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Japanese/Japanese writing system

The Japanese language uses three different systems for writing. There are two syllabaries— hiragana and katakana —which have characters for each basic mora (syllable). Along with the syllabaries, there are also kanji , which is a writing system based on Chinese characters. However, kanji have changed since their adoption, so it would not be recommended to learn both Chinese and Japanese writing at the same time.

  • 3.1 Examples
  • 4 Latin alphabet
  • 5 Stroke order
  • 8 Vertical and horizontal writing, and page order
  • 9 Background reading

Kanji [ edit | edit source ]

The kanji are logograms (pictures representing words), or symbols, that each represent a morpheme (words or parts of words). Usually, each kanji represents a native Japanese morpheme as well as a loaned Chinese morpheme. This means that each kanji usually has two or more different pronunciations. The different pronunciations of a particular 漢字 ( かんじ ) 　( kanji ) are called “readings.” It may seem daunting at first, but with extensive practice, knowing when to use which pronunciation will become second nature.

A 漢字 usually has two types of readings:

音読み readings are approximations of the Chinese pronunciations of that particular 漢字. This reading is mostly used for multi-kanji compound words, except for peoples' surnames where 訓読み-reading is used. A kanji may have multiple 音読み. Some kanji are of Japanese origin and thus do not have on-reading. 訓読み readings are the native Japanese sound(s) associated with that 漢字. There can be multiple or no kun readings for the same kanji.

Although there are over 50,000 漢字, the Japanese government has approved 2,136 so-called “daily use” 漢字, known as 常用漢字 ( じょうようかんじ ) ( jōyō kanji ) for publications, but usually about 3000 are recognized by an average adult.

Kana [ edit | edit source ]

While Chinese characters are useful for writing a language with so many homophones, the inflections of the Japanese language make it necessary to have a phonetic script to indicate the inflection. A set of Chinese characters, the man'yōgana , were used to represent pronunciation and write words that lacked Chinese characters. Around 800 A.D. these had developed into the cursive hiragana script.

This method of writing was used primarily for poetry or by women, and did not gain recognition as an acceptable way to record historical records or scholarly works. [ citation needed ]

Another script, the katakana also developed from Chinese characters, some from the same source as the hiragana , but others from different ones. This explains the similarities between some hiragana and katakana, while others are completely different. The katakana is primarily used for foreign loan-words. In other words, the katakana syllabary can be said to be the Japanese writing equivalent of writing in italics .

The two are collectively known as the kana ( 仮名 ( かな ) , e. false name). Both are syllabaries, so there are no isolated consonants, with one exception; the moraic nasal , which sounds similar to most pronunciations of the latin character “n.” Each of the kana contains 45 characters and are typically listed in a table formation called gojūonzu ( 五十 ( ごじゅう ) 音図 ( おんず ) , e. fifty sounds illustration) but the yi, ye, wi, wu, we sounds are obsolete in modern Japanese, so in fact only 45 sounds exist. n is not counted because it does not constitute a mora.

Punctuation [ edit | edit source ]

Common punctuation marks are the comma "、" which connects two sentences, and the full stop "。" which indicates the end of a sentence. To separate words that the reader might not otherwise know how to read (most often in the case of foreign words written consecutively in katakana), a middle point "・" is used. Instead of quotation marks, the brackets "「" and "」", and "『" and "』" (for quotes inside of quotes) are used.

Examples [ edit | edit source ]

Latin alphabet [ edit | edit source ].

The Latin alphabet (ローマ字, rōmaji ) is not part of the Japanese language but it is used as a fashionable way of writing words, mostly nouns such as the name of a company, business, sports team, etc. Rōmaji is also used for the transliteration of Japanese and to input Japanese text online and in word processors. There are two competing transliteration methods: the Kunrei-shiki developed by the Japanese government in the mid-20 th century and taught in elementary school; and the more widely used Hepburn-shiki developed by Reverend James Curtis Hepburn in the late 19 th century.

Stroke order [ edit | edit source ]

Japanese characters were originally written by brush, and later by pen and pencil, so the stroke order is important. When writing by hand, and particularly in cursive or calligraphic styles, using proper stroke order is crucial. Additionally, some characters look very similar but are written differently. Students who practice both reading and writing can easily distinguish these characters, but students who only practice reading may find it difficult.

The East Asian Calligraphy wikibook has some material on stroke orders.

