Classical Japanese language

Encyclopedia : C : CL : CLA : Classical Japanese language

The Classical Japanese language was the Japanese language as spoken and written during the Heian era of Japan, circa 900–1200 CE. It is the direct successor to the Old Japanese language and is characterized by an enormous influx of Chinese vocabulary and widespread changes in the phonology. Phonological changes include:

The change of the prenasalized consonants to voiced consonants
The addition of long vowels and closed syllables to syllable inventory
The elision of certain consonants in certain environments
The lenition of [p] to the bilabial fricative [ɸ]
The change from syllable-timing to mora-timing

Classical Japanese was written in three different ways. It was first recorded in Chinese characters used as a phonetic transcription as in Old Japanese. This usage later produced the hiragana and katakana syllabic scripts which were derived from simplifications of the original Chinese characters.

Classical Japanese was the standard for the written form of the language for long time. Use of Classical Japanese for writing started to decline after the Meiji Restoration, when Modern Japanese was born, though newspapers and official documents were still written in Classical Japanese then. After the World War II, most of written Japanese switched to Modern Japanese, though even today it is used for literature especially in traditional genre like haiku.

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