Talk:Hentaigana

I am curious about this addition:

"The hiragana "syllabic n" (ん) originally derives from a hentaigana for /mu/." As I understand it, ん derives from the 天 character. Can anyone shed some light on this? adamrice 19:19, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's 无 (as in 無, nothing(ness)), not 天. - 218.208.245.127 15:11, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

An example on the right side would be nice. As it is now, I thought the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sho.png image was a hentaigana until I read more carefully.

Finding public-domain images can be a problem, but if you find one, go ahead and post it. adamrice 13:51, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not in Unicode?

Why has Unicode no code points for hentaigana characters assigned? --84.61.22.108 14:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Because it's an obsolete writing system. --FlareNUKE 01:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

No. Unicode already includes several obsolete writing systems, and they've recently even accepted the future addition of a script that's not just obsolete, but undeciphered. We don't even know what the symbols mean.

Well, in that case it could be either be because

1. It's not well known, and they have not gotten around to it, or

2. They don't see a point in it.

FlareNUKE 11:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the reason is that they're considered variant forms of the existing hiragana characters. But that's arguable, of course, so maybe they'll be added to unicode in the future. --Ptcamn 01:13, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Unicode does indeed encode historical scripts. However, no one has submitted a proposal yet. They are not variants. Bendono 06:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I found a site with a downloadable font supposedly containing over 200 Hentaigana. Here's the site: http://www.mojikyo.org/ I haven't downloaded the font yet, but I will.Moocowsrule (talk) 05:13, 23 August 2008 (UTC)Moocowsrule

The page to download is down on Mojikyo, so you have to download from another site: http://www.stanford.edu/group/scbs/mojikyo/. Moocowsrule (talk) 05:24, 23 August 2008 (UTC)Moocowsrule

Sorry for so many posts but I found another site for Unicode. Sadly it's all in Japanese and seeing as I'm horrible with Kanji I have no idea what they're saying. http://homepage2.nifty.com/Gat_Tin/kanji/kana.htm.Moocowsrule (talk) 05:31, 23 August 2008 (UTC)Moocowsrule

There is a new proposal to add Hentaigana to a new "Historic Kana" block of Unicode: http://www.in-nomine.org/~asmodai/hentaigana-proposal.pdf 67.39.200.73 (talk) 22:40, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I compiled the glyph table given in that PDF into an origin table, using information from (images in) the hiragana and katakana articles. Most kanji origins of current kana appear in the PDF, but apparently not all. My kanji reading skills are basically non-existing and I automated some part of the work (regexp), so perhaps someone can correct me were I’m wrong or unsure and fill in the blanks. — Christoph Päper 22:41, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Kanji origins of Kana: basically Man’yôgana, but only when used in reduced, cursive forms
characters for Hiragana and Katakana not repeated for Hentaigana even when there are alternative glyphs; some uncertain

	a			i			u			e			o
	Hira	Kata	Hentai	Hira	Kata	Hentai	Hira	Kata	Hentai	Hira	Kata	Hentai	Hira	Kata	Hentai
	安	阿	悪	以	伊	意移	宇		有雲	衣	江	要盈	於
K	加		閑可我駕賀歌哥	機幾		支起貴喜	久		倶具求	計	介	遣氣希	己		許故古
S	左	散	佐斜	之		志四新事	寸	須	春数壽	世		勢聲	曽		所楚處
T	太	多	當堂	知	チ	地遅	川	川州	徒都津	天		停亭轉弖	止		東登度等斗
N	奈		那難	仁		爾耳ニ児	奴		怒努	祢		年禰	乃		能濃農廼
H	波	ハ	者盤半葉頗	比		日飛悲非	不		婦布	部		旁倍遍弊邊	保		寶本報
M	末		万満萬真	美	三	見微身	武	牟	無舞	女		免面	毛		毋裳茂
Y	也		夜耶屋	–	以		由		遊游	–	衣		与	與	代餘余
R	良		羅	利		梨里離理	留	流	累類	礼		禮連麗	呂		婁樓路露
W	和		王輪倭	為	井		–	宇		恵		衛	遠	乎	越尾

2019 and Unicode 12.1 here, it’s definitely in[1] Unicode[2] at this point. JohnSmith13345 (talk) 11:44, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Full Table list:

http://japan-studies.com/language/hiragana/hentaigana/ --FlareNUKE 11:45, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

