Given harakiri was once pronounced farakiri and, even earlier, parakiri, how do I write those two older forms, using kanjis?


In ["The Unfolding Of Language" by Guy
Deutscher](https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/the-unfolding-of-
language-9781407070285), I've read that "harakiri" was once pronounced as
"farakiri" and, even earlier "parakiri", thus reavaling the word underwent the
_p → f → h_ weakening shift that happened in many languages.

Now, from a simple we search, I found that _harakiri_ is written like 腹切り.

What about the other two forms? How do I write them?




If you asked this question knowing almost nothing about the [Japanese writing
system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system), you should
read a bit about it first. 腹切り is a perfectly valid Japanese word, but it's
written using a type of character called
[kanji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji), which are **ideograms**. 腹 is a
character that represents the meaning of "abdomen", and 切 is an ideogram that
means "cut". Although the kanji 腹 has several standard readings including
"hara", you cannot use kanji to explain the pronunciation of a word. As an
analogy, you can use the emoji to convey the meaning of cat, and it has a
standard reading (/kæt/), but you cannot use this character to explain the
historical pronunciations of the word. Even if it was _pronounced_ differently
in the past, is always _written_ as .

If you want to compare various pronunciations of a word, you need to use
[**hiragana**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana) instead, which are
phonetic characters similar to the Latin alphabet. Here's how you can simulate
the old pronunciations of "harakiri" using hiragana:

Romaji (Latin) | Hiragana  
---|---  
harakiri | はらきり  
farakiri | ふぁらきり  
parakiri | ぱらきり  
  
Note that the latter two rows are just rough simulations. No one would
understand you if you pronounced or wrote this word in these old ways.

(By the way, the word-initial "p" sound in Japanese words disappeared before
the 8th century, and the practice of harakiri did not appear until the 12th
century. I doubt that people in the past actually pronounced it like
"parakiri".)




If you asked this question knowing almost nothing about the [Japanese writing
system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system), you should
read a bit about it first. 腹切り is a perfectly valid Japanese word, but it's
written using a type of character called
[kanji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji), which are **ideograms**. 腹 is a
character that represents the meaning of "abdomen", and 切 is an ideogram that
means "cut". Although the kanji 腹 has several standard readings including
"hara", you cannot use kanji to explain the pronunciation of a word. As an
analogy, you can use the emoji to convey the meaning of cat, and it has a
standard reading (/kæt/), but you cannot use this character to explain the
historical pronunciations of the word. Even if it was _pronounced_ differently
in the past, is always _written_ as .

If you want to compare various pronunciations of a word, you need to use
[**hiragana**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana) instead, which are
phonetic characters similar to the Latin alphabet. Here's how you can simulate
the old pronunciations of "harakiri" using hiragana:

Romaji (Latin) | Hiragana  
---|---  
harakiri | はらきり  
farakiri | ふぁらきり  
parakiri | ぱらきり  
  
Note that the latter two rows are just rough simulations. No one would
understand you if you pronounced or wrote this word in these old ways.

(By the way, the word-initial "p" sound in Japanese words disappeared before
the 8th century, and the practice of harakiri did not appear until the 12th
century. I doubt that people in the past actually pronounced it like
"parakiri".)

