Chinese Characters Evolved into Katakana (3)
After the introduction of Chinese characters, the system of "two ways of classical Chinese" appeared in Japan. (that is, spoken English can only be written in Chinese) "However, in ancient times, the meaning of words was simple and it was difficult to write sentences in words. Because of the lecturer, there are not enough words. "To make up for the lack of recording Japanese in Chinese," Today is still a word, pay attention to pronunciation training ".
Ye Wan's pen name is a symbol that regards Chinese characters as simple phonetic symbols. For example, and →よ(ヨ(yo), ヨ→の(ノ(no)) and so on. When people copy the pseudonym of Vanilla, because the phonetic Chinese characters as the pseudonym of Vanilla do not need to be as rigorous as the ideographic Chinese characters, various simplification methods gradually appear. Such as "He" → "よヨ". After the convention was simplified, it gradually became a pseudonym seen in modern times. However, until the unification of pseudonyms in modern times, there were still many systems of pseudonyms, which is the evidence that the above pseudonyms were not made by one person.
Japan belongs to the cultural circle of Chinese characters, and its ancient books or official documents are written in Chinese characters. However, because the classical Chinese in ancient Chinese is extremely difficult to understand and there are many strokes of Chinese characters, it was very difficult for Japanese people to learn at that time, which indirectly caused that only a small number of scholars who could stand a cold window for ten years, or wealthy and powerful nobles who could ask tutors to let their children read, could read and write, and most of the rest could not read. In addition, it also stems from the disadvantages of "literati who are proficient in Chinese" mastering politics. As a result, the wave of "breaking away from Korea" came into being.
The result of Japan's "breaking away from Chinese" is "pseudonym", which can be divided into "hiragana" and "katakana". The purpose of coining words is different.
Hiragana is born for writing songs and stories; "Katakana" was born to interpret Chinese. The founder of the former is a woman, and the author of the latter is a man.
Because the court girl copied the Collection of Ye Wan for many years, and the Chinese characters of "Ye Wan pseudonym" have a fixed pronunciation and are handwritten, which virtually simplifies the Chinese characters and becomes a cursive font. Over the years, it has become a "hiragana".
On the other hand, in order to pronounce Chinese as the inherent pronunciation of Japan, court children who want to learn Chinese or elites admitted to universities have to add all kinds of auxiliary words and marks by disassembling Chinese characters. These auxiliary words and markers are just "katakana". For example, "seeing is better than hearing a hundred things", and the Japanese pronunciation is "seeing is better than hearing a hundred things". Interestingly, the "cheating" methods of elites at that time were similar to those of modern students when learning foreign languages. Modern students have pencils. They can secretly write "Ancient Mao Ning" next to "Good Morning" and then destroy the evidence with an eraser afterwards. Ancient Japanese students, although they didn't have pencils, knew how to use bamboo sticks to add subsidy marks next to Chinese, which was regarded as an "invisible writing". If you don't look carefully, you really can't see the trace of "derailment".
Therefore, in Japan after the middle of the ninth century, "Hiragana" characters appeared. Tale of Bamboo, Collection of Songs of Ancient and Modern Harmony, Tale of Ise, Diary of Tosa, Diary of Dragonfly, Pillow Grass, Tale of Genji, etc. They are all "hiragana" characters without punctuation and Chinese characters. And this period is also a period of disharmony between male and female roles.
There are many chorus songs in Ise Tale, which can be said to be a story made up of chorus songs. Naturally, the whole article is written in Hiragana. But the Diary of Tosa is a travel note written by the famous singer Ji Guanzhi posing as a woman. However, travel notes, diaries, essays, etc. , is a prose genre that freely expresses daily life and personal inner feelings. It is too inconvenient to write in Chinese. Therefore, Ji Guanzhi had to pretend to be a woman, and recorded what he saw and heard on the trip in the spoken language (Hiragana) at that time. Unexpectedly, it was because Ji Guanzhi wrote the first record, The Diary of Tosa, that the court women created the female literature of the dynasty.
In that case, what about the "katakana" invented by men? Can katakana only be subordinate to the status of "invisible writing" Of course not. However, "Katakana" appeared in the book about 200 years later than "Hiragana". It first appeared in Story of the Past and Present, and it took another hundred years to appear in The Abbot, written by Ya Changming.
At present, "Hiragana" is used for phonetic symbols of Japanese characters and standard Japanese, and "Katakana" is mostly used for transliteration of foreign words and special purposes (such as advertisements and public signs). ).
I hope it can help you solve the problem.