The process by which the Japanese pronunciation system was developed remains unclear. One can hypothesize that in primitive times, people communicated with simple sounds like animals. As if to support this hypothesis, a researcher studying animal behavior at Kyoto University has proven that titmice communicate by changing their calls. The Japanese language is made up of 44 basic sounds and their derivatives. There are quite a few researchers who believe that each of these sounds had its own meaning. Although likely different from the original, there are still words today where the meaning is established by a single sound. For example, “e” meaning “a painting,” and “o” meaning “a tail.” The Japanese language is composed of five basic vowels (a, i, u, e, o) and nine basic consonants (k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, w). It is hypothesized that in primitive times, people communicated using only vowels. In the past, there were more than five vowels, but similar vowel sounds are no longer used. Sounds and meanings were then created by adding consonants to vowels, and furthermore, words are thought to have been created by combining sounds with other sounds to create new words. This was followed by the addition of the basic variant sounds such as “ga” and “kya,” the special “nn” and long sounds (elongated), and the urging double consonant word, which can be considered to have broadened the range of expression. ( From October issue, 2022 / 2022年10月号より）