2024 Volume 20 Issue 3 Pages 35-52
This paper investigates nine documents which contain the Tō-on readings used by Chinese interpreters in the Edo period. Through examining kana notations used for transliterating the pronunciation of Chinese, this paper discusses the consonants of the Japanese /h-/ series at that time.
To accurately transliterate the initials /f/-group(軽唇音), /hu/-group(喉音合口) and /h/-group(喉音開口) in Chinese, these documents take different approaches: separately using ハ and フア notation or mixing them together, or only using ハ notation, or separately using ハ and ハア notation.
This is thought to be due to the fact that the Japanese compilers of each document based their kana notations on their own pronunciation of the Japanese /h-/ series while transliterating Chinese pronunciation. Overall, these documents can be divided into four types from the perspective of how kana notations are used: I. Separation, II. Combination, III. Consistency, and IV. Length.
Accordingly, this paper concludes that the consonants of the Japanese /h-/ series in the 18th century are highly varied, and it is assumed that there were intermediate states, such as [ɸ～hw] and [hw~h], in the de-labialization [ɸ]>[h] which occurred in the Japanese /h-/ series.
