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Kana
are syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , which were Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe 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. A number of systems exist to write the Ryūkyūan languages, in particular Okinawan, in hiragana. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as ruby text for Chinese characters in Taiwan when it was under Japanese rule. Each kana character corresponds to one phoneme or syllable, unlike kanji, which generally each corresponds to a morpheme. Apart from the five vowels, it is always CV (consonant onset with vowel nucleus), such as ''ka'', ''ki'', ''sa'', ''shi'', etc., with the sole exception of the C grapheme for nasal codas usually romanised as ''n ...
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Syllabary
In the Linguistics, linguistic study of Written language, written languages, a syllabary is a set of grapheme, written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) mora (linguistics), morae which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optional) consonant sound (simple onset (linguistics), onset) followed by a vowel sound (nucleus (syllable), nucleus)—that is, a CV (consonant+vowel) or V syllable—but other phonogram (linguistics), phonographic mappings, such as CVC, CV- tone, and C (normally nasals at the end of syllables), are also found in syllabaries. Types A writing system using a syllabary is ''complete'' when it covers all syllables in the corresponding spoken language without requiring complex orthography, orthographic / graphemic rules, like implicit codas ( ⇒ /C1VC2/), silent vowels ( ⇒ /C1V1C2/) or echo vowels ( ⇒ /C1V1C2/). This loosely corresponds to ''shallow'' orthographies in alphabetic writin ...
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Daijirin
is a comprehensive single-volume Japanese dictionary edited by , and first published by in 1988. This title is based upon two early Sanseidō dictionaries edited by Shōzaburō Kanazawa (金沢庄三郎, 1872–1967), ''Jirin'' (辞林 "Forest of words", 1907) and the revised ''Kōjirin'' (広辞林 "Wide forest of words", 1925). History Sanseido specifically created ''Daijirin'' to compete with Iwanami's profitable ''Kōjien'' dictionary, which was a longtime bestseller through three editions (1955, 1969, and 1983). Two other contemporary dictionaries directed at the ''Kōjien'' market share were Kōdansha's color-illustrated ''Nihongo Daijiten'' (日本語大辞典 "Great dictionary of Japanese", 1989) and Shōgakukan's ''Daijisen'' (大辞泉 "Great fountainhead of words", 1995, also edited by Akira Matsumura). The first edition of ''Daijirin'' (1988) had 220,000 headword entries and included encyclopedic content in numerous charts, tables, and illustrations. While ''Kōj ...
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Kanji
are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, 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 Syllabary, syllabic scripts of and . The characters have Japanese 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 the Meiji Restoration, Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as , by a process similar to China's simplified Chinese characters, simplification efforts, with the intention to increase literacy among the general public. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characters that exist. There are nearly 3 ...
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Syllabogram
Syllabograms are graphemes used to write the syllables or morae of words. Syllabograms in syllabaries are analogous to letters in alphabets, which represent individual phonemes, or logograms in logographies, which represent morphemes. Syllabograms in the Maya script most frequently take the form of V (vowel) or CV (consonant-vowel) syllables of which approximately 83 are known. CVC signs are present as well. Two modern well-known examples of syllabaries consisting mostly of CV syllabograms are the Japanese 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 , wh ..., used to represent the same sounds in different occasions. Syllabograms tend not to be used for languages with more complicated syllables: for example English phonotactics allows syllables as complex as CCCVCCCC (as in ...
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Taiwan Under Japanese Rule
The Geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, together with the Penghu, Penghu Islands, became an annexed territory of the Empire of Japan in 1895, when the Qing dynasty ceded Taiwan Province, Fujian-Taiwan Province in the Treaty of Shimonoseki after the Japanese victory in the First Sino-Japanese War. The consequent Republic of Formosa resistance movement on Taiwan was Japanese invasion of Taiwan (1895), defeated by Japan with the Capitulation of Tainan (1895), capitulation of Tainan. Japan ruled Taiwan for 50 years. Its capital was located in Taipei, Taihoku (Taipei), the seat of the Governor-General of Taiwan. Taiwan was Japan's first colony and can be viewed as the first step in implementing their "Nanshin-ron, Southern Expansion Doctrine" of the late 19th century. Japanese intentions were to turn Taiwan into a showpiece "model colony" with much effort made to improve the island's economy, public works, Industrial sector, industry, cultural Japanization (1937 to 1945), and sup ...
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Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the China, People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. It has an area of , with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its Urbanization by country, highly urbanized population is concentrated. The combined Free area of the Republic of China, territories under ROC control consist of list of islands of Taiwan, 168 islands in total covering . The Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area, largest metropolitan area is formed by Taipei (the capital), New Taipei City, and Keelung. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the List of countries and dependencies by population density, most densely populated countries. Tai ...
