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The kanbun writing system essentially required every literate Japanese to be competent in written Chinese, although it is unlikely that many Japanese people were then fluent in spoken Chinese. Chinese pronunciation was approximated in words borrowed from Chinese into Japanese; this Sino-Japanese vocabulary is still an important component of the ...
The Iroha Jiruishō (色葉字類抄 or 伊呂波字類抄, "Characters classified in iroha order and annotated") is a 12th-century Japanese dictionary of Kanji ("Chinese characters"). It was the first Heian Period dictionary to collate characters by pronunciation (in the iroha order) rather than by logographic radical (like the Tenrei Banshō ...
For instance, the character for east, 東, has tō as its on'yomi, from Middle Chinese tung. However, Japanese already had two words for "east": higashi and azuma. Thus the kanji 東 had the latter readings added as kun'yomi. In contrast, the kanji 寸, denoting a Chinese unit of measurement (about 30 mm or 1.2 inch), has no native Japanese ...
The Japanese word kanbun originally meant 'Literary Chinese writings'—or, the Chinese classics. [8] Kanbun compositions used two common types of Japanese kanji readings: Sino-Japanese on'yomi ('pronunciation readings') borrowed from Chinese pronunciations and native Japanese kun'yomi 'explanation readings' from Japanese equivalents.
Kun'yomi (訓読み) is a way of pronunciation of Chinese characters in Japanese. It is the pronunciation of the Japanese synonymous word that uses a Chinese character. Therefore, kun'yomi readings only borrow the form and meaning of Chinese characters, and do not use the Chinese pronunciations.
Man'yōgana (万葉仮名, Japanese pronunciation: [maɰ̃joꜜːɡana] or [maɰ̃joːɡana]) is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this type of ...
In Japanese, Kokuji (国字, "national characters") refers to Chinese characters made outside of China. Specifically, kanji made in Japan are referred to as Wasei kanji (和製漢字). They are primarily formed in the usual way of Chinese characters, namely by combining existing components, though using a combination that is not used in China.
Many generalizations about Japanese pronunciation have exceptions if recent loanwords are taken into account. For example, the consonant [p] generally does not occur at the start of native (Yamato) or Chinese-derived (Sino-Japanese) words, but it occurs freely in this position in mimetic and foreign words. [2]