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What happened to the old Hiragana "ri" ?

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sicktouches_505576
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What happened to the old Hiragana "ri" ?

Postby sicktouches_505576 » May 18th, 2015 12:10 am

So I noticed the symbol has changed to り, but in the link below you can clearly see the old "ri".

http://www.textfugu.com/resources/hiragana-chart/

mmmason8967
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Re: What happened to the old Hiragana "ri" ?

Postby mmmason8967 » May 18th, 2015 1:20 pm

It hasn't changed. The one in the picture is the same character as り but it doesn't look quite the same because it's a different font.

Fonts are based on handwriting, which is traditionally done with a brush. It's possible to write hiragana in a flowing style where the brush doesn't lift off the paper very often and the strokes join up, and some fonts are based on this style. The font being used on Texfugu is like that, so the り and ゆ characters, for example, appear to be a single stroke.

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Murius
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Re: What happened to the old Hiragana "ri" ?

Postby Murius » May 18th, 2015 3:59 pm

Also there are far worse instances of font changes, try to paste 社 in zkanji* and see how the radical change is well... radical!

* http://zkanji.sourceforge.net/

sicktouches_505576
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Re: What happened to the old Hiragana "ri" ?

Postby sicktouches_505576 » May 19th, 2015 12:47 am

That's odd, it appears that the character is different on my smartphone. My phone seems to replace the hiragana "ri" with something that looks closer to the katakana "ri". That's so strange.

Murius
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Re: What happened to the old Hiragana "ri" ?

Postby Murius » May 19th, 2015 4:56 am

It looks like it's very common:

Image

Also the missing part, while accentuated to show the difference between the hiragana and katakana is the thin line the brush would leave going from the end of the first downward stroke to the top of the second one. The chart I learned hiragana from (in an old french manual) showed this clearly (mainly because it was poorly printed!). Same goes for the diagonal line going from top right to bottom left in "ko"...

thegooseking
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Re: What happened to the old Hiragana "ri" ?

Postby thegooseking » May 19th, 2015 9:15 pm

Although this case is not an example of it, 'old' characters in Japanese are referred to as hentaigana.

The history of kana is quite interesting. In the Man'yoshu, a collection of ancient Japanese texts, kanji were used not for their meaning, but for their sound. Using kanji in this way was therefore called man'yogana. When monks were writing in man'yogana, they developed certain shorthands for each character, by removing strokes and simplifying the characters. This is where hiragana and katakana come from. However, there was no standardisation. Sometimes different kanji could be used for the same sound in man'yogana, and sometimes different monks came up with different shorthands for the same man'yogana character.

In 1900, kana were standardised, with an edict that there should be only one character for each sound in hiragana and katakana. This standardisation didn't quite bring us the modern kana we know - it took another standardisation in the 1940s for that - but it was the start of standard kana. Kana that were not included in the standard list were classified as hentaigana. Hentaigana are sometimes still used, e.g. in signage, but they're very much considered non-standard and have a bit of an "old-timey" feel.

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sicktouches_505576
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Re: What happened to the old Hiragana "ri" ?

Postby sicktouches_505576 » May 20th, 2015 11:25 pm

Thanks for all the responses, I really appreciate all the help. ありがと

community.japanese
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Re: What happened to the old Hiragana "ri" ?

Postby community.japanese » May 24th, 2015 10:12 am

san, マイケルさん、Muriusさん、少狼さん、
Konnichiwa.
It seems all of you have had a good discussion.
Yuki 由紀
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