Strange Kana You (Probably) Don't Know

This was fascinating. Great job!

I kept trying to wipe the screen of my phone thinking that it was dirty but it was just the white background 💀

3:08 it's official, I can't escape Touhou

ヴ is probably the most known to Japanese speakers. It is sometimes written, but the v is rarely pronounced. People still say baiorin, berry guddo. Edit: oh and あ゛is well known as well from manga.

Someone already mentioned this but in the Ainu language (in Hokkaido), there's some unique kanas. For example the small letters (non-vowel), such as, ㇰ (-k), ㇷ゚ (-p) and ㇽ (-r). There's also small ha-hi-hu-he-ho to represent ending kh (-kh) so ㇵ, ㇶ, ㇷ, ㇸ and ㇹ. And a lot of other quirks such as the usage of "we" (ヱ) and "wi" (ヰ).

Japanese is so cool. I find it generally to be a very consistent language, but with the occasional quirk, such as with these kana.

When I asked my Japanese teacher why Ga is sometimes said Nga he told me something along the lines of "it is beautiful speech" and that is how they might say it on news broadcasts. It coming from the Tokyo dialect makes sense, I'm sure that is a dominant dialect on TV.

10:38 There is also the possibility to add the maru to R-row characters to get an L-row. Now, Japanese does not distinguish such sounds at all, not even in modern transcription, but Catholic missionaries in the previous century did use such to teach the readings of chants in Latin

Handakuten is also used with R-syllables to represent l sounds:- ラ゚( la) リ゚( li) ル゚ (lu) レ゚( le)ロ゚( lo) Dakuten is also used with W-syllables to represent V-sounds(an alternative toう&ウwith Dakuten).

ヱ is occasionally used in names, more for stylistic reasons than anything else; e.g. クロエ and クロヱ have identical pronunciations, and the beer brand Yebisu is stylised as ヱビス (pronounced Ebisu).

THE CIRNO PLUSH

This was a pretty fun video! I'd always hear the "nga" sound and be wondering "why tho" 😂. I didn't realize it was a dialect EDIT: Glad to see that you hit your 1k subs goal pretty quick! It seems like this is your most watched video so far!

They also used to use kanbun for "translating" other languages, including English. It looks pretty cursed. You can find some examples if you image search something like "英語　漢文"

11:32 it's kind of like writing chinese characters but reading in shakespeherian english? that is the closest metaphor i can think of. the text you have i think is in mixed kanbun and manyogana so it would be only readable by japanese aristocrats, not technically what i would call classic chinese, but it's pretty close

I first saw one of these weird nonstandard kana in the film Spirited Away. There is one on the wall in the first shots of the spirit town market.

I didn't know about the maru diacritic being used on the ka family! Nor about tenten being used to roughen up the vowel kana. Really interesting and informative video, I've found the Japanese writing system so interesting since I begun learning it, so getting to know more hentaigana is really exciting. Most of my attention has been diverted towards phonetics since I begun learning the language, and there's so many obscure intricacies your average joe, or even native speaker simply wouldn't pick up on, and its opened my mind to so many oddities in the the English language as well. Love this video and hope you have ideas for more like it in the future, I think I'll enjoy the content either way though.

Thanks for the explanation on dakuten added to あいうえお。I've wondered about that for years, but always forgot to ask my teachers.

New subscriber!!! I'm learning JP and I noticed the "nga" pronunciations and was confused but realized it's a dialect so I've naturally picked it up. It's good to see it covered here. The other things here were super interesting and I didn't know. Learning a new language is so fascinating

dude, I feel like I've learned so much from such a precise, nice, short video. I've been missing these kinda very informative less than 15 minute video. It seems everything has to be at least 50 minutes nowadays and at that point I just can't store the information shown. This one? I feel like I learned a lot and I can still remember it all.

Fun fact, the katakana エ was originally meant to write "ye". The old katakana for "e" was 𛀀, which may not display for some devices. For people whose device does not support the character, it looks like ラ but with the first (top) stroke being 丶instead of 一