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In the Japanese writing system, or , "variant kana" are variant forms of hiragana.
Because the selection of which hiragana glyphs would become standardized was instituted by the government at the time variant kana are effectively unused in modern Japan, save for some limited situations such as signboards, calligraphy, place names, and personal names.#築島1981、pp.352-353。 Today, those hiragana glyphs not used in school education since 1900 as a result of the script reform are called hentaigana.
The 1900 standard included the hiragana ゐ, ゑ, and を, which historically stood for the phonetically distinct moras /wi/, /we/, and /wo/ but are currently pronounced as /i/, /e/, and /o/, identically to い, え, and お. The を kana is still commonly used in the Japanese writing system, instead of お, for the direct object particle /-o/. These characters were deprecated by the 1946 spelling reform.
Hentaigana are still used occasionally today in some contexts, such as store signs and logos, to achieve the "old-fashioned" or "traditional" look.
Katakana also has variant forms, such as (ネ) and (ヰ). 『小学略則教授法』「五十音図」 However, katakana's variant forms are fewer than hiragana's. Katakana's choices of man'yōgana segments had stabilized early on and established – with few exceptions – an unambiguous phonemic orthography (one symbol per sound) long before the 1900 script regularization.
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The glyph for example Hiragana wu (𛄟) also needs a special font to display such as
| +Kanji origins of kana ! ! !Hiragana !Katakana !Hentaigana |
The Unicode block for Kana Supplement is U+1B000–U+1B0FF:
The Unicode block for Kana Extended-A is U+1B100–U+1B12F:
In this sample, is a variant of は, and of す, of け, and of し. Another book was typeset with two different spellings for the same phrase tatoe-ba: たとへ and たとへば. The same word, nashi, can be spelt with regular hiragana (なし) and hentaigana (し) on the same page.
The choice between different hiragana and hentaigana could be contextual. For example, か, and may be used at the beginning of a word, while , and may be used elsewhere, while was used extensively specifically for the topic particle.
Hentaigana are now considered obsolete, but a few marginal uses remain. For example, otemoto (chopsticks), is written in hentaigana on some wrappers and many soba shops use hentaigana to spell kisoba on their signs. (See also: "Ye Olde" for "the old" on English signs.)
Hentaigana are used in some formal handwritten documents, particularly in certificates issued by classical Japanese cultural groups (e.g., martial arts schools, etiquette schools, religious study groups, etc.). Also, they are occasionally used in reproductions of classic Japanese texts, akin to blackletter in English and other Germanic languages to give an archaic flair. Modern poems may be composed and printed in hentaigana for visual effect.
However, most Japanese people cannot read hentaigana nowadays, only recognizing a few from their common use in shop signs, or figuring them out from context.
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