Mixed usage and notes of interest [ edit | edit source ]

There are instances where kanji, hiragana, and katakana may be replaced by another writing style. Frequently, words that have kanji are written in hiragana. Some kanji are simply rarely used but their reading is known. The swallow is called tsubame and has the kanji "燕", but since it is obscure, the word will generally be written out with hiragana: "つばめ".

wiki japanese writing

When writing for an audience that isn't expected to know certain kanji (such as in texts aimed at young people or kanji outside the standard set), their reading is often added on top of, or to the right of the characters, depending on whether they are written horizontally or vertically, respectively. This form of writing is called furigana (振り仮名) or yomigana (読み仮名).

Since kanji can have several different readings, it may not be straightforward to determine how to read a certain word. This problem is particularly pronounced in place names where readings may be highly irregular and archaic.

Though katakana are principally used for loan words from other languages, it can be used for stylistic purposes. Either to highlight a certain word, or give it a different feel (e.g. make it look more hip). Furthermore, since some personal names don't have kanji, but are written in hiragana, personal name readings are generally written in katakana to indicate that these are not the name itself, but simply the pronunciation.

Ateji [ edit | edit source ]

The word "club", as it is borrowed from English, will typically be written in katakana as クラブ; however, the kanji 倶楽部 kurabu will also sometimes be used; this use of kanji for phonetic value is called 当て字 ateji . Other times, typically in older texts, grammatical particles are also written in kanji, as in 東京迄行く Tokyo made iku ([I] go to Tokyo), where まで made (to/till) is written in kanji (迄) instead of hiragana.

Numerals [ edit | edit source ]

The Arabic numerals, called Arabia sūji (アラビア数字) or san'yō sūji (算用数字) in Japanese, are used in most circumstances (e.g. telephone numbers, pricing, zip codes, speed limit signs and percentages). Kanji numerals can still be found, however, in more traditional situations (e.g. on some restaurant menus, formal invitations and tomb stones).

Vertical and horizontal writing, and page order [ edit | edit source ]

Traditionally, Japanese is written in a format called 縦書き tategaki , or vertical writing . In this format, the characters are written in columns going from top to bottom. The columns are ordered from right to left, so at the bottom of each column the reader returns to the top of the next column on the left of the preceding one. This copies the column order of Chinese.

Modern Japanese also uses another writing format, called 横書き yokogaki , or horizontal writing . This writing format is identical to that of European languages such as English, with characters arranged in rows which are read from left to right, with successive rows going downwards.

There are no set rules for when each form has to be used, but usage tends to depend on the medium, genre, and subject. Tategaki is generally used to write essays, novels, poetry, newspapers, comics, and Japanese dictionaries. Yokogaki is generally used to write e-mails, how-to books, and scientific and mathematical writing (mathematical formulas are read from left to right, as in English).

Materials written in tategaki are bound on the right, with the reader reading from right to left and thus turning the pages from left to right to progress through the material. Materials written with yokogaki are bound on the left and the pages are turned from right to left, as in English.

Background reading [ edit | edit source ]

wiki japanese writing

All items (3)

Hiragana

Japanese writing system (Q190502)

Identifiers

Wikipedia (52 entries).

Wikibooks (5 entries)

Wikinews (0 entries)

Wikiquote (0 entries), wikisource (0 entries), wikiversity (0 entries), wikivoyage (0 entries), wiktionary (0 entries), multilingual sites (0 entries).

wiki japanese writing

Borne as it is from the partnership between the American Hasbro and the Japanese TakaraTomy , Transformers has from its inception been a bilingual franchise, split cardinally between English, the language of this wiki, and the Japanese language (日本語 Nihongo ). The road between the two does not always run smooth, and many quirks of the Transformers franchise can be ascribed to this friction.

Japanese: a crash course

" Kana " (仮名) is the colloquial term for the portion of the modern Japanese writing system correlating directly to mouth noises (read: letters, kinda sorta). Kana can be written using two native systems: the " hiragana " (ひらがな) script used primarily for Japanese words, and the " katakana " (カタカナ) script used primarily for loanwords or foreign words, as well as for denoting emphasis. Kana is a primarily syllabic script; with the exception of six kana, each symbol represents a consonant-vowel pair, such as ど do , は ha , ぐ gu , and け ke .

These basic kana are in turn modified by the " dakuten " ( ﾞ), which resembles a quotation mark and transforms a voiceless kana such as "ka" into a voiced "ga" and changes the soft "f-" series into the "b-" series; and the " handakuten " ( ﾟ), which resembles a degree sign and modifies the soft "f-" series of kana into the hard "p-" series.

