Quote:
Originally Posted by masaegu
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.
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Someone from this forum gave me a link to a Wikipedia page explaining the differences between old Japanese, medium old, modern and nowadays (or something like that...can't recall the way they were regrouped).
I am surely glad I am studying Japanese today, because the old Japanese was described much like Chinese. Many different pronunciations for vowels and consonants. I like it today with just 1 sound.