Rubbing of Bussokuseki-kahi poems carved c. 752, recording Old Japanese using Chinese characters
Region
Japan
Era
8th century
Language family
Japonic
Old Japanese
Early form
Proto-Japonic
Writing system
Man'yōgana
Language codes
ISO 639-3
ojp
Linguist List
ojp[a]
Glottolog
oldj1239
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Old Japanese (上代日本語, Jōdai Nihon-go) is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial.
Old Japanese was an early member of the Japonic language family. No genetic links to other language families have been proven.
Old Japanese was written using man'yōgana, using Chinese characters as syllabograms or (occasionally) logograms. It featured a few phonemic differences from later forms, such as a simpler syllable structure and distinctions between several pairs of syllables that have been pronounced identically since Early Middle Japanese. The phonetic realization of these distinctions is uncertain. Internal reconstruction points to a pre-Old Japanese phase with fewer consonants and vowels.
As is typical of Japonic languages, Old Japanese was primarily an agglutinative language with a subject–object–verb word order, adjectives and adverbs preceding the nouns and verbs they modified and auxiliary verbs and particles appended to the main verb. Unlike in later periods, Old Japanese adjectives could be used uninflected to modify following nouns. Old Japanese verbs had a rich system of tense and aspect suffixes.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
OldJapanese (上代日本語, Jōdai Nihon-go) is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century)....
spoken in the east of Japan, in the area traditionally called Togoku or Azuma. Eastern OldJapanese constitutes a branch of the Japanese subgroup of the Japonic...
Japanese (日本語, Nihongo, [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 120 million...
(平安時代). The successor to OldJapanese (上代日本語), it is also known as Late OldJapanese. However, the term "Early Middle Japanese" is preferred, as it is...
The Japanese numerals are the number names used in Japanese. In writing, they are the same as the Chinese numerals, and large numbers follow the Chinese...
Japanese pronouns are words in the Japanese language used to address or refer to present people or things, where present means people or things that can...
Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan (Japanese: 日琉語族, romanized: Nichiryū gozoku), sometimes also Japanic, is a language family comprising Japanese, spoken in...
various aspects of Japanese life before the Meiji Restoration. The book, which was written in 1871, forms an introduction to Japanese literature and culture...
not Japanese dialects, although they are sometimes referred to as such. Regional variants of Japanese have been confirmed since the OldJapanese era....
an estimated one-third of the population in Japan is expected to be 65 and older. The aging of Japanese society, characterized by sub-replacement fertility...
Kanji (漢字, Japanese pronunciation: [kaɲdʑi]) are the logographic Chinese characters adapted from the Chinese script used in the writing of Japanese. They were...
this shift in consonants, see OldJapanese § Consonants, Early Middle Japanese § Consonants, and Late Middle Japanese § /h/ and /p/.) [v] There are three...
classical Japanese language (文語 bungo, "literary language"), also called "old writing" (古文 kobun), sometimes simply called "Medieval Japanese" is the literary...
kanji can be used to write both Sino-Japanese words and native Japanese words. Historically, both Korean and Japanese were written solely with Chinese characters...
name of Japan. Mizuho (瑞穂) refers to ears of grain, e.g. 瑞穗國 Mizuho-no-kuni "Country of Lush Ears (of Rice)". From OldJapanese midu > Japanese mizu ("water;...
characteristics that Middle Japanese had retained during the language's development from OldJapanese, thus becoming intelligible to modern Japanese. The period spanned...
Japan before Meiji Restoration Ritsuryō Han (administrative division) Samurai Mass, Jeffrey P. and William B. Hauser. (1987). The Bakufu in Japanese History...
Japanese particles, joshi (助詞) or tenioha (てにをは), are suffixes or short words in Japanese grammar that immediately follow the modified noun, verb, adjective...
conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics with verb forms...
Japanese poetry is poetry typical of Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the Japanese language, which includes OldJapanese, Early Middle Japanese...
Hideo (2003). OldJapanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction. RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-415-30575-6. Seeley, Christopher (1984). "The Japanese Script since 1900"...
oldJapanese Constitution, this definition applied to the territories of Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu). Japanese page about Mainland Japan (内地...
pre-OldJapanese yamatai, Miyake (2003:41) cites Alexander Vovin that Late Old Chinese ʑ(h)a maaʳq dhəə 邪馬臺 represents a pre-OldJapanese form of Old Japanese...
language of Goguryeo, which he considers a relative of Japanese in a family he calls Japanese-Koguryoic. He suggests that the family was located in western...
the OldJapanese construction) attached to a non-past form of the verb; e.g., Tōkyō Japanese kaku-na, Kyōto Japanese kaku-na, Kagoshima Japanese kaʔ-na...
Second Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese naval Zero Fighter was named after this year. After the Second World War , the United States occupied Japan, and stopped...