ト = To ラ = ra ン = n ス = su フォー = fō マー = mā

Due to the influence of the Chinese language , Japanese also uses " kanji " (漢字), a kind of script where each character represents an entire concept and can function as a word unto itself. These kanji often have two pronunciations, one the Japanese word for the specific concept (訓読み kun'yomi ) and another based on the borrowed Chinese word (音読み on'yomi ), but can sometimes have additional pronunciations. Single kanji can then be compounded into more complex concepts; for example, the Japanese word for telephone, denwa , is made up of the symbols "電話", which separately mean "electric" and "talk".

生 = "living" 命 = "life force", inochi as a kun'yomi 体 = "body, figure"

司 = "official" or "director" 令 = "law" or "command" 官 = "governor/bureaucrat" Kana and kanji

超 ( chō , "super-") ロボット ( robotto , katakana) 生命体 ( seimeitai , "lifeform", kanji with on'yomi) トランスフォーマー ( toransufōmā , Transformer in katakana)

" Furigana " ( 振 ( ふ ) り 仮名 ( がな ) ) is a kind of Japanese reading aid that employs superscript, known as " ruby text " (ルビ), to provide a pronunciation guide for particularly difficult words. Now as you can probably guess from reading the above, it is usually used to provide the kana to sound out kanji in educational contexts. What does this have to do with Transformers ? In the wider world, furigana see another use: PUNS. [1] In this context, furigana can be used to impart a sort of "side B" to a phrase in a manner that can be thought of as dimly analagous to comedy footnotes [2] in English.

ブルー = ( Burū , "Blue", katakana) 偉大なる司令官 ("Grand Commander" - standard reading)

ビッグコンボイ ("Big Convoy" - furigana pronunciation guide)

Romanization

" Romanization " refers to the adaptation of languages or words that do not use Latin letters to the 26-character Latin alphabet used in English (among other, less important languages). Technically, the English-specific term would be "Anglicization".

Any writing system is, at best, an approximation of the sounds it represents. The modern Japanese writing system distinguishes between fewer phonemes than most, but this does not mean the language lacks those phonemes, merely that different sounds can be represented by the same symbols. English has more than twenty-six sounds denoted by character-combinations (ex. " ch " makes a sound that is not the combination of the mouth-movements for " c " and " h ", but a close cousin), but even those combinations are imperfect; the "oo" letter sequence represents different sounds in " cook " and " spook ". While Japanese does have official romanization systems, such as the Nihon-shiki , it can still be difficult to romanize a Japanese word to match its author's intent due to the sharing of phonemes and other artifacts of the differences between the English and Japanese languages.

Lost in Translation

Typical causes for friction between languages are mistakes in mechanical process of translation for perfectly straightforward material, wordplay that only makes sense to a native Japanese speaker, and, occasionally, terms with no coherent meaning to be had. In some rare cases, it even appears that mistranslation occurs on purpose .

Recall that from the perspective of an audience that does not speak the language, whether the words fit together at all is usually of no consequence so long as they are pronounceable, catchy, and easy to remember when buying their products .

Causes of translation errors

Romanization difficulties.

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Actual Japanese people can often have their names romanized in several ways, all of which are, by default, equally valid: For example, the name of legendary Diaclone and Generation 1 toy designer Kōjin Ōno (大野 光仁 Ōno Kōjin ) can also be Romanized as "Kojin Ohno" or "Kouzin Ono". Japanese people who frequently interact with the Western world may settle for an "official" version for simplicity's sake; in that case, insisting on using an alternate Romanization would be considered pedantic and ignorant.

Since the vast majority of Transformers names used for the Japanese market are English or English-derived, romanizing them isn't particularly difficult— for example, Megatron 's Japanese name (メガトロン Megatoron ) is simply a transliteration of his Western name; the same applies to Thundercracker (サンダークラッカー Sandākurakkā ). Many characters whose names were changed for the Japanese market are still easy to decipher; for example, Jazz traditionally becomes "Meister" (マイスター Maisutā ), Sideswipe becomes "Lambor" (ランボル Ranboru ), and Optimus Prime becomes "Convoy" (コンボイ Konboi ).

