite hentaigana -- there are a few variants of ゑ btw

[@skanthavelu]

Very interesting! I have also noticed that many Japanese Americans will have a ye in their names or surnames such as Miyeko, Mayeda or Inouye.

[@puthisak456]

​@XiaosChannel character unicode?

[@servantofaeie1569]

Are you u/nutsack133? I found your Reddit post about her name a few hours ago

[@flutterwind7686]

This isn't what I thought it was w

[@XiaosChannel]

well you gotta agree it is what's on the thumbnail XD

[@usamanasher3900]

I finally mastered hiragana, Katakana and first two grades kanji.... It's all easy once I get the grasp. I will soon master all the 1945 characters and nothing will stop me... COME AT ME BRO!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA.... Hentaigana: "Hello, you must be the new student... Nice to meet you... I will be your next teacher. Sit down"

[@XiaosChannel]

well kanjis are not that hard. they are just permutations of the same thing. hentaiganas also not that hard if you know the stroke order, as they are just cursive based on the stroke order.

[@Xinnou]

good vid but doubt it will get any love from algorithm due to title lol

[@XiaosChannel]

Lol yeah please help share this if you know people who might find this interesting

[@a3vus]

very omoshiroi!

[@SynoPTL]

I came to this video

[@BIRDYCODYT]

ayoooo

[@halfsine]

@@BIRDYCODYT "come on"

[@APOORVASAXENA-fh1pe]

I think kana invented by kukai (kobe dashi) when i see by Wikipedia

[@nyamnyam1416]

I am Japanese and have never learnt these characters at school or otherwise

[@XiaosChannel]

きそば(楚者)とかは街に見かけると思いますよ、注意を払えば。 ほかは古典を読まないとあんまり役に立たないからね。。。

[@nyamnyam1416]

@@XiaosChannel 歴史の浅い北海道出身だし、今は日本国外に住んでるし、古典も読みません。ｗｗｗ

[@APOORVASAXENA-fh1pe]

I think kana invented by kukai (kobe dashi)

[@equilibrum999]

cool gana

[@FrozenLily]

xiao the legend

[@XiaosChannel]

lol what

[@janmusi]

I don't want to do any research on this.

[@OleksandrSe]

How do you pronounce it with serious face😁

[@macandcheese.no3]

But can they still teach you this?

[@XiaosChannel]

probably at university level

[@1.4142]

They are censored

[@legal040]

変態仮名はエロ字字の好きな書き方ですか

[@marcocrescenzi1387]

褻黼

[@Soulskinner]

Thank you for the video. It was quite an interesting, and I've subscribed! But let me disagree, hm. Or just comment couple of points. XD These name changes of Ukrainian cities just because of current events. I find it strait stupid. Especially considering that they sound differently in other languages, anyway and it's fine. But that's not the interesting part. Interesting part is standardization and was it worth it. First point. I actually find Romaji kinda useless, but quite ok spelling method. Well. Useless because we have Kana and it's a good idea to learn it and to get used to it, while Romaji makes that we get less practice with an actual Kana. But as spelling? I think everyone knows that it's just use English characters to represent Kana. And in English... You see one characters, read these completely different way. So it's easy to "switch" to this type of reading. Especially... If it's not your native language. XD ...and we're getting to the next point - that's what happens, when you don't change your writing system in centuries! While they have tons of loan words, which kept the original spelling. So it've became complete nightmare to write and read. Meanwhile. I don't really know how common is this, but Russian language saw some changes to. Maybe not that drastic, but after Socialist Revolution, some rules of writing (?) was changed. Was removed the symbol "Ѣ", because the sound, which it was representing, kinda gone, so it sounded the same as "Е" (Ye). Well, it's not that hard to read texts which are 150+ years old. But they give some troubles and it's kinda hard to get used to these. And maybe it sounds bad, and stuff. But nothing is stopping publishers just to publish modern editions, of these texts. Using modern spelling rules. I bet, in Japan and other places it's the same story. At least, it's something usual and classical authors are part of school program. Which are often, or even usually at least 110 years older. So I don't really see any strong cons against this type of standardization. While these are still interested, they may actually learn these scripts in their original form.

[@XiaosChannel]

Well thanks for the thoughtful response. For Ukraine, here's the official statement of Japanese MOFA clearly stating it's to show support: twitter.com/MofaJapan_jp/status/1509473237004001284 And yes you can publish old texts with new spellings, but that only works for the most popular texts. If you're doing research on your own as it might be needed in a democratic society, you must know the hentaigana to read texts back then. The reason it does not work like russian where you could guess (Or simplified chinese for that matter) is the magnitude of change is too great, but yeah i can see if someone learns like 10-20 the most common hentaigana, they'll mostly be able to read it no problem.

[@sundog486]

Regarding your comment about changes to Ukrainian place names. It seems to me that whatever one's politics, it is respectful to call places by the names that the native people call them. However I fear it will be a long time before we call Japan Nihon or Nippon.

[@OBrasilo]

@@sundog486 The problem is that Russians are just as native to those places as Ukrainians (as a matter of fact, the area being fought in right now, was part of the land conquered by Russia from the Ottoman Turks in the late 18th century and the places were all built by Russians), and to deny that just because of the current war is stupid. But, it's not surprising to see this kind of action being taken by the same government of Japan which denies Japan's own past war crimes (such as the Nanking massacre), vists the Yasukuni shrine where class A war criminals are interred, and refuses to accept that South Sakhalin and all the Kurils (including the southernmost four) are Russian now as a result of the outcome of World War II (which is why to this day, Japan has still not signed a peace treaty with Russia which means that World War II is technically still on-going).

[@OrangeBananaMonster]

Omg hair :O

[@XiaosChannel]

lol well thanks i guess

[@APOORVASAXENA-fh1pe]

I think kana invented by kukai (kobe dashi) when i see by Wikipedia

[@APOORVASAXENA-fh1pe]

I think kana invented by kukai (kobe dashi)

[@APOORVASAXENA-fh1pe]

I think kana invented by kukai (kobe dashi) when i see by Wikipedia

[@APOORVASAXENA-fh1pe]

I think kana invented by kukai (kobe dashi)

[@APOORVASAXENA-fh1pe]

I think kana invented by kukai (kobe dashi)

[@XiaosChannel]

well considering all these variations it seems unlikely one single person invented them. the korean characters though, i think, was invented by one emperor, and you can see it is much more regular compared to whats in this video

[@APOORVASAXENA-fh1pe]

I think kana invented by kukai (kobe dashi)

[@huje8264]

Why did you comment this so many times