Gojūon

The gojūon (五十音, lit. Fifty Sounds) is a Japanese ordering of kana.

It is named for the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed, but the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a syllabic chart is therefore 46. Some of these gaps have always existed as gaps in sound: there was no yi or wu in Old Japanese, and ye disappeared in Late Old Japanese, predating the kana: the kana for e, i, and u double up for those phantom values. Also, with the spelling reforms after World War II, the kana for we and wi were replaced with e and i, the sounds they had developed into. The kana for syllabic n (ん) is not part of the grid, as it was introduced long after gojūon ordering was devised (previously む was used for this sound).

The gojūon contains all the basic kana, but it does not include:

• versions of kana with a dakuten such as が or だ, or kana with handakuten such as ぱ or ぷ,
• smaller kana, such as the sokuon (っ) or yōon (ゃ,ゅ,ょ).

The gojūon order is the prevalent system for collating Japanese in Japan. For example, dictionaries are ordered using this method. Other systems used are the iroha ordering, and, for kanji, the radical ordering.

History

The gojūon is an ancient convention, originating in the character ordering in Sanskrit, as well as a means for expressing the hansetsu of Chinese characters.

In a quip, it uses Sanskrit organization (grid, with order of consonants and vowels), and Chinese writing (in columns, right-to-left).

Brāhmī script, showing vowel ordering.

The order of consonants and vowels, and the grid layout, originates in Sanskrit shiksha (śikṣā, Hindu phonetics and phonology), and Brāhmī script, as reflected throughout the Brahmic family of scripts. In this vein, the monk Kūkai introduced the Siddhaṃ script to Japan in 806 on his return from China.

Note however that the Sanskrit was written left-to-right, with vowels changing in rows, not columns; writing the grid vertically follows Chinese writing convention.

Discrepancies

There are three ways in which the grid does not exactly accord with Sanskrit ordering of Modern Japanese; that is because the grid is based on Old Japanese, and some sounds have changed in the interim.

s/さ

What is now s/さ was previously pronounced [ts], hence its location; in Sanskrit /s/ is near the end of the list.

h/は

h/b/p (はばぱ) are placed where p/b are in Sanskrit (in Sanskrit, h is at the end) and the diacritics do not follow the usual pattern: p/b (as in Sanskrit) is the usual unvoiced/voiced pattern, and [h] has different articulation.

In brief, this is because /h/ was previously [p], and pronouncing /h/ as [h] is recent.

This is discussed in more detail at Old Japanese: /h/; in brief: prior to Old Japanese, modern /h/ was presumably [p], as in Ryukyuan languages. Proto-Japanese is believed to have split into Old Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages in the Yamato period (250–710). In Old Japanese (from 9th century) and on to the 17th century, /h/ was pronounced [ɸ], with the earliest evidence from the start of the period being from 842, by the monk Ennin, writing in Zaitōki that Sanskrit "p" is more labial than Japanese, and with late evidence being that Portuguese transcribed the は row as fa/fi/fu/fe/fo.

N/ん

This was not present in Old Japanese (it developed following Chinese borrowings), does not fit with other characters, and thus is attached at the end of the grid, as in Sanskrit treatment of miscellaneous characters.

Examples

Japanese mobile phone keypad, showing gojūon column labels

The earliest example of a gojūon-style layout dates from a manuscript known as Kujakukyō Ongi (孔雀経音義) dated c. 1004-1028. In contrast, the earliest example of the alternative iroha ordering is from the 1079 text Konkōmyō Saishōōkyō Ongi (金光明最勝王経音義) .

Gojūon ordering was first used for a dictionary in the 1484 Onkochishinsho (温故知新書); following this use, gojūon and iroha were both used for a time, but today gojūon is more prevalent.

Today the gojūon form the basis of input methods for Japanese mobile phones – each key corresponds to a column in the gojūon (5 row × 10 column grid of kana), while the number of presses determines the row. For example, the '2' button corresponds to the ka-column (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko), and the button is pressed repeatedly to get the correct kana.