One problem is posed by the Japanese use of the plural, which doesn't use an "s" suffix like it does in English. Thus, the Japanese name for the overall brand is literally "Transformer" (トランスフォーマー Toransufōmā ). However, since Takara uses the spelling "Transformers" every time the name is rendered in English, the plural "s" can be assumed to materialize in the transition from katakana to the Latin spelling in much the same way Optimus Prime's trailer appears and disappears every time he transforms. This doesn't always apply, however; some English-derived names with a plural in them may in fact keep the "s" suffix in their katakana spelling, such as Generations (ジェネレーションズ Jenerēshonzu ), resulting in an inconsistent appearance in the combination " Transformers: Generations ", where "Generations" uses the plural "s" but "Transformers" doesn't.

The Japanese writing system distinguishes between fewer phonemes than most. Foreign words in Japan frequently acquire creative spellings as a result of being rendered "down" into the Japanese spelling system.

In some cases where Takara has put the Latin spelling of the characters' names on their packaging , something was amiss: Whoever was responsible for the romanization screwed up, and the error was not caught in quality control either. The most common causes for bad romanization are a mix-up between /l/ and /r/ (which are approximated by the same sound in Japanese) and /v/ and /b/ (the /v/ sound doesn't exist in Japanese and is usually substituted by /b/). Another common issue is that /n/, if followed by /m/, /b/, and /p/, becomes /m/ in Japanese phonology.

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Also worth mentioning is the lack of spaces for compound names in some cases, such as with the entire Super-God Masterforce line, which had "Superginrai", "Godginrai" or " Kingposeidon ", the Galaxy Force line, which had " Galaxyconvoy ", " Firstaid " or " Mastermegatron ", or Legends " Blue Bigconvoy ". This happens because the katakana spelling often does not have any separations between these name components (it is possible to use a "middle dot" ・, called a nakaguro, but its usage is not mandatory), and this structure may be carried over during the Romanization if the people in charge of the packaging design don't pay attention to it.

A particularly unusual case is that of the non -Japanese Generation 1 Action Master Elite " Omega Spreem " toy, which came out at a time when the original Transformers toy line had been canceled for the United States market and was primarily released in European markets . Intended as the same character as the older Generation 1 Omega Supreme toy, both "Supreme" and "Spreem" are possible transliterations of the katakana spelling スプリーム (though "Supreme" is obviously the only one that actually makes sense ). Why Hasbro UK would use a nonsensical transliteration of the Japanese spelling of the character's English name is lost in the mists of time; however, a partial explanation can be found in the Transformers Vault book: The design artwork for an unreleased standard (i.e. not Elite) Action Master version of Omega Supreme has his name (correctly spelled) written quite large on the top of the sheet in big black marker. However, there's also an illustrator's note written in very small pen/pencil next to the toy's design artwork, which misspells the character's name as "Omega Spreem", despite the correct spelling being in giant text directly above it (though to be fair, it's possible that the black marker text was added after the fact). When the toy was released, for some reason Hasbro used the nonsensical "Omega Spreem" spelling.

"Double blind" translation

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Some times, the romanization is on point, the meaning of each word is more or less correct, and the sentence structure is technically acceptable, but no one in the room is fluent in the language and the wind just isn't at their backs, producing results that are... Off.

On occasion, some popular English catchphrases for the brand have been translated into Japanese and then re-translated back into English, producing a particularly brutal contrast with the "correct answer." A prime example is when the tagline "More than meets the eye" was translated into Japanese and then re-translated back into English for the packaging of the Japanese release of the Heroes of Cybertron line, producing the trainwreck, "The truth who the eyes met before!"

Translating the untranslatable

Pun problems.

Much like in English, many Japanese Transformer names are corny puns. This becomes problematic very quickly when puns that work in Japanese do not in English:

Furigana frenzy

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As discussed above, the grammatical construction known as " furigana " doesn't really have a clean analogue in English. Thankfully this particularly elaborate form of wordplay is pretty rare in Transformers media, perhaps due to the younger-skewing demographics of the franchise. Rare, that is, with one prominent exception: the saga of the technicolor warrior monks known as the Primus Vanguard utilizes a truly dizzying array of furigana puns in the names of its major characters, up to and including Optimus Prime himself.

"High concept" names

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And then there are the names that didn't mean much to begin with, or are so baroque that any Romanization would have to be either extremely liberal in order to make sense, or end up nonsensical either way. Accuracy is sometimes a low priority, as English-derived names are generally simply intended to sound "cool", not necessarily make sense to Japanese children. A familiar point of reference might be the atrocities we in the English market regularly inflict upon Latin.

Frequent avenues of mistranslation

Because it looks cool.

We've all seen Japanese characters tacked onto English language goods to "look cool" on solely aesthetic grounds. Did you know that goes the other way too? Unsurprisingly this rarely produces intelligible results in either direction.

