Middle Japanese
Proper noun
Meaning
Middle Japanese
The ancestor language of Japanese, spoken in the period c. 800–1600.
Related terms
Examples
Early Middle Japanese sees a significant amount of Chinese influence on the language's phonology – length distinctions become phonemic for both consonants and vowels, and series of both labialised (e.g. kwa) and palatalised (kya) consonants are added.
The end of Early Middle Japanese sees the beginning of a shift where the attributive form (Japanese rentaikei) slowly replaces the uninflected form (shūshikei) for those verb classes where the two were distinct.