Explore: Manʼyōgana

Man'yōgana (万葉仮名; Japanese pronunciation: [maɰ̃joꜜːɡana] or [maɰ̃joːɡana]) is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese

sections are written in Man'yōgana, which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can

were Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese (e.g. man'yōgana); and hentaigana, which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana

purposes only. It represents an intermediate cursive form between historic man'yōgana script and modern hiragana. Sōgana appears primarily in Heian era texts

of man'yōgana (万葉仮名), which adapted kanji for their phonetic value (derived from their Chinese readings) rather than their semantic value. Man'yōgana was

Tōyō kanji Jinmeiyō kanji Hyōgai kanji Kana Hiragana Hentaigana Katakana Man'yōgana Sōgana Gojūon Typographic symbols Japanese punctuation Iteration mark

other Japanese syllabary besides hiragana and katakana is their precursor man'yōgana, use of which had died out well before 1712. Imatto-canna was probably

transliterate texts and works of arts from India, by taking parts of man'yōgana characters as a form of shorthand, hence this kana is so-called kata (片;

main Japanese syllabic writing system, derived from a cursive form of man'yōgana, a system where Chinese ideograms (kanji) were used to write sounds without

colloquial readings Kanbun Idu Variants Zetian characters Derived systems Kana man'yōgana hiragana katakana Jurchen script Khitan large small Nüshu Bopomofo Slavonic