The Blending of Go-on and Kan-on in Medieval Japanese

Compared with Sino-Japanese Words Found in Iroha Jiruishō and Nippo Jisho

Abstract

In modern Japanese, there are many Sino-Japanese words with two characters, one of which is read by Go-on and the other by Kan-on, such as gengo (gen is Kan-on and go is Go-on). It has been remarked that the blending of Go-on and Kan-on scarcely occurred until the medieval period. To quantitatively confirm this perspective, this study classified Sino-Japanese words with two characters, of which Go-on and Kan-on are explicitly distinct, into three categories, namely, Go-on, Kan-on, and blend reading words. The proportion of blend reading words to the other two words in Iroha Jiruishō (the Japanese dictionary compiled in the 12^th century) is approximately 15%, and in Nippo Jisho (the Japanese–Portuguese dictionary compiled in 1603-04), it rises to approximately 24%. This result demonstrates that the blending of Go-on and Kan-on increased during the medieval period. This study also pointed out that some examples of shifts between Go-on and Kan-on implies that the unification of Sino-Japanese readings, which means either Go-on or Kan-on becomes dominant for each character, influenced the spread of blending.