Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/568

548 has in many cases been altered, but with no greater variation from the mandarin sounds of the characters than in many of the dialects of China. Unfortunately for the learner, three systems of pronunciation are used. One, called the Go-on (from that state in China which had the highest political influence at the time), was introduced when the Chinese language first became a subject of study by the Japanese, about A. D. 286. Another, called the Kan-on, was introduced in the 7th century; and another, called the To-on, in more recent times. The Go-on pronunciation is most current among the Buddhists and the common people, while the Kan-on is used mainly by the Confucianists, the government, and the literary classes. The Japanese have formed or invented many ideographs, after the manner of the Chinese, to designate things or words in their own language for which there were no equivalent characters in the Chinese. They also attach meanings to many of the characters different from the Chinese, and use them in a different way to suit the grammatical requirements of their native tongue. There are three general styles of literary composition in use. One is pure Chinese, in which none but Chinese characters are employed, and the grammatical construction is in accordance with the Chinese idiom. Frequently in this style marks or signs are used along the line of the characters to designate the order in which they should be read in translating the sentences into the Japanese language, or to suit the native idiom. Another, and the most common, is that in which the Chinese characters are used to a greater or less extent, mixed with native words written with their own letters, and where the structure and idiom are purely Japanese. Most of the literature intended for the unlearned and common reader is in this form. There is still another, written almost entirely in the native character, with little or no admixture of Chinese, intended for the use of women and children and uneducated persons. There is no reason to believe that the Japanese possessed letters or characters with which to write their own language previous to the time of the introduction of the study of Chinese into their country. The weight of evidence as well as of authorities is against the statement of some authors who advocate this opinion, and even produce an ancient alphabet, which however is too artificial in its form and structure to warrant the belief that it is anything more than the invention of some person of modern times. If they ever had an alphabet or syllabary more ancient than the present one, it has certainly not been used for many centuries, and there are no books now extant written in this character. It was after the Japanese had begun to study and read Chinese books that the syllabary now in use was formed, and when we may also believe they began to reduce their native language to writing. This syllabary was of gradual growth, and not the invention of any one person. In their earliest writings the Chinese characters were used, in the same composition, in a double capacity: phonetically, to express merely Japanese syllabic sounds; and significatively, to express in the native language the idea contained in the character. As phonetics they were first used especially to write the names of persons, places, postpositions, and auxiliary words and particles. The characters were also first used in their entire form, unabridged; but being found too cumbrous and inconvenient, they were simplified in form, and rendered more easy to read and more expeditious in writing, in two ways: one, called hira-kana, by writing the whole character in a very abridged or contracted form and in a cursive style; the other, called kata-kana, by taking a part only of the character, consisting generally of two or three strokes, to express the sound of the whole. These two forms have no resemblance to each other. The hira-kana is the kind of letter commonly used, especially in books intended for the common people and the uneducated classes. The kata-kana has been little used, except in dictionaries to define the meaning of Chinese characters, or in scientific and philosophical works. In the hira-kana there are also several ways of writing the same letter, differing in being more or less contracted, as well as several different letters to express the same syllabic sound, making the acquisition of the written language extremely troublesome.—The Japanese letters are 48 in number. Each letter represents a syllabic sound, excepting the last or n sound, which is only used as a final consonant, and is not included by the Japanese in their syllabary, which they always speak of as containing 47 syllables. The syllabary or alphabet is called iroha, from the first three letters; and this is also the first word of a series forming three sentences in which the letters have been arranged to facilitate their acquisition. The kata-kana signs of the iroha are derived from Chinese characters, the latter, which are prefixed in the following table, being also used as capitals: