Editing Man'yōshū (section)

==Linguistic significance==
In addition to its artistic merits, the {{Transliteration|ja|Man'yōshū}} is significant for using the earliest Japanese writing system, the cumbersome {{Transliteration|ja|[[man'yōgana]]}}.<ref name="KatoSanderson2013Two">{{cite book|author1=Shuichi Kato|author2=Don Sanderson|title=A History of Japanese Literature: From the Manyoshu to Modern Times|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JwGOYBfNdrUC&pg=PA24|date=15 April 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-136-61368-5|page=24}}</ref> Though it was by no means the first use of this writing system—which was used to compose the {{Transliteration|ja|[[Kojiki]]}} (712),<ref name="Miller1967">{{cite book|author=Roy Andrew Miller|title=The Japanese Language|year=1967|publisher=Tuttle|page=32}}, cited in {{cite book|author=Peter Nosco|title=Remembering Paradise: Nativism and Nostalgia in Eighteenth-century Japan|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mu4v2rZ14fwC&pg=PA182|year=1990|publisher=Harvard Univ Asia Center|isbn=978-0-674-76007-3|page=182}}</ref>—it was influential enough to give the writing system its modern name, as {{Transliteration|ja|man'yōgana}} means "the {{Transliteration|ja|[[kana]]}} of the {{Transliteration|ja|Man'yō[shū]}}".<ref name="Frellesvig2010">{{cite book|author=Bjarke Frellesvig|title=A History of the Japanese Language|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v1FcAgiAC9IC&pg=PA14|date=29 July 2010|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-48880-8|page=14|access-date=9 December 2018|archive-date=19 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230119211340/https://books.google.com/books?id=v1FcAgiAC9IC&pg=PA14|url-status=live}}</ref> This system uses Chinese characters in a variety of functions: [[logogram|logographically]] to represent Japanese words, phonetically to represent Japanese sounds, and frequently in a combination of these. Such usage of Chinese characters to phonetically represent Japanese syllables eventually led to the birth of {{Transliteration|ja|kana}}, as they were created from simplified cursive forms ({{Transliteration|ja|[[hiragana]]}}) and fragments ({{Transliteration|ja|[[katakana]]}}) of {{Transliteration|ja|man'yōgana}}.<ref name="Daniels1996">{{cite book|author=Peter T. Daniels|title=The World's Writing Systems|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ospMAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA212|year=1996|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-507993-7|page=212|access-date=2018-12-09|archive-date=2023-01-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230119211340/https://books.google.com/books?id=ospMAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA212|url-status=live}}</ref>

Like the majority of surviving [[Old Japanese]] literature, the vast majority of the {{Transliteration|ja|Man'yōshū}} is written in Western Old Japanese, the dialect of the [[Kansai region|capital region]] around [[Kyoto]] and [[Nara (city)|Nara]]. However, specific parts of the collection, particularly volumes&nbsp;14 and 20, are also highly valued by historical linguists for the information they provide on other [[Old Japanese#Dialects|Old Japanese dialects]],<ref>Uemura 1981:25–26.{{citation needed|date=April 2021}}</ref> as these volumes collectively contain over 300 poems from the [[Azuma (region)|Azuma]] provinces of eastern Japan—what is now the regions of [[Chūbu region|Chūbu]], [[Kantō region|Kanto]], and southern [[Tōhoku region|Tōhoku]].