Language is said to be alive, and Japanese is no exception. Japanese consists of vowels that are pronounced on their own and consonants that are pronounced in combination with vowels. Currently, there are five vowels: “a , i , u, e , o ,” but there was a time when there were six or even eight vowels. Some syllables have been lost in modern times. For example, the “e ” in the “wa” row used to be written as “ヱ” and had a different pronunciation. On the other hand, there’s still complexity in differentiating the same sounds based on meaning or usage, such as “ず” and “づ, ” “じ” and “ぢ, ” “は” and “わ, ” “へ” and “え.” It’s also said that “ha , hi , fu , he , ho” were pronounced "pa , pi , pu, pe , po” in ancient times. The fact that in manyogana , which uses Japanese characters without regard to the meaning of the kanji , “ha ” was written with the character “波” (pronounced “pa ” in Chinese) is one of the reasons for this. Furthermore, there’s also a theory that they were pronounced as “fa , fi, fu, fe, fo.” Some phrases are now used in cases where they weren’t originally intended to be used. For example, “sumimasen ,” which is a phrase used for apologizing, is also used when calling out to someone, and some people use it to express thanks as well. There are phrases where the subject is omitted, or the sentence is left incomplete, with the expectation that the other person will understand the meaning. “こんにちは Konnichiha (Hello)” is a classic example of this. It’s written as “こんにちは konnichiha ” and not “こんにちわ konnichiwa ” because it’s derived from an abbreviated form of the phrase “How is your day going today?” There are many foreign words where the shortened form has become more common than the original term. For example, “department store” is shortened to “depa-to,” and “smartphone” is shortened to “sumaho.” After World War II, the United States, which occupied and governed Japan, held the view that the complexity of the Japanese language might have been a factor in leading the Japanese people to war. Reports to the U.S. government suggested that the language should be made easier for Japanese people to understand and more internationally accessible. There were moves to push for the Romanization of the Japanese. However, it’s said that as the United States conducted further investigations, they changed their approach upon discovering the remarkably high literacy rate among the Japanese people. (From June issue, 2024 / 2024年6月号より)