へん

See also: べん

Japanese

Etymology 1

From Classical Japanese せん (sen), from はせん (wa sen), with は merged with the preceding syllable or becoming や, giving やへん (yahen). In turn, はせん is a composition of は (wa, topic marker or emphasis marker), せ (se, “to do”, irrealis stem) and ん (n, “not”).

Similar lenition /s/ → [h] is also seen in other words in Kansai, e.g. さん (san) to Kansai はん (han).

Suffix

へん • (-hen)

(Kansai) marks negation
Synonym: (standard) ない (nai)

そんなことでけへん。 ― Sonna koto dekehen. ― I can't do something like that.

Usage notes

This word is morphologically an inflectional suffix. It is classified as 助動詞 (jodōshi, “auxiliary verb”) in traditional Japanese grammar.
In Kyōto, may change to ひん (hin) in certain phonological environments.
The past tense is へんかった (henkatta).
May affect the vowel at the end of the stem, as in the example above (できる (dekiru) → でけへん (dekehen)).

Etymology 2

For pronunciation and definitions of へん – see the following entries.

【編】5	[noun] compilation [noun] (fiction) a story arc [counter] counter for volumes of a text

【遍】S	[counter] (number of) times

【変】4	[adjective] strange [noun] change [noun] (music) flat (semitone down) [noun] sudden change, turn (in a patient's condition)

【辺】4	[noun] (colloquial) place, general area, vicinity [noun] (geometry) the joining line between two vertices of a polygon; edge, [side] [noun] (graph theory) any of the connected pairs of the vertices in a graph; edge

【偏】S	[noun] the left-hand component of a kanji

【片】6	[counter] counter for fragments, petals, flakes, etc.

(This term, へん (hen), is the hiragana spelling of the above terms.)
For a list of all kanji read as へん, see Category:Japanese kanji read as へん.

(The following entry does not have a page created for it yet: 篇.)