Britannica Sources used in this answer

How did Japanese scribes use Chinese characters to write Japanese sounds?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Japanese calligraphy — Japanese language Record of a haiku exchange on *kaishi* writing paper by Japanese poet Bashō and one of his pupils in the teacher's own handwriting, 17th century, from a hanging scroll (ink on paper).

To represent Japanese sounds using Chinese characters, early Japanese scribes developed a phonetic system known as man’yōgana.12

Because the Japanese language is agglutinative and differs significantly from Chinese, scribes utilized Chinese characters for their phonetic values rather than their original meanings. In this system, a Japanese word was written by selecting Chinese characters whose Chinese pronunciations resembled the desired Japanese syllables. For example, the Japanese word yama ("mountain") was written by combining a character that sounded like ya with another that sounded like ma.132

This phonetic use of characters allowed scribes to transcribe Japanese words and grammatical elements that lacked direct Chinese equivalents. Over time, this practice evolved into the two modern syllabaries:12
* Hiragana: Developed by simplifying the cursive (grass) style of man’yōgana characters.12
* Katakana: Created by abbreviating or using parts of Chinese characters, often appearing more angular.2

These kana scripts eventually replaced the cumbersome use of full Chinese characters for phonetic purposes, allowing for a more efficient representation of Japanese grammar and native vocabulary.14