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Iroha
The is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism, 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 generally written that way ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perfect 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 typing. 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 and was used by Western Union to test Telex/ TWX data communication equipment for accuracy and reliability. Pangrams like this are now used by a number of computer programs to display computer typefaces. 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 the lazy dog" (which has 35 letters) and use standard written English without abbreviations or proper nouns: *"Quick ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
E (kana)
In Japanese writing, the kana え (hiragana) and エ (katakana) ( romanised ''e'') occupy the fourth place, between う and お, in the modern Gojūon (五十音) system of collating kana. In the Iroha, they occupy the 34th, between こ and て. In the table at right (ordered by columns, from right to left), え lies in the first column (あ行, "column A") and the fourth row (え段, "row E"). Both represent . Derivation え and エ originate, via man'yōgana, from the kanji 衣 and 江, respectively. The archaic kana ゑ (we), as well as many non-initial occurrences of the character へ (he), have entered the modern Japanese language as え. The directional particle へ is today pronounced "e", though not written as え. Compare this to は (ha) and を (wo), which are pronounced "wa" and "o" when used as grammatical particles. For the kana romanized sometimes as "e", see we (kana). Variant forms Scaled-down versions of the kana (ぇ, ェ) are used t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kūkai
, born posthumously called , was a Japanese Buddhist monk, calligrapher, and poet who founded the Vajrayana, esoteric Shingon Buddhism, Shingon school of Buddhism. He travelled to China, where he studied Tangmi (Chinese Vajrayana Buddhism) under the monk Huiguo. Upon returning to Japan, he founded Shingon—the Japanese branch of Vajrayana Buddhism. With the blessing of several Emperors of Japan, Emperors, Kūkai was able to preach Shingon teachings and found Shingon temples. Like other influential monks, Kūkai oversaw public works and constructions. Mount Kōya was chosen by him as a holy site, and he spent his later years there until his death in 835 C.E. Because of his importance in Japanese Buddhism, Kūkai is associated with many stories and legends. One such legend attribute the invention of the ''kana'' syllabary to Kūkai, with which the Japanese language is written to this day (in combination with ''kanji''), as well as the ''Iroha'' poem, which helped to standardise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heian Period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kammu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means in Japanese. It is a period in Japanese history when the Chinese influence on Japanese culture, Chinese influences were in decline and the national culture matured. The Heian period is also considered the peak of the Japanese Emperors of Japan, imperial court, noted for its Japanese art, art, especially Japanese poetry, poetry and Japanese literature, literature. Two syllabaries unique to Japan, katakana and hiragana, emerged during this time. This gave rise to Japan's famous vernacular literature, with many of its texts written by court ladies who were not as educated in Chinese as their male counterparts. Although the Imperial House of Japan had power on the surface, the real power was in the hands of the Fujiwara clan, a powerful Kuge, aristocratic family wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kana
are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , which were Kanji, Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese language, Japanese (e.g. ''man'yōgana''); and ''hentaigana'', which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana. Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu language, Ainu. A Okinawan scripts, number of systems exist to write the Ryūkyūan languages, in particular Okinawan language, Okinawan, in hiragana. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as ruby text for Chinese characters in Taiwan when it was Taiwan under Japanese rule, under Japanese rule. Each syllabogram, kana character corresponds to one phoneme or syllable, unlike kanji, which generally each logogram, corresponds to a morpheme. Apart from the five vowels, it is always ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wi (kana)
(: , : ) is an obsolete Japanese (Japanese phonetic characters, each of which represents one Mora (linguistics), mora), which is normally pronounced in current-day Japanese. The combination of a W-column kana letter with ''dakuten'' to create and ヸ in and ''katakana'' was introduced to represent in the 19th century and 20th century. It is presumed that represented , and that and represented distinct pronunciations before merging to sometime between the Kamakura period, Kamakura and Taishō period, Taishō periods. Along with the for ( in , in ), this was Historical kana usage, deemed obsolete in Japanese with the orthographic reforms of 1946, to be replaced by in all contexts. It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia and foreign words, the form (U-[small-i]) is used for the mora . However, the still sees some modern-day usage as a stylistic variant of . The spelling of whisky is usually , but is sometimes written stylistically, such as . The name of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hiragana
is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", as contrasted with kanji). Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora (linguistics), mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be a vowel such as /a/ (hiragana wikt:あ, あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as /ka/ (wikt:か, か); or /N/ (wikt:ん, ん), a nasal stop, nasal sonorant which, depending on the context and dialect, sounds either like English ''m'', ''n'' or ''ng'' () when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French language, French, Portuguese language, Portuguese or Polish language, Polish. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of the aforementioned ん), the kana are r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
:Category:Japanese Words And Phrases ...
{{Commons Words and phrases by language Words Words Words A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Change
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic change) or a more general change to the speech sounds that exist (''phonological change''), such as the merger of two sounds or the creation of a new sound. A sound change can eliminate the affected sound, or a new sound can be added. Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned if the change occurs in only some sound environments, and not others. The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On the other hand, " alternation" refers to changes that happen synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's underlying system (for example, the ''-s'' in the English plural can be pronounced differently depend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voiceless Glottal Fricative
The voiceless glottal fricative, sometimes called voiceless glottal transition or the aspirate, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages that patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant '' phonologically'', but often lacks the usual ''phonetic'' characteristics of a consonant. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . However, has been described as a voiceless phonation because in many languages, it lacks the place and manner of articulation of a prototypical consonant, as well as the height and backness of a prototypical vowel: An effort undertaken at the Kiel Convention in 1989 attempted to move glottal fricatives, both voiceless and voiced, to approximants. The fricative may be represented with the extIPA diacritic for strong articulation, . The Shanghainese language, among others, contrasts voiced and voiceless glottal fricatives.Qian 2003, pp.14-16. Features Features of the "voiceless glottal fricative": * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voiceless Bilabial Fricative
The voiceless bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a Latinised form of the Greek letter Phi. Features Features of the voiceless bilabial fricative: Occurrence See also * Index of phonetics articles A * Acoustic phonetics * Active articulator * Affricate * Airstream mechanism * Alexander John Ellis * Alexander Melville Bell * Alfred C. Gimson * Allophone * Alveolar approximant () * Alveolar click () * Alveolar consonant * Alveolar ej ... References Sources * * * * * * * * External links * {{DEFAULTSORT:Voiceless Bilabial Fricative Fricative consonants Bilabial consonants Pulmonic consonants Voiceless oral consonants ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ryuichi Abe
is the Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions at Harvard University. Until May 2004, he was professor of Japanese religions in the departments of religion and East Asian languages and culture at Columbia University. Abe, through his teaching and books, has made an important contribution to the Western understanding of Buddhism in Japan. His book on Kūkai, ''The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse'', underscores Kūkai's impact on 9th-century Japanese society. At a time when Confucian discourse dominated Japan, Kūkai developed a “voice” for Buddhism. He has also written about Ryōkan and Saichō. He received his bachelor's degree in economics from Keio University and his master's degree from School of Advanced International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Mary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
