Strange Kana You (Probably) Don't Know
73,928
Published 2024-06-27
Patreon: patreon.com/FreeBirdJP
Discord: FreeBirdJP
Xiao's Channel: @XiaosChannel
Ngetoma: @ngethoma
Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:43 Shout Outs
1:20 Obsolete Kana
3:53 Hentaigana
5:37 Goryakugana
6:49 Diacritics
10:41 Kanbun
11:45 Outro
All Comments (21)
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This was fascinating. Great job!
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I kept trying to wipe the screen of my phone thinking that it was dirty but it was just the white background 💀
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Someone already mentioned this but in the Ainu language (in Hokkaido), there's some unique kanas. For example the small letters (non-vowel), such as, ㇰ (-k), ㇷ゚ (-p) and ㇽ (-r). There's also small ha-hi-hu-he-ho to represent ending kh (-kh) so ㇵ, ㇶ, ㇷ, ㇸ and ㇹ. And a lot of other quirks such as the usage of "we" (ヱ) and "wi" (ヰ).
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3:08 it's official, I can't escape Touhou
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ヴ is probably the most known to Japanese speakers. It is sometimes written, but the v is rarely pronounced. People still say baiorin, berry guddo. Edit: oh and あ゛is well known as well from manga.
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Handakuten is also used with R-syllables to represent l sounds:- ラ゚( la) リ゚( li) ル゚ (lu) レ゚( le)ロ゚( lo) Dakuten is also used with W-syllables to represent V-sounds(an alternative toう&ウwith Dakuten).
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Japanese is so cool. I find it generally to be a very consistent language, but with the occasional quirk, such as with these kana.
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ヱ is occasionally used in names, more for stylistic reasons than anything else; e.g. クロエ and クロヱ have identical pronunciations, and the beer brand Yebisu is stylised as ヱビス (pronounced Ebisu).
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10:38 There is also the possibility to add the maru to R-row characters to get an L-row. Now, Japanese does not distinguish such sounds at all, not even in modern transcription, but Catholic missionaries in the previous century did use such to teach the readings of chants in Latin
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When I asked my Japanese teacher why Ga is sometimes said Nga he told me something along the lines of "it is beautiful speech" and that is how they might say it on news broadcasts. It coming from the Tokyo dialect makes sense, I'm sure that is a dominant dialect on TV.
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There's even more weird Kana, if you look at the Ainu language. For example, they got stuff like ツ゚, セ゚ and ㇱ. "tu" (unlike Japanese tsu), "tse" and "-s" respecitively.
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I'm a fluent Japanese speaker who has lived in Japan and planning to live in Japan in the future. And yet I learned new things today. 教えてくれてありがとう!
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This was a pretty fun video! I'd always hear the "nga" sound and be wondering "why tho" 😂. I didn't realize it was a dialect EDIT: Glad to see that you hit your 1k subs goal pretty quick! It seems like this is your most watched video so far!
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They also used to use kanbun for "translating" other languages, including English. It looks pretty cursed. You can find some examples if you image search something like "英語 漢文"
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11:32 it's kind of like writing chinese characters but reading in shakespeherian english? that is the closest metaphor i can think of. the text you have i think is in mixed kanbun and manyogana so it would be only readable by japanese aristocrats, not technically what i would call classic chinese, but it's pretty close
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I was coding up a Japanese character driver back in the late 1980s, and was advised that instead of just coding to support pre-formed k* d* z* etc. I needed to code for " and ゜ as seperate modifiers that could be combined with *anything*. Just like in English just because there's no word spelled kqzj doesn't mean that you should be incapable of physically typing it.
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I legit seen the usage of that あ with dakuon in the Doujinshi, indicating the character is making weird noises 💀
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THE CIRNO PLUSH
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Fun fact, the katakana エ was originally meant to write "ye". The old katakana for "e" was 𛀀, which may not display for some devices. For people whose device does not support the character, it looks like ラ but with the first (top) stroke being 丶instead of 一
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In addition to these, there's also the katakana extension for writing the Ainu language. I think these are basically just small versions of some katakana and they represent only the consonant sound of the character. They are used to write final consonants that don't occur in Japanese.
