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The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana.Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis.
This requires using the characters 𠮟, 塡, 剝, 頰 which are outside of Japan's basic character set, JIS X 0208 (one of them is also outside the Unicode BMP). In practice, these characters are usually replaced by the characters 叱, 填, 剥, 頬, which are present in JIS X 0208.
Addition of the small y kana is called yōon. A small tsu っ, called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; for example, compare さか, saka, "hill" with さっか, sakka, "author".
Tenchū (Mandarin: zhuǎnzhù) characters have variously been called "derivative characters", "derivative cognates", or translated as "mutually explanatory" or "mutually synonymous" characters; this is the most problematic of the six categories, as it is vaguely defined. It may refer to kanji where the meaning or application has become extended.
1931: The former jōyō kanji list was revised and 1,858 characters were specified. 1942: 1,134 characters as standard jōyō kanji and 1,320 characters as sub-jōyō kanji were specified. 1946: The 1,850 characters of tōyō kanji were adopted by law "as those most essential for common use and everyday communication". [1]
Adding these dots to the sides of characters (right side in vertical writing, above in horizontal writing) emphasizes the character in question. It is the Japanese equivalent of the use of italics for emphasis in English. ※ 2228: 1-2-8: 203B: kome (米, "rice") komejirushi (米印, "rice symbol")
The original language of Japan, or at least the original language of a certain population that was ancestral to a significant portion of the historical and present Japanese nation, was the so-called yamato kotoba (大和言葉 or infrequently 大和詞, i.e. "Yamato words"), which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as wago (和語 ...
'Kana' is a compound of kari (仮, 'borrowed; assumed; false') and na (名, 'name'), which eventually collapsed into kanna and ultimately 'kana'. [3]Today it is generally assumed that 'kana' were considered "false" kanji due to their purely phonetic nature, as opposed to mana which were "true" kanji used for their meanings.