Everything about Hentaigana totally explained
Hentaigana are alternative
kana letterforms equivalent to standard kana characters. This is a legacy of
man'yōgana, where many different
kanji could be used to represent the same syllable. As the man'yōgana forms became simplified into cursive forms, hentaigana and hiragana were the result.
Hentaigana were used more or less interchangeably with their equivalent
hiragana on an ad hoc, individual basis until
1900, when the hiragana syllabary was standardized to one character per
mora. They are not included in
Unicode.
Development of the hiragana syllabic "n"
The hiragana
"syllabic n" derives from a cursive form of the character 无. The spelling reform of 1900 separated the two uses, declaring that could only be used for /mɯ/ and could only be used for syllable-final /n/. Previously, in the absence of a character for the syllable-final /n/, the sound was spelled (but not pronounced) identically to /mɯ/, and readers had to rely on context to determine what was intended. This ambiguity has led to some modern expressions based on what are, in effect,
spelling pronunciations. For example, "trying to say" is ultimately a misreading of
mu as
n. (The modern Japanese form comes from earlier . Many other changes are seen here as well.)
Modern usage
Hentaigana are considered obsolete in modern writing, but a few uses still remain. For example, many
soba shops use hentaigana to spell on their signs. Hentaigana are used in some formal handwritten documents, particularly in certificates issued by classical Japanese cultural groups (for example, martial art schools, etiquette schools, religious study groups, etc). Also, hentaigana are occasionally used in reproductions of classic Japanese texts. Hentaigana may be used much like
blackletter in English and other Germanic languages, to give an archaic flair. However, most Japanese people are unable to read hentaigana, only recognizing a few from their common use in shop signs, or figuring them out from context.
Note that this hentai (: "variants") isn't the same word as the
hentai from which the English slang term is derived.
Incomplete list
Note that some of the following examples are simplified from the same kanji as their hiragana counterparts, but written differently.
Image:Hiragana_I_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_E_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_O_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_KA_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_KI_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_KO_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_SI_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_SU_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_TA_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_NA_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_NO_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_HA_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_YU_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_RE_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_RO_01.png|（）
Image:Hiragana_WA_01.png|（）
A more complete list and more information can be seen in the Japanese Wikipedia pages and
Further Information
Get more info on 'Hentaigana'.
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