Table

This table uses the vertical system of Japanese writing, and should be read from the top down, starting from the rightmost column, then to the left. In each entry, the top entry is the hiragana, the second entry is the corresponding katakana, the third entry is the Hepburn romanization of the kana, and the fourth entry is the pronunciation written in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Please see Japanese phonology for more details on the individual sounds.

/N/	/w/	/r/	/y/	/m/	/h/	/n/	/t/	/s/	/k/	Ø
ん ン n [ɴ] etc.	わ ワ wa [w͍a]	ら ラ ra [ɽa]	や ヤ ya [ja]	ま マ ma [ma]	は ハ ha [ha]	な ナ na [na]	た タ ta [ta]	さ サ sa [sa]	か カ ka [ka]	あ ア a [a]	/a/
	ゐ1 ヰ wi [i]	り リ ri [ɽi]		み ミ mi [mi]	ひ ヒ hi [çi]	に ニ ni [ni]	ち チ chi [tɕi]	し シ shi [ɕi]	き キ ki [ki]	い イ i [i]	/i/
		る ル ru [ɽu͍]	ゆ ユ yu [ju͍]	む ム mu [mu͍]	ふ フ fu [ɸu͍]	ぬ ヌ nu [nu͍]	つ ツ tsu [tsu͍]	す ス su [su͍]	く ク ku [ku͍]	う ウ u [u͍]	/u/
	ゑ1 ヱ we [e]	れ レ re [ɽe]		め メ me [me]	へ ヘ he [he]	ね ネ ne [ne]	て テ te [te]	せ セ se [se]	け ケ ke [ke]	え エ e [e]	/e/
	を ヲ wo [o]	ろ ロ ro [ɽo]	よ ヨ yo [jo]	も モ mo [mo]	ほ ホ ho [ho]	の ノ no [no]	と ト to [to]	そ ソ so [so]	こ コ ko [ko]	お オ o [o]	/o/

1. These kana are no longer in common use. They, and the three empty cells, are normally replaced with the plain vowel kana いうえ (イウエ) in the charts that Japanese use, but that has not been done here to avoid confusion.

Ordering of variant kana

In the ordering based on the gojūon, smaller versions of kana are treated in the same way as full size versions:

• the sokuon, the small kana tsu, is ordered in the same way as the large tsu, and after them. For example,

  まつ　まったく　まつば　まとう (matsu, mattaku, matsuba, matou)

• yōon sounds are ordered in the same way as the full sized sounds, and after them. For example,

  きや　きゃ　きやく　きゃく　きゆ (kiya, kya, kiyaku, kyaku, kiyu).

Voiced versions of the kana (those with a dakuten) are placed after the kana, and classified under their unvoiced versions; handakuten are placed after dakuten. For example,

すすき　すずき　すずしい　すすむ　(susuki, suzuki, suzushii, susumu).

and

は　ば　ぱ (ha, ba, pa)

Mnemonics

In order to remember the gojūon, various mnemonics have been devised. For example,

Ah, Kana Symbols: Take Note How Many You Read Well.

and

Ah, Kana. Surely Take Note How Many You Read Well.

and

Kana Signs, Think Now How Much You Really Want (to learn them).

and also

A Kind Samurai Told Naomi How My Yak Ran Wild.

The first letters in these phrases give the ordering of the non-voiced initial sounds.

For vowel ordering, the vowel sounds in the following English phrase may be used as a mnemonic:

Ah, we soon get old.

The vowel sounds in the English words approximate the Japanese vowels: a, i, u, e, o.

One can also use

HAIL UNESCO

to remember the order of the vowels.

References

• Kubota, Jun (2007) (in Japanese). Iwanami Nihon Koten Bungaku Jiten. Iwanami Shoten. ISBN 978-4-00-080310-6. 
• Mabuchi, Kazuo (1993) (in Japanese). Gojūonzu no Hanashi. Taishūkan Shoten. ISBN 4-469-22093-0. 
• "The Japanese language", Roy Andrew Miller, ISBN 0226527182, describes the origin of gojūon in Sanskrit.
• Gendai Kokugo Reikai Jiten, ISBN 4095010428, used to obtain examples of dictionary ordering.

External links

• sci.lang.japan FAQ on the origin of kana order contains the relevant quote from the above reference.
• Kana Table (PDF)