That table is far from complete. Bendono 06:53, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I've updated the table with the info in the hiragan portion of the Kana Hentai-shuu (I don't have the katakana half). Garfieldnate (talk) 19:25, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Characters

Who created the hentaigana images shown in the article? The calligraphy is beautiful. 66.171.76.241 04:25, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

This guy most likely. --FlareNUKE 04:24, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

hentai

It was bound to happen...OMFG HENTAI LOLOLOLLOLOLOOLOLOL —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.75.171.118 (talk) 04:25, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Could anybody please provide some etymological details on the name?~~Nicholas A. Chambers 18:37, 25 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicholas.a.chambers (talk • contribs)

Hentai means different form; it's not the 'weird' or 'perverted' hentai that you're thinking of. Garfieldnate (talk) 19:22, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Are they etymologically related? The article on the other kind of hentai says it's short for "hentai seiyoku” or “abnormal sexual desire”, whereas here it is the “abnormal (irregular) form” of kana. If they are related terms, perhaps this note in the article should be updated to clarify that:

The hentai (変体: "variant" or "irregular form") in this word is not the same as the hentai (変態) which means "abnormal" or "pervert".

Tim314 (talk) 03:56, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

misreading?

I would appreciate a cite or some backup for the idea that "iwan to suru" is a "misreading" of "iwamu to suru" -- I realize that "iwan" is a variant of "iwamu", but it can be seen as far back as the Man'youshu in the 7th century. The idea that the written form influenced that pronunciation change is highly suspicious to me. The section also refers to 1900 writing reforms, which I have never heard of (does the writer mean 1945?)

---

I agree, this is probably wrong. According to all the Japanese language webpages I could find this is simply a case of the pronunciation shifting, without influence from the the form. I added a "citation needed".

-"david —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.89.129.147 (talk) 00:45, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Hentaigana links

I found a site on 123explore containing a few Hentaigana related links. Here's the page: http://www.123exp-comm.com/t/23394324724/. Hope this is useful.Moocowsrule (talk) 05:16, 23 August 2008 (UTC)Moocowsrule

New Info

Evidently by adding a small Dakuten of Handakuten at the corner of the Hentaigana it reads as the changed character. Proof of this is on this page: http://homepage2.nifty.com/Gat_Tin/kanji/kana.htm. I'm not sure how correct this is though...Moocowsrule (talk) 05:34, 23 August 2008 (UTC)Moocowsrule

ISO 15924

The ISO 15924 code for hentaigana is given in the infobox as Kana (411). That (confusingly) is the code for katakana, whereas hiragana is Hira (410), katakana and hiragana together are Hrkt (412) and Japanese writing in general, i.e. with kanji added to the mix, is Jpan (413). I’m not sure what the correct code for hentaigana would be, but I doubt Kana was the one. You probably wouldn’t do wrong with Jpan and perhaps Hrkt, too. Does anyone know better? — Christoph Päper 22:12, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

手

It seems that the kanji 手 have also been used for the syllable/sound te. But the only online source have been able to recover is on a Hungarian blog. You can particularly see it on this table list image. May I add it to the Kanji origins of Kana table? — Lacrymocéphale 17:38, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

the table of "standardized hentaigana" is pretty impenetrable

im coming at this as someone with a basic knowledge of hiragana and their origins, and i find this table immensely confusing. i cannot imagine how this page must look to someone who doesn't know hiragana at all. some of these i'm able to infer from context, but some examples of things that are not explained include:

• what the bracketed characters mean in relation to the ones they're next to
• what the bold characters in the cell headings are
• why 'wu' is empty
• what ∅ means
• why cells have a variable number of characters (is there significance to that?)
• whether there is significance to the order of the characters in each cell

the 'sources of hentaigana' table isn't a whole lot less confusing; in particular, why is there a column headed "Hentaigana" that appears to only have regular kanji in it, and not the hentaigana that have been introduced in the table above? under "gallery", i am told that 'some of' these examples are one thing, and 'others' are another, but i am given no clues which are which

i don't really have answers for any of this, i just wanted to share that this page felt very confusing and unhelpful to me 2A00:23C7:BDC2:D201:B6F2:1A78:93CC:BD62 (talk) 15:41, 26 April 2021 (UTC)