The Five Unused Kana
There are 46 base kana for both hiragana and katakana:
· 5 vowels
· 40 vowel and consonant combinations
· 1 singular consonant ‘n’
| a | i | u | e | o | |
| ∅ | あ | い | う | え | お |
| k | か | き | く | け | こ |
| g | が | ぎ | ぐ | げ | ご |
| s | さ | し | す | せ | そ |
| z | ざ | じ | ず | ぜ | ぞ |
| t | た | ち | つ | て | と |
| d | だ | ぢ | づ | で | ど |
| n | な | に | ぬ | ね | の |
| h | は | ひ | ふ | へ | ほ |
| b | ば | び | ぶ | べ | ぼ |
| p | ぱ | ぴ | ぷ | ぺ | ぽ |
| m | ま | み | む | め | も |
| y | や | ゆ | よ | ||
| r | ら | り | る | れ | ろ |
| w | わ | ゐ | ゑ | を | |
| ん (n) |
There are also an additional 25 kana that come from modifying some of the base kana with diacritical marks called dakuten (゛) and handakuten (゜). However, if you look at the chart above, you’ll notice that there are theoretically 45 possible vowel and consonant combinations, not just 40. Wi, we, wu, yi, and ye aren’t used in everyday Japanese. But why?
Kana That Never Existed
While all five kana mentioned above are not used in everyday Japanese, wu, ye and yi never existed in the first place. Wu and yi weren’t needed because the Japanese speakers didn’t use those sounds. Ye however, is believed to have been a sound in Japanese before the invention of the kana writing system.
Before the modern kana system developed, there was the man’yōgana system, which is an obsolete kana system in which the kanji were adopted from Chinese for their sounds instead of their meanings. In man’yōgana, ye was represented as “江”. It is believed that ye and e had similar pronunciations. It’s believed that e fully replaced ye in use by the Edo period. Interestingly, the katakana for e “エ” was derived from the man’yōgana of ye “江”.
Obsolete Kana
The kana for wi and we do exist for both hiragana and katakana, but they are now obsolete in modern Japanese and rarely used. The main reason for both kana becoming obsolete is that over time, their pronunciation started to lose the consonant beginning and began to sound the same as their respective vowel sounds.
Wi is ゐ in hiragana and ヰ in katakana. The pronunciation for wi was believed to be pronounced differently from i until at least the Kamakura Period. By 1946, wi was officially deemed obsolete. The wi sound is still used in Japanese for foreign words or various onomatopoeias, and is written as ウィ (Katakana u and a smaller katakana i). The hiragana for wi is sometimes still used for creative purposes like a band name or the name of a character in a book or game.
We is ゑ in hiragana and ヱ in katakana. Similarly to wi, we is assumed to have been pronounced differently to e until sometime after the Kamakura period. This katakana was similarly deemed obsolete in 1946 and was fully replaced by the e kana. When a we sound is needed in a foreign word or an onomatopoeia, we is typically written as ウェ (Katakana u and a smaller katakana e). While obsolete, the kana is still used for creative purposes like in the beer Yebisu (ヱビス), which is pronounced Ebisu, but uses the original spelling it had in 1890.
May I put part of this on my page if I include a reference to this web page?
As long as you link back to this page, then sure!
Why couldn’t they have ever spelled the name of their OWN currency???
In Japanese the word “yen” is pronounced “en.” If I had to guess why, it’s probably because the pronunciation changed over time.
The spelling of their currency in a foreign script might also have something to do with the spelling conventions, and phonics of the languages of those who first had need to write about that currency in a language other than Japanese. Although I haven’t looked into this, I would think that Portuguese or Dutch might be guilty party in this case.
It just doesn’t make sense!!!
So how would the Japanese spell the name of the Chinese town of ‘Wuhan’, if there has never been a letter for ‘Wu’?
Most likely would use the kana for ru..?
chinese is made up of hanzi, which is practically just kanji. these can be translated directly to japanese, and will look the same but sound different.
in the case of wuhan, it is written as 武漢 in both languages, but in japanese it is pronounced bukan (ぶ•かん). you were close, but the method of translation in a little different between japanese and chinese because kanji and hanzi are practically the same.