Quote:
Originally Posted by flunacy
Good evening from Italy, everyone 
I hope everyone is doing fine!
I would like to ask....
About the "konbanwa" word...
It is written こんばんは in hiragana, with はfinal,
but why is it pronounced with "wa" final?
Thank you for explaining it...
I've just started learning the language and I've lots of doubts!
Thank you for helping me!
Buona serata a tutti! Have a nice evening everyone!
flunacy |
This is a linguistic phenomenon that is seen in many languages in that pronunciation changes faster than spelling. The tendency is that pronunciation almost always gets simpler over time.
Take the English word "daughter" for example. The "gh" part was actually pronounced a long time ago. Even though it's completely silent today, the "gh" has remained in the spelling of the word.
The word "knight" would even be a better example. You only pronounce half of the letters today, namely the n, i and t.
The Japanese particle は used to be pronounced "ha". The pronunciation changed to "wa" several hundred years ago yet the "spelling" has remained the same. The same goes for を. It had been pronounced "wo" until several hundred yeras ago but its pronunciation changed to "お" without a change in the writing.
Send me a big panino!