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Ruby Text
Ruby characters or rubi characters () are small, annotative glosses that are usually placed above or to the right of logographic characters of languages in the East Asian cultural sphere, such as Chinese ''hanzi'', Japanese ''kanji'', and Korean ''hanja'', to show the logographs' pronunciation; these were formerly also used for Vietnamese ''chữ Hán'' and ''chữ Nôm'', and may still occasionally be seen in that context when reading archaic texts. Typically called just ruby or rubi, such annotations are most commonly used as pronunciation guides for characters that are likely to be unfamiliar to the reader. Examples Here is an example of Japanese ruby characters (called ''furigana'') for Tokyo (""): Most are written with the ''hiragana'' syllabary, but ''katakana'' and ''romaji'' are also occasionally used. Alternatively, sometimes foreign words (usually English) are printed with furigana to provide the meaning, and vice versa. Textbooks sometimes render on-readings wi ...
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Taiwanese Hokkien
Taiwanese Hokkien ( , ), or simply Taiwanese, also known as Taigi ( zh, c=臺語, tl=Tâi-gí), Taiwanese Southern Min ( zh, c=臺灣閩南語, tl=Tâi-uân Bân-lâm-gí), Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by more than 70 percent of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by a significant portion of those Taiwanese people who are descended from Hoklo immigrants of Minnan region, southern Fujian. It is one of the national languages of Taiwan. Taiwanese is generally similar to Hokkien spoken in Amoy dialect, Amoy, Quanzhou dialect, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou dialect, Zhangzhou, as well as dialectal forms used in Southeast Asia, such as Singaporean Hokkien, Penang Hokkien, Philippine Hokkien, Medan Hokkien, and Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien. It is mutually intelligible with the Amoy and Zhangzhou varieties at the mouth of the Jiulong River in mainland China, and with Philippine Hokkien to the south in the Philippines, spoken altogether by a ...
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Taiwanese Kana
Taiwanese kana (, , ) is a katakana-based writing system that was used to write Taiwanese Hokkien (commonly called "Taiwanese") when the island of Taiwan was under Japanese rule. It functioned as a phonetic guide to hanzi, much like furigana in Japanese or Zhuyin fuhao in Chinese. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, including Hakka and Formosan languages. The system was imposed by Japan at the time and used in a few dictionaries, as well as textbooks. The ''Taiwanese–Japanese Dictionary'', published in 1931–32, is an example. It uses various signs and diacritics to identify sounds that do not exist in Japanese. The system is chiefly built for the Amoy dialect of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan, with some consideration for the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects of Hokkien also spoken in Taiwan as well, which descendant speakers of all three of the historical major dialects of Hokkien thrived, developed, and intermixed in Taiwan for centuries pr ...
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Okinawan Language
Okinawan (, , , ), or more precisely Central Okinawan, is a Northern Ryukyuan languages, Ryukyuan language spoken primarily in the southern half of the Okinawa Island, island of Okinawa, as well as in the surrounding islands of Kerama Islands, Kerama, Kumejima, Okinawa, Kumejima, Tonaki, Okinawa, Tonaki, Aguni, Okinawa, Aguni and a number of smaller peripheral islands. Central Okinawan distinguishes itself from the speech of Northern Okinawa, which is classified independently as the Kunigami language. Both languages are listed by UNESCO as Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, endangered. Though Okinawan encompasses a number of local dialects, the Shuri, Okinawa, Shuri–Naha variant is generally recognized as the ''de facto'' standard, as it had been used as the official language of the Ryukyu Kingdom since the reign of King Shō Shin (1477–1526). Moreover, as the former capital of Shuri was built around the royal palace, the language used by the royal court became the reg ...
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Ryūkyūan Languages
The , also Lewchewan or Luchuan (), are the indigenous languages of the Ryukyu Islands, the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. Along with the Japanese language and the Hachijō language, they make up the Japonic language family. Just as among Japanese dialects it is hard to understand each other, the Ryukyu and mainland Japanese languages are not mutually intelligible. It is not known how many speakers of these languages remain, but language shift toward the use of Standard Japanese and dialects like Okinawan Japanese has resulted in these languages becoming endangered; UNESCO labels four of the languages "definitely endangered" and two others "severely endangered". Overview Phonologically, the Ryukyuan languages have some cross-linguistically unusual features. Southern Ryukyuan languages have a number of syllabic consonants, including unvoiced syllabic fricatives (e.g. Ōgami Miyako 'breast'). Glottalized consonants are common (e.g. Yuwan Amami "horse"). S ...
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Okinawan Scripts
Okinawan, spoken in Okinawa Island. Documents in Ryukyu Kingdom were written in kanji and hiragana, derived from Japan. Although generally agreed among linguists to be a distinct language, most Japanese, as well as some Okinawans, tend to think of Okinawan as merely a regional dialect of Japanese, even though it is not intelligible to monolingual Japanese speakers. Modern Okinawan is not written frequently. The Japanese writing system is used in Okinawan scripts. Systems Conventional usages The modern conventional ''ad hoc'' spellings found in Okinawa. Council system The system devised by the Council for the Dissemination of Okinawan Dialect沖縄方言普及協議会 University of the Ryukyus system This system was devised b a section of University of the Ryukyus. Unlike others, this method is intended purely as a phonetic guidance, and basically only uses katakana. For the sake of an easier comparison, corresponding hiragana are used in this article. New Okinawan let ...
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