Cool Japanese

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Cool English

Snappy English catchphrases of questionable intelligibility are a frequent stalwart of "cool" characters' dialogue in Japanese children's media.

Bits of English often creep their way into Japanese theme songs as well, being something of a staple in Japanese pop music.

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Furthermore, on many occasions, when Japanese Transformers cartoons have been translated and dubbed into English, the translations and scripts have been rushed, resulting in mind-boggling dialogue.

When the Omni Productions dub was produced for The Headmasters , Masterforce and Victory and when the Voicebox dub was produced for Armada and Energon , early, unpolished translations of the Japanese TV series were used for the final scripts. While these translations were (mostly) accurate, they were accurate in a tremendously literal sense, often not being adjusted to fit the English language properly. What resulted were incoherent lines of dialogue which sounded like a Babelfish translation of a web page.

Deliberate mistranslation

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In some rare cases, an official instance of mistranslation is both so blatant and so persistent that it appears to be done on purpose, usually for trademark reasons.

The prime example is Generation 1 Mirage , who got renamed into "Ligier" (リジェ) for the Japanese market, based on the real life car manufacturer who produced the car the original Mirage toy's alternate mode was based on. While the Generation 1 toy only spelled the name in katakana, with no official Romanized spelling supplied, both the more recent Robotmasters and Binaltech toys have used the official Romanization "Rijie"... which is, as a Romanization of the katakana spelling, about the furthest possible from "Ligier". Curiously enough, the Robotmasters toy's instructions do spell the name "Ligier", thus suggesting legal reasons for the alternate spelling.

A different case is the Generation 1 Constructicon Hook , who was renamed into "Gren" (グレン Guren ) for Japan. "Gren" is effectively a mangled version of the English word "crane" (クレーン Kurēn ) which didn't originate with Takara, but has been used at least in regional Japanese dialects (mostly in the Hiroshima area) since the Meiji period. So it's basically a reference to a traditional mutation of a loanword.

Around the onset of the Prime Wars Trilogy , Hasbro evidently discovered the quick and easy trademarking joys of aggressively literal Romanization.

Vendor mistranslation

Sometimes mistranslations don't originate with Takara or other official parties, but with (mostly Western) online retailers and their vendors. Historically, these vendors often received solicitations of new toys via fax in the era before easy machine translation cross-checks. Depending on the quality of the fax, the legibility of the katakana spelling of the new toys' names, the Japanese and/or English skills of the vendors and their familiarity with the Transformers brand , they may have just come up with very weird interpretations of the katakana spelling of the toys' names. The results can range from minor misspellings (such as "Conboy") to occasional random weirdness or complete gibberish.

Although these spellings aren't "official", they're often the first versions of these names fans read...and some of these names stick, even when the official Romanization is widely available.

Things that are not mistranslation

Spelling errors.

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Mild misspellings frequently occur due to poor linguistic replacement, especially when multiple sounds may not be distinguished in other languages. For example, the letters c/s/z and b/v are linguistically indistinguishable in Latin American Spanish. Similarly, the English ɹ , l , and v sounds do not exist in Japanese and are conflated with ɺ and b .

Conversely, a new spelling might be created to represent an otherwise rare sound in that language. For example, Japanese approximates an English rhotic vowel by extending the corresponding vowel sound, [7] resulting in " Load Zarak ". Using "ah" to facilitate the English "uh" results in Roadbaster . (Both cited examples can be found in the 2001 Transformers Generations guidebook.)

There are also spelling errors in background lettering found in the Generation 1 cartoon :

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Translingual [ edit ]

Han character [ edit ].

神 ( Kangxi radical 113, 示 +5, 10 strokes in traditional Chinese and Korean , 9 strokes in mainland China and Japanese , cangjie input 戈火中田中 ( IFLWL ), four-corner 3520 6 , composition ⿰ 礻 申 ( G H T J V ) or ⿰ 示 申 ( K or U+FA19 ))

Derived characters [ edit ]

References [ edit ]

Chinese [ edit ]

wiki japanese writing

Glyph origin [ edit ]

Phono-semantic compound ( 形聲 ／ 形声 ( xíngshēng ) , OC *hlin ): semantic 示 ( “ god ; deity ” ) + phonetic 申 ( OC *hlin , “ lightning ” ) .

Originally 申 in the oracle bone script and in some bronze inscriptions. The ancients feared the unpredictable lightning and considered it to be divine or of divine origin . 示 was added for specialization.

