Have you ever wondered why all the Japanese learners are confused at the beginning of their learning journey with the topic particle は being pronounced as わ？Then this short text is for you!
In the early history of Japanese, the modern HA row consonants (HA, HI, FU, HE, HO) were pronounced with P as PA, PI, PU, PE, PO.
However, in the Nara period (710 to 794) the P sound shifted to softer F (FA, FI, FU, FE, FO).
The same phenomenon happened in Indo-European languages (Grimm’s law) for example:
Proto-Indo-European \*pṓds (foot) changed to \*fōt- in proto germanic languages and eventually to foot (in English), *Fuß in German and Fod in Danish.*
For example, mother (母（modern HAHA）was pronounced as FAFA).We can still see remnants of this in the pronunciation of ふ (FU).In the Heian period (794 to 1185) another shift happened, the F sound changed to W, but ONLY when it followed a vowel, so it wasn’t used at the beginning of the word.
Example:母(FAFA) started to be pronounced as FAWA.川 (KAFA) started to be pronounced as KAWA. (川 – river)This sound change is the reason why the particle は is pronounced as わ, more about it a bit later.
Eventually, in the Edo period (1603 and 1867, Edo is the original name of Tokyo) when people from various areas of Japan started coming to the Edo resulting in various dialects intermixing, and the F sounds started to be pronounced as H, resulting in modern pronunciation. Of course, ふ was the exception. So 母（FAWA）shifted to modern HAHA.However, the orthography did not change and even though words were pronounced in a new way, the old kanas that represented old pronunciation were used which resulted in a linguistic wild west, luckily, most often this was the case for words written with kanji.
(By the way, another interesting sound change in the Edo period was the change of Ri to I in some words, like ござります→ございます。)
And eventually, soon after World War 2, the Japanese reformed writing, so that it would reflect the actual pronunciations so 川(かは) now was written as 川（かわ）. However, the particles were excepted because many felt that changing these exceedingly common spellings would confuse readers.The same reform retained the historical writing of particles へ and を, and also 当用漢字表（とうようかんじひょう) touyou kanji list (lit. “List of kanji for general use”) were made (the precursor of modern 2136 常用漢字 (jouyoukanji).
To sum up, は is pronounced as わ because the transcript reflects obsolete now pronunciation that was not changed during the language reform.
PSThe わ used at the end of the sentence (the one used for exclamation) comes from the topic particle は, yet it is written as わ in modern Japanese.
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11 comments
Thanks for explaining!
At what point were the diacritics introduced to the は column (ば, ぱ etc.)? Was it during the writing reform to be able to represent “obsolete” pronunciations, or were they gradually added during the sound shift phases for disambiguation?
Good read, but does this mean that 母 used to be pronounced papa
Oh I love etymology, thanks for explaining that! So many “Ahh, I see!” moments <3
Another informative post. Thank you as always!
> …and the F sounds started to be pronounced as H, resulting in modern pronunciation. Of course, ふ was the exception.
In the case of ふ, I think the sound western speakers perceive as ‘f’ actually results from the lip compression caused by the proper Japanese pronunciation of the vowel ‘u’, rather than being inherited from history. This would be equivalent to the palatalization caused by the pronunciation of the vowel ‘i’ on the consonants ‘s’, ‘t’, ‘z’, which western speakers perceive as ‘sh’, ‘ch’, ‘j’.
Yeah it is also why we say (日本) にほん which came from にっぽん. Which is why in English we say Ja-Pan (the Pan part is from Pon, and the Dutch screwed up the Ni sound and said Ja).
I believe this is known as Grimm’s law in linguistics. It happens in almost all languages as plosives are difficult to pronounce/distinguish and slowly erode away.
Similar to how words like tres with a t, became three(free) with an f.
Or piscine, probably became pish, then phish or fish!
Check out this book if you like this sort of thing – The Unfolding Of Language: The Evolution of Mankind`s greatest Invention
Wait why did the は (kana) that was pronounced わ in はは change to は (sound), but the は that was pronounced わ in かは stay わ (sounding) during the f->h shift?
As a beginner-level student of the Japanese language, culture and history this explanation helpt me understand a lot. Thank you!
> PSThe わ used at the end of the sentence (the one used for exclamation) comes from the topic particle は, yet it is written as わ in modern Japanese.
So why did they change for this particle but not the original topic particle は?
So why is 母 “haha” and not “hawa” today? I think you need an exception for this word. Nikkoku has some good stuff to say about it:
ハ行子音は、語頭ではp→Φ→h、語中ではp→Φ→wと音韻変化したとされる（Φは両唇摩擦音。Ｆとも書く）。これに従えば、「はは」は papa → ΦaΦa → Φawa → hawa となったはずで、実際、ハワの形が中世に広く行なわれたらしい。仮名で「はは」と書かれたものの読み方がハハなのかハワなのかは確かめようがないが、すでに一二世紀の初頭から一①の挙例「古本説話集」など、「はわ」と書かれた例が散見されるから、川のことを「かは」と書いてカワと読むごとく、「はは」と書いてハワと読むことも少なくなかったと考えられる。キリシタン資料を見ると、「日葡辞書」では Fafaハハと Fauaハワの両形が見出しにあるが、「天草本平家」などにおける実際の用例ではハワの方が圧倒的に多い。
This is going to be a really dumb question, but how come when Im playing taiko no tatsujin, instead of アニメ it says ヤニメ? And another dumb one, after reading this post, how do I know if は is actually ha or wa?