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I'm writing a story with some... very old people, so I'm chasing down some very outdated pronunciations. What's the oldest known pronunciation for the sentence "When is it?"

(I'm not directly asking for an archaic pronunciation of「今、いつか？」because for all I know they'd've used different words entirely, but that's the sentence as it'd appear in modern Japanese.)

broccoli forest
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linkhyrule5
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1 Answers1

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I can't tell that this is absolutely correct as a word in Nara period, though.

In eight-hundreds, before 古今和歌集 was made, it seems that there was a conversation like this between Mikado and an editor.

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~sg2h-ymst/yamatouta/sennin/arisue.html

貞観の御時、万葉集はいつばかり作れるぞと問はせたまひければ、よみてたてまつりける
(In the 貞観 era, Mikado asked me when 万葉集 had been made, and I replied in a poem.)

→when＝いつばかり
Therefore it seems that "when" in ancient Japanese was the same as today's word "いつ".
And ばかり is a word of emphasis.
Add a predicate of an interrogative sentence to this phrase, and it is like this.

いつなりや
nariuji
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    The OP might be interested to know that いつ today is not pronounced the same way as Old Japanese いつ was. Today つ is tsu, but it was originally tu; that s didn't appear until Late Middle Japanese (A History of the Japanese Language, Frellesvig p.322). –  May 01 '16 at 19:47
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    And according to the same book, word-internal consonants were likely to gain voicing, in this case it might have been idu (phonetically). – broccoli forest May 02 '16 at 13:23