Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction

How can sounds of a dead language be brought back to life? What is wrong with the way we pronounce Old Japanese? How can other Asian languages help us to ‘reconstruct’ a language we no longer use?

Eighth-century Japanese or Old Japanese is studied by many Japanese students at school and texts are available in almost any bookstore, yet almost no one pronounces it in a way that its original speakers would recognize. Old Japanese attempts to rectify this problem. The anachronistic pronunciation of this ancient language is resolved through the book’s persuasive step-by-step guide to reconstructing the central dialect of eighth-century Japanese.

Miyake clearly presents what is already known about the history of writing in Japan, the history of Japanese phonology, and several continental Asian data sources including Sino-Korean and Sino-Vietnamese, before convincingly synthesizing this wide variety of evidence into an argument for a system of Old Japanese which utilizes thirteen consonants and seven vowels. Accessible to both specialists and non-specialists alike, this book – the first to provide an areal view of East Asian historical phonology in English – will prove a valuable resource to all those interested in linguistics, Japanese
studies and the history of writing.