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Concept
Historical kana orthography
Summary
The historical kana orthography, or old orthography, refers to the kana orthography in general use until orthographic reforms after World War II; the current orthography was adopted by Cabinet order in 1946. By that point the historical orthography was no longer in accord with Japanese pronunciation. It differs from modern usage (Gendai kana-zukai) in the number of characters and the way those characters are used. There was considerable opposition to the official adoption of the current orthography, on the grounds that the historical orthography conveys meanings better, and some writers continued to use it for many years after.
The historical orthography is found in almost all Japanese dictionaries, such as Kōjien. In the current edition of the Kōjien, if the historical orthography is different from the modern spelling, the old spelling is printed in tiny katakana between the modern kana and kanji transcriptions of the word. Ellipses are used to save space when the historical and modern spellings are identical. Older editions of the Kōjien gave priority to the historical orthography.
The historical orthography should not be confused with hentaigana, alternate kana that were declared obsolete with the orthographic reforms of 1900.
This section uses Nihon-shiki romanization for づ, ず, ぢ, じ, ゐ, and ゑ.
In historical kana usage:
Two kana are used that are obsolete today: ゐ/ヰ wi and ゑ/ヱ we. These are today read as i and e. Words that formerly contained those characters are now written using い/イ i and え/エ e respectively.
Outside of its use as a particle, the を wo kana is used to represent the o sound in some, but not all, words.
Yōon sounds, such as しょう shō or きょう kyō, are not written with a small kana (ゃ, ゅ, ょ); depending on the word, they are written with either two or three full-sized kana. If written with two kana and the last one is や ya, ゆ yu, or よ yo, then it represents a short syllable of one mora, such as きよ kyo. If written with two or three kana and the last one is う u or ふ fu, then it represents a long syllable of two moras.
Official source
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