12

皆さん、こんにちは！

Now, I've been reading 竹取物語 and have come across (another) set of symbols that I've yet to understand. Given the following sentence.

かくて翁やう／＼豐になり行く。

What does the sudden 「／＼」 mean?

Earthliŋ
  • 47,707
  • 9
  • 125
  • 198
Tirous
  • 3,394
  • 4
  • 19
  • 47
  • 1
    Could it possibly be the vertical iteration mark? See [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iteration_mark#Repeating_multiple_characters). By the definition in the wiki, I believe this sentence would then mean かくて翁やうやう豐になり行く。My Japanese is unfortunately too limited to parse this sentence though. – Enrico Borba Dec 30 '16 at 20:41
  • See this article about iteration marks in Japanese:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iteration_mark#Japanese – kandyman May 19 '18 at 12:08

1 Answers1

14

This is supposed to be an iteration mark.

This type of iteration mark is usually only used in vertical writing (the traditional layout for Japanese writing). It looks like a big く but is twice as tall.

It also exists in Unicode, so I can try to produce it here, although it may not render nicely:

や
う
〱

(Wikipedia does a better job and has more examples.)

The characters ／＼ are often (ab)used to represent the vertical iteration mark in horizontal writing.

So,

やう／＼ = やうやう = ようよう = 漸う

Earthliŋ
  • 47,707
  • 9
  • 125
  • 198