Etymology 1 [ edit ]

Possibly Sino-Tibetan ; compare Chepang ग्‍लीङ्‌ह ( gliŋh , “ spirit , mind , soul ” ) ( Schuessler, 2007 )

Pronunciation [ edit ]

Definitions [ edit ]

Synonyms [ edit ]

Compounds [ edit ], descendants [ edit ].

Etymology 2 [ edit ]

Japanese [ edit ]

Kanji [ edit ].

( grade 3 “Kyōiku” kanji ,  shinjitai kanji, kyūjitai form 神 )

Readings [ edit ]

⟨kami 2 ⟩ → * /kamɨ/ → /kami/

From Old Japanese , ultimately from Proto-Japonic *kamuy .

Not related to 上 ( kami 1 → kami , “ top , upper ” ) or 髪 ( kami , “ hair ” ) . Possibly cognate with Korean 검 ( geom , “ god , spirit ” ) .

Often appears in compounds as kamu- or kan- , indicating that kami is a bound or fused form deriving from * /kamu.i/ . Note that this final i may be the Old Japanese emphatic nominative particle い ( i ) , likely cognate with Korean nominative particle 이 ( i ) . Such fusion has occurred in other Japanese terms, such as 目 ( me , “ eye ” , from ma + i ) or 酒 ( sake , “ sake , liquor ” , from saka + i ) .

Compare Ainu カムィ ( kamuy , “ god ” ) .

Noun [ edit ]

神 ( かみ ) • ( kami ) 

Quotations [ edit ]

For quotations using this term, see Citations:神 .

Derived terms [ edit ]

Proper noun [ edit ]

神 ( かみ ) • ( Kami ) 

See also [ edit ]

From Middle Chinese 神 ( MC ʑiɪn ). The 漢音 ( kan'on , literally “ Han sound ” ) reading, so likely a later borrowing from Middle Chinese .

Compare modern Mandarin 神 ( shén ) .

神 ( しん ) • ( shin ) 

Affix [ edit ]

Etymology 3 [ edit ]

From Middle Chinese 神 ( MC ʑiɪn ).

The 呉音 ( goon , literally “ Wu sound ” ) reading, so likely the earlier borrowing from Middle Chinese .

神 ( じん ) • ( jin ) 

Etymology 4 [ edit ]

⟨mi 1 ⟩ → * /mʲi/ → /mi/

From Old Japanese .

Cognate with 御 ( mi- ) , an honorific prefix originally used to refer to gods and other high-status objects.

神 ( み ) • ( mi ) 

Korean [ edit ]

Etymology [ edit ].

From Middle Chinese 神 ( MC ʑiɪn ). Recorded as Middle Korean 신 ( sin )  ( Yale : sin ) in Hunmong Jahoe ( 訓蒙字會 / 훈몽자회 ), 1527.

Hanja [ edit ]

神 ( eumhun 귀신 신 ( gwisin sin ) )

Okinawan [ edit ]

From Proto-Ryukyuan *kami .

神 ( hiragana かみ , rōmaji kami )

Old Japanese [ edit ]

From Proto-Japonic *kamuy .

Can be parsed as a compound of unbound apophonic 神 ( kamu ) +‎ い ( i (2) , emphatic nominative particle ) .

神 ( kami 2 ) ( kana かみ )

Cognate with 御 ( mi 1 - ) , an honorific prefix originally used to refer to gods and other high-status objects.

Alternative forms [ edit ]

神 ( mi 1 ) ( kana み )

Vietnamese [ edit ]

神 : Hán Việt readings: thần [1] [2] [3] 神 : Nôm readings: thần [1] [2] , thằn [1] , thườn [3]

wiki japanese writing

IMAGES

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COMMENTS

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  7. Japanese writing system

    Wikipedia(52 entries) · afwiki Japannese skryfstelsel · alswiki Japanische Schrift · arwiki نظام كتابة ياباني · astwiki Escritura xaponesa · bewiki Японская

  8. Japanese language

    These kanji often have two pronunciations, one the Japanese word for the specific concept (訓読み kun'yomi) and another based on the borrowed

  9. 人

    Derived charactersEdit ... Wikipedia has an article on: ... From Old Japanese or Middle Japanese development, hito is sometimes shifted to -uto, -udo, -to

  10. 神

    Originally 申 in the oracle bone script and in some bronze inscriptions. The ancients feared the unpredictable ... Japanese Wikipedia has an article on:.