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掲 示 板 Forums - は instead of わ? Top >
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Why does こんばんは use は instead of わ?
Because it comes from 今 晩 は, and は is used as the topic marking particle (pronounced "wa").
今晩 (tonight, this evening) + は (topic marker) + ...(rest of the sentence is implied).
今 日 は (こんにちは) is the same idea.
It's like saying "As for this evening... / Tonight is...", but the "good/nice/pleasant" or "how are you?" part got copped off (it's now implied).
Edit: I didn't feel like OP's question was about phonetics history, but I guess we've now covered both angles :D
It's one of the artifacts of pronunciations that has since stuck at this time.
The entire h-row (はひふへほ) is irregular, as are what’s left of the w-row (わを) and the y-row (やゆよ). Semivowels are just shifty.
Basically only particles (は, を and へ particularly) maintain this discrepancy, since the government officially changed the vocabulary spellings to match modern phonetics. In words that include one of those particles it is different
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