Ancient Japanese, especially Old Japanese in the Nara period, sounded different.
It likely had eight vowels that merged into today’s five.
Writers used Manyogana, Chinese characters for Japanese sounds, before kana.
Word order was SOV, marked by particles like ga, no, wo.
Early works like Kojiki and Man’yōshū preserve poems, myths, and court speech.
Over centuries, sounds shifted from p to h, while honorifics deepened.