The origin of man'yōgana

Abstract

Most scholars in Japanese studies (history, linguistics, literature) tend to accept in one form or another the ancient legend that the phonetic writing system of ancient Japan, known as man'yōgana, came from Paekche. This legend about the ancient Korean kingdom—Paekche—appears in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, Japan's two oldest chronicles. To date there have been few attempts to use concrete data from the peninsula either to prove or reject this legend. This article supplies information from all epigraphic data on the Korean peninsula to show that Paekche spread the use of Chinese (sinographs) to be used phonogrammatically and that Koguryo educated the rest of the peninsula in the use of this script.

Philological evidence for *e and *o in Pre-Old Japanese

“…As Bentley (2001) and I (Miyake 2000(Miyake , 2001 have argued elsewhere, Japanese writing is based on Paekche writing, not the Silla writing which developed into hyangchal. I suspect (1) that the Old Korean reading *ki of LHan *kie > *cie is a Silla innovation 38 which deviated from the original Chinese pronunciation with *-e and (2) that this graph retained its more Chinese-like value *ke in Japan and elsewhere on the peninsula (and perhaps even in earlier Silla writing).…”

“…'Go-on' ('sounds of Wu') is a cover term for the earliest layers of borrowings which may date from the early fifth century, when Paekche scholars began to teach Chinese to Japanese nobles (Bentley 2001). Although Pulleyblank (1991: 3) interpreted the name 'Go-on' literally and identified the source of Go-on as southern Early Middle Chinese (EMC), it is not certain whether 'Go' refers to the southern Chinese state of Wu.…”

O sistema de escrita japonês: além da fala

“…Acontece que esses caracteres, já na China antiga, eram com frequência usados como fonogramas, para grafar as sílabas ya, ma e tai. Há evidência filológica que os fonogramas empregados no Japão descendem daqueles empregados na Coreia e na China (BENTLEY, 2001).…”