Grammar of the Japanese Written Language (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Grammar of the Japanese Written Language<br><br>But even in this early stage it was occasionally found necessary to give the Chinese characters a phonetic value in order to write Japanese proper names of unknown or doubtful derivation and other words or particles for which there were no convenient Chinese equivalents. Besides in the case of poetry nzana could only give the meaning whereas with band not only the meaning but the precise words and particles used could be expressed and consequently the metre rendered discernible. These causes gradually gave rise to a more extended use of the Chinese characters as mere phonetic signs. The poetry in the Koji/ei is written in leana and in the Manyo''s/zin a collection of poems extending over the period from the fifth to the ninth century a gradual increase in the proportion of phonetic signs is plainly observable.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases an imperfection in the original such as a blemish or missing page may be replicated in our edition. We do however repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.