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Ametsuchi No Uta
The or is a Japanese pangram, first appearing in the 9th century AD in the ''Minamoto Shitagōshū'' (Collection of Minamoto Shitagō), which is credited as being the oldest perfect pangram in the Japanese language. Its name roughly translates to "Song (or Words) of the Universe". The text The text of the pangram written in hiragana (including the now archaic ゐ ''wi'' and ゑ ''we'' as well as the also archaic 𛀁 ''ye''. ん ''n'' is not included as it had not been invented yet) あめ つち ほし そら やま かは みね たに くも きり むろ こけ ひと いぬ うへ すゑ ゆわ さる おふせよ えの 𛀁を なれゐて The text of the pangram written in kanji: 天 地 星 空 山 川 峰 谷 雲 霧 室 苔 人 犬 上 末 硫黄 猿 生ふせよ 榎の枝を 慣れ居て The text of the pangram written in Hepburn romaji: Ame tsuchi hoshi sora Yama kaha mine tani Kumo kiri muro koke Hito inu uhe suwe Yuwa saru ofuseyo Eno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), there was a massive influx of Sino-Japanese vocabulary into the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pangram
A pangram or holoalphabetic sentence is a sentence using every letter of a given alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and keyboarding. Origins The best-known English pangram is "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". It has been used since at least the late 19th century, was used by Western Union to test Telex/ TWX data communication equipment for accuracy and reliability, and is now used by a number of computer programs to display computer fonts. Short pangrams Short pangrams in English are more difficult to devise and tend to use uncommon words and unnatural sentences. Longer pangrams afford more opportunity for humor, cleverness, or thoughtfulness. The following are examples of pangrams that are shorter than "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog" (which has 33 letters) and use standard written English without abbreviations or proper nouns: *"Waltz, bad nymph, for qui ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minamoto No Shitagō
was a mid Heian ''waka'' poet, scholar and nobleman. He was also a male-line descendant of Emperor Saga. He was the original compiler of the ''Wamyō Ruijushō'', the first Japanese dictionary organized into semantic headings. He was designated as one of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals for his distinguished poetic accomplishments. In addition to the ''Wamyō Ruijushō'', his remaining works include a poetry collection known as the . Some scholars claim that he is the author of the ''Taketori Monogatari'' (Tale of the Bamboo Cutter). Ziro Uraki also posits him as a possible author of '' Utsuho Monogatari'' (Tale of the Hollow Tree) in the foreword to his English translation of that work. As one of the Five Men of the Pear Chamber he assisted in the compilation of the waka anthology ''Gosen Wakashū''. He also compiled ''kun'yomi'' readings for texts from the revered ''Man'yōshū The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled som ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrasted with kanji). Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be either a vowel such as ''"a"'' (hiragana あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as ''"ka"'' (か); or ''"n"'' (ん), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English ''m'', ''n'' or ''ng'' () when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French, Portuguese or Polish. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of ん "n"), the kana are referred to as syllabic symbols and not alphabetic letters. Hiragana is used to write ''okurigana'' (kana suffixes following a kanji ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kanji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived syllabic scripts of ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. The characters have Japanese pronunciation, pronunciations; most have two, with one based on the Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After World War II, Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as shinjitai, by a process similar to China's simplified Chinese characters, simplification efforts, with the intention to increase literacy among the common folk. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romaji
The romanization of Japanese is the use of Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as . Japanese is normally written in a combination of logographic characters borrowed from Chinese (kanji) and syllabic scripts (kana) that also ultimately derive from Chinese characters. There are several different romanization systems. The three main ones are Hepburn romanization, Kunrei-shiki romanization (ISO 3602) and Nihon-shiki romanization (ISO 3602 Strict). Variants of the Hepburn system are the most widely used. Romanized Japanese may be used in any context where Japanese text is targeted at non-Japanese speakers who cannot read kanji or kana, such as for names on street signs and passports and in dictionaries and textbooks for foreign learners of the language. It is also used to transliterate Japanese terms in text written in English (or other languages that use the Latin script) on topics related to Japan, such as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iroha
The is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian period (794–1179). The first record of its existence dates from 1079. It is famous because it is a perfect pangram, containing each character of the Japanese syllabary exactly once. Because of this, it is also used as an ordering for the syllabary, in the same way as the ''A'', ''B'', ''C'', ''D''... sequence of the Latin alphabet. Text The first appearance of the Iroha, in was in seven lines: six with seven morae each, and one with five. It was also written in man'yōgana. 以呂波耳本部止 千利奴流乎和加 餘多連曽津祢那 良牟有為能於久 耶万計不己衣天 阿佐伎喩女美之 恵比毛勢須 Structurally, however, the poem follows the standard 7–5 pattern of Japanese poetry (with one hypometric line), and in modern times it is g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Literature
Japanese literature throughout most of its history has been influenced by cultural contact with neighboring Asian literatures, most notably China and its literature. Early texts were often written in pure Classical Chinese or , a Chinese-Japanese creole language. Indian literature also had an influence through the spread of Buddhism in Japan. During the Heian period, Japan's original culture () developed and literature also established its own style, with the significant usage and development of to write Japanese literature. Following the Perry Expedition which led to the end of the policy and the forced reopening of foreign trade, Western literature has also made influences to the development of modern Japanese writers, while Japanese literature has in turn become more recognized internationally, leading to two Japanese Nobel laureates in literature, namely Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburō Ōe. History Nara-period literature (before 794) Before the introduction of kanji f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
