User talk:112.197.72.255

Japanese verb conjugation: Citation needed
Hi! Thank you for your contributions to the Japanese verb conjugation page!

You included a citation reference to the content added, however the citation appears to be lacking. Could you explain where exactly in the Daijirin dictionary that we can find support for the statement:
 * "This realization of -wa is an artifact preserved from the archaic Japanese -fu < -pu verbs (which would have yielded, regularly, -wa < -fa < -pa). This is noted with historical kana in dictionaries; for example, 言う (iu) < 言ふ (ifu < ipu) and 言わぬ (iwanu) < 言はぬ (ifanu < ipanu)."

Is this in a digital version of the dictionary? Is it in a published book? If it's a book, what page number is it, what year was it published? Is it in an appendix? Is it under a specific word? As it currently stands, it's impossible to verify what your saying, so we need your assistance for clarification.

Once again, thank you for helping to improve the article! — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 01:57, 8 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Every single entry has a historical kana spelling. It's a common practice in monolingual Japanese dictionaries. 言う has いう for the modern spelling and いふ for the archaic spelling. 言はぬ is an archaic verb form so it only has いはぬ. Note that the fact that every entry has a historical spelling, regardless of whether the word in question was every found in written in archaic times, suggests that this is more of an automated process based on morphemes with known historical spellings; however, for basic verbs that are well attested such as 言う, there shouldn't be any doubt.112.197.72.255 (talk) 04:55, 8 July 2021 (UTC)


 * As historical points, we know that various verbs ending in う in modern Japanese were spelled with ふ instead in earlier times, in some cases going all the way back to Old Japanese (for those verbs used in texts so long ago) and up through not even a hundred years ago. One such verb is いう, from older いふ.
 * We also know from the Nippo Jisho of 1603 that ふ was already pronounced as う when it didn't come at the start of a word, at least for the dialect of Japanese that the dictionary compilers were accustomed to (probably somewhere in the southwest, considering where the Portuguese were allowed to trade). For instance, see page 137 of the Nippo Jisho, particularly the second-to-last entry on the right:

 Iy, yŭ, yŭta. Falar, ou dizer.
 * The dictionary's format for verbs is to give the 連用形, then the 辞書形, then the 過去形. The following y was used to indicate the second mora of a long-I sound.  The ŭ character was used to spell long-U, spelled either uu (for long-U that belongs to two separate morphemes) or ū (for long-U in a single morpheme) in the Hepburn romanization scheme.  Transposing the above into modern Hepburn romanization and English, we get:

 Ii, yuu, yuuta. To speak, or to say.
 * Note the use of the past-tense form yuuta, still more common in southwestern Japanese where modern northeastern uses yutta instead.
 * Japanese texts of the time spelled the verb forms as いひ, ゆふ, ゆふた, or as いひ, いふ, いふた, depending on dialect. Here's an example from 1896, search for ふた to find many instances of verbs that end in った in modern Japanese, and were spelled as ending in ふた instead, things like 思ふた for 思った, 違ふた for 違った, いふた for いった.  Search for いひ to find instances of いひ as the 連用形 of modern verb いう.  Similarly, search for いは to find instances of this as the 未然形 of modern verb いう.  Basho's poem 石の巻 from 1702 includes the term そふた where modern Japanese would use そった ("alongside").  Search there too for はず to find the 未然形 + negative ず of various verbs, including うしなはず (modern うしなわず from うさなう), たがはず (modern たがわず from たがう), and したはず (modern したわず from したう).  Basho's text there includes other terms with medial は that is spelled わ in modern Japanese, such as やはらげ (modern やわらげ from やわらげる), かはれば (modern かわれば from かわる), いざなはれて (modern いざなわれて from いざなう).
 * HTH! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 20:58, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not a question of believability, it's a question of verifiability. It's unreasonable to expect a researcher to read a statement saying "all verbs ending with 「う」 have their archaic spellings listed as 「ふ」 or 「ぷ」 in the dictionary" and then citing a dictionary with the veracity dependent on the implication of "just check any verb ending with 「う」 in this dictionary for their archaic spelling to believe this claim". That makes verifying difficult, since its implicit verification through deduction rather than explicit verification from a peer-reviewed source.
 * To use the paradigm of mathematics: If a person claims to have discovered a formula to conclude if any number is a prime number, they can say "the proof is just test the formula with every integer for yourself". This is unacceptable, because there are infinite integers, and there might be an undiscovered composite number that tricks the formula into concluding "prime". There are probabilistic primality tests (see ) that were once thought to be deterministic primality tests (see ). This has happened, actually, where Fermat's Little Theorem was thought to be a true prime number test until the famous example of the number 561 was discovered to break the formula (561 looks like a prime number according to the formula, but is actually divisible by 3). This is why mathematics in general requires rigorous explicit proofs rather than assumptions by numerous deductions.
 * So, with that paradigm in mind, it's better to find an explicit peer-reviewed academic opinion or explanation of a linguistic change in history, including the う・ふ・ぷ sound shifts. An explicit peer-reviewed statement is a far better citation than "do your own research in this dictionary and after seeing a few examples that don't contradict my statement, assume that every single other word in the dictionary also doesn't contradict my statement".
 * Again, I want to emphasise: I'm not attacking the opinion. I'm requesting an explicitly verifiable citation.
 * @Eiríkr Útlendi, your examples to literature that use the older spellings of words also don't satisfy as a citation that explains a global linguistic shift in pronunciation/spelling. They're just examples that archaic pronunciation/spelling was used historically. Furthermore, the Portuguese Nippo Jisho is basically inaccessible to me, since it's neither written in English nor Japanese; besides, it's a primary resource rather than a secondary resource. If we could find an academic/peer-reviewed source that has analysed the Nippo Jisho and made observations about the phonetic shifts in the language over history, then that's perfect and exactly what we can use. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 15:07, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , for the Nippo Jisho, Google Translate can help with the Portuguese. :)
 * If you can read Japanese, the ja:ハ行転呼 (Ha-gyō tenko, "Ha-row shifted pronunciation") article describes this sound change in depth. During the Heian period, pretty much all word-medial  sounds shifted to, and then (except for before ) disappeared -- this shift, together with the phonological treatment of particles as clitics or suffixes, is why the particle  is pronounced as wa rather than the orthographically-expected ha, and why  is pronounced as e instead of the expected he.  There is a little more available in Japanese via Kotobank, such as the Nihon Kokugo Dai Jiten entry for, or the Mypedia entry for.  There are some additional details mentioned in English at Historical kana orthography.  See also Japanese_language, which explicitly mentions this same  →  shift, as well as Early_Middle_Japanese, which cites Alexander Vovin's 2002 book A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose.
 * HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 17:47, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Oooh! Thank you thank you, those extra resources look promising, I'll check them out this week and add a citation if nobody else does it first. — JKVeganAbroad (talk) 01:46, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I've added a (very old) citation to the article that validates this historical phenomenon: