Japanese Language Stack Exchange
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Questions tagged [hentaigana]

変体仮名. Variant forms of hiragana that were used prior to 1900, but which are no longer in use.

Hentaigana (変体仮名) are variant forms of hiragana that were used prior to a 1900 reform. Hentaigana are no longer in common use.

For example, the following is a hentaigana for い:

hentaigana for い

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Is it true that the meaning of あ可よろし is unknown?

One of the cards in a Hanafuda deck looks like this: The character that looks like の is actually , a hentaigana for ka derived from the kanji 可. The card says あかよろし, not あのよろし. According to Wikipedia, the meaning of the inscription (which is also…
Jack M
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What does this fish market banner say?

A friend has at home this banner from an old fish shop in Sapporo. I suppose it's a souvenir from Japan. It intrigues me a lot! What's this の with an upper stroke and the ten-ten? What's the name for the place? Does the following make sense: ⻌の魚? On…
Jason Lint
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Recognizing old Japanese handwriting

Can you please help me with recognizing this line in old Japanese handwriting? As I suppose, this is: ? やき ？ っすれ ？ の二 but it's most likely that I am wrong
Julia
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Is there any way to input hentaigana into text documents?

Having found some books that use hentaigana (e.g. the 古今琉歌集) alongside standard hiragana and kanji, I've been trying to find a way to input hentaigana characters into text files. I've found proposed plans to add hentaigana to unicode, but so far…
Harith Vasant
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How do I decide which Hentaigana to use?

According to this page , there are multiple Hentaigana express あ. How do I decide which to use? このページによると、'あ'を表す変体仮名は複数あるそうです。これらをどうやって使い分けるのでしょうか。
ra1ned
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Understanding Basho haikus in difficult calligraphy

I'm struggling here to read these two haikus on my teacups. One horizontal row is one cup. All others I have are reading right to left, guess these ones go same way. All others have also been Matsuo Basho poems. Any tips would be welcome! A little…
Tõnis Kimmel
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What are some examples of surnames written with hentaigana?

What are some examples of surnames written with 変体がな? Are there any common or famous surnames with 変体仮名?
user46840
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