An Etymological Analysis of the Cursive Chinese Character Origins of Japanese Hiragana

Abstract

Japanese Hiragana( 平仮名 ) was created for recording the pronunciation as phonetic symbols. Hiragana is generally believed to be imitated from the Chinese cursive writing forms. At the beginning of the creation of Hiragana, the direct motivation was to extract the corresponding pronunciation from certain Chinese characters(Kanji; 漢字 ). Therefore, the pronunciation of each Hiragana should be consistent or close to the pronunciation of the original Chinese characters when certain Hiragana was derived during the 9th century CE. By comparing the phonology of the middle ancient period of the Chinese character, and combining the pronunciation of Wu dialect( 吳方言 ), Cantonese dialect( 粵方言 ) and Minnan dialect( 閩南話 ) as frames of reference, it can be found that the currently accepted correspondence between Hiragana and Kanji contains discrepancies, with a total of 18 groups of conventional matches showing completely inconsistent or significantly different pronunciations. Modern scholars had been made some mistakes in exploring the correct correspondence in 7 Hiragana when retrospecting the origin back to 7 Chinese Characters. The questionable point is that the phonological correspondence is discordant or inconsistent even though the similar writing forms or character shape can be traced back. This is a mistake of keeping the external image or shape without saving the inner syllable or pronunciation. The cognitive error is that regardless of the difference in pronunciation but just keeping a simple font similarity or identity. To be clear, there are 6 Hiragana need to unbinding the conventional correspondence and re-link new bond respectively. The new correspondence is え to 哀，こ to 工，と to 土，め to 每 ( 母 )，を to 戉 ( 越 )，ん to 見，respectively. and there is“ヘ”left except the deformation of calligraphy fonts, it may come from the Chinese ancient musical notation (banzi notation; 半字譜 ) of the Tang Dynasty banquet music(Yanyue; 燕樂；讌樂).