Have you ever wondered why we pronounce “は” as “wa”?
I regularly ask my followers surveys and questions on my Instagram stories, and one of them asked me to tell them why we pronounce “は” as “wa”.
Today I will explain it in my blog.
Because「は」used to be 「ぱ」
For a long period of time, from about 10,000 years ago to 794 CE, there was no hiragana “はひふへほ” in Japan.
And the character for “は” was pronounced “pa”.
When the hiragana “はひふへほ” was created, the pronunciation changed from “ぱぴぷぺぽ” to “ふぁ, ふぃ, ふ, ふぇ, ふぉ.”
Let’s look at some examples of words in the way they were read at the time.
「はっぱ」→「ふぁっぱ」
「ひよこ」→「ふぃよこ」
「ふね」→「ふね」
「へび」→「ふぇび」
「にほん」→「にふぉん」
Then, in about 700 years, from 1185 to about 1868, it changed to two ways of reading, as in “ふぁ→は” and “ふぁ→わ”.
What used to be a “ふぁ, ふぃ, ふ, ふぇ, ふぉ” at the beginning of a word became “はひふへほ”.
「ふぁし」→「はし」
「ふぃる」→「ひる」
「ふぇや」→「へや」
「ふぉん」→「ほん」
Other “ふぁ, ふぃ, ふ, ふぇ, ふぉ” (particles, middle & end of words) became “わ, うぃ, う, うぇ, うぉ”.
「かふぁ」→「かわ」
「こふぃ」→「こうぃ」
「まふぇ」→「まうぇ」
「あふぉ」→「あうぉ」
The pronunciation of “わ, うぃ, う, うぇ, うぉ” then changed to “わいうえお”.
The reason for the change is “because it’s easier to pronounce.”
“は” (particle) in “私は” was also read as “wa”.
Why not just read everything as “wa”?
The reason for using “は” and “わ” differently is “because the government decided to.”
On November 16, 1946, the government decided to change the rules of the writing to be closer to the actual pronunciation.
However, “は” following a subject like “私は” had a long history of use from the late Heian Period (before 1185) to the early Showa Period (after 1926).
We decided to leave it as it is as an exception because changing it to “わ” would cause confusion.
Therefore, the particles “~は,” “~へ,” and “~を” were not written as “わ,” “え,” and “お” to match the pronunciation, but as “は,” “へ,” and “を” as they had been written before.
