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@TAKASUGI Shinji Does accent really apply to particles? —Suzukaze-c (talk) 03:58, 8 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Suzukaze-c: Theoretically, they don’t have an accent. Maybe we should call it an intonation. The feminine わ has a rising intonation while the Kansai わ has a falling intonation. The two わ are separate particles for me, although my edit was reverted by Alves9. I don’t know his/her reasoning. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 06:23, 8 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
They are the same particle. The female わ traces its origin directly to western わ, when it was used by rich merchants in eastern Japan and subsequently adopted by young high-status women. The only real difference is that it has a rising intonation. Alves9 (talk) 15:00, 8 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
They are not the same at all, even though they have the same etymology. They are doublets. If the etymology matters, you should merge them with は. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 22:48, 8 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
They are not doublets if one is directly descended from another. In that case, it's just a term with an evolved regional meaning. Kind of like "faggot" to mean "homosexual". Alves9 (talk) 23:59, 8 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Chiming in. The KDJ entry here at Kotobank has several distinct entries for わ. The third one down marked 〘終助〙 appears to be the one we're talking about here. That first arises in the 1500s as a shift from sentence-final uses of topic particle . The usage notes in the [語誌] section describe how the feminine and general senses are distinguished by intonation. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 00:33, 9 September 2020 (UTC)Reply