Katakana
Katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script. The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more complex kanji. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable in the Japanese language is represented by one character or kana, in each system; each kana represents either a vowel such as "a". In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, used for Japanese words not covered by kanji and for grammatical inflections, the katakana syllabary usage is quite similar to italics in English. Katakana are characterized by sharp corners. There are two main systems of ordering katakana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering; the complete katakana script consists of 48 characters, not counting functional and diacritic marks: 5 nucleus vowels 42 core or body syllabograms, consisting of nine consonants in combination with each of the five vowels, of which three possible combinations are not canonical 1 coda consonantThese are conceived as a 5×10 grid, as shown in the adjacent table, read ア, イ, ウ, エ, オ, カ, キ, ク, ケ, コ and so on.
The gojūon inherits its consonant order from Sanskrit practice. In vertical text contexts, which used to be the default case, the grid is presented as 10 columns by 5 rows, with vowels on the right hand side and ア on top. Katakana glyphs in the same row or column do not share common graphic characteristics. Three of the syllabograms to be expected, yi, ye and wu, may have been used idiosyncratically with varying glyphs, but never became conventional in any language and are not present at all in modern Japanese; the 50-sound table is amended with an extra character, the nasal stop ン. This can appear in several positions, most next to the N signs or, because it developed from one of many mu hentaigana, below the u column, it may be appended to the vowel row or the a column. Here, it is shown in a table of its own; the script includes two diacritic marks placed at the upper right of the base character that change the initial sound of a syllabogram. A double dot, called dakuten, indicates a primary alteration.
Secondary alteration, where possible, is shown by a circular handakuten: h→p. Diacritics, though used for over a thousand years, only became mandatory in the Japanese writing system in the second half of the 20th century, their application is limited in proper writing systems, but may be more extensive in academic transcriptions. Furthermore, some characters may have special semantics when used in smaller size after a normal one, but this does not make the script bicameral; the layout of the gojūon table promotes a systematic view of kana syllabograms as being always pronounced with the same single consonant followed by a vowel, but this is not the case. Existing schemes for the romanization of Japanese either are based on the systematic nature of the script, e.g. nihon-siki チ ti, or they apply some Western graphotactics the English one, to the common Japanese pronunciation of the kana signs, e.g. Hepburn-shiki チ chi. Both approaches conceal the fact, that many consonant-based katakana signs those canonically ending in u, can be used in coda position, where the vowel is unvoiced and therefore perceptible.
Of the 48 katakana syllabograms described above, only 46 are used in modern Japanese, one of these is preserved for only a single use: wi and we are pronounced as vowels in modern Japanese and are therefore obsolete, being supplanted by i and e respectively. Wo is now used only as a particle, is pronounced the same as vowel オ o; as a particle, it is written in hiragana and the katakana form, ヲ, is uncommon. A small version of the katakana for ya, yu or yo may be added to katakana ending in i; this changes the i vowel sound to a glide to a, u or o, e.g. キャ /kja/. Addition of the small y kana is called yōon. Small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds, but in katakana they are more used in yōon-like extended digraphs designed to represent phonemes not present in Japanese. A character called a sokuon, visually identical to a small tsu ッ, indicates that the following consonant is geminated. In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation.
Geminated consonants are common in transliterations of foreign loanwords. The sokuon sometimes appe
Japanese dragon
Japanese dragons are diverse legendary creatures in Japanese mythology and folklore. Japanese dragon myths amalgamate native legends with imported stories about dragons from China and India; the style of the dragon was influenced by the Chinese dragon. Like these other East Asian dragons, most Japanese ones are water deities associated with rainfall and bodies of water, are depicted as large, serpentine creatures with clawed feet; the modern Japanese language has numerous "dragon" words, including indigenous Tatsu from Old Japanese ta-tu, Sino-Japanese ryū or ryō 竜 from Chinese lóng 龍, nāga ナーガ from Sanskrit nāga, doragon ドラゴン from English "dragon". The c. 680 AD Kojiki and the c. 720 AD Nihongi mytho-histories have the first Japanese textual references to dragons. "In the oldest annals the dragons are mentioned in various ways," explains de Visser, "but as water-gods, serpent- or dragon-shaped." The Kojiki and Nihongi mention several ancient dragons: Yamata no Orochi 八岐大蛇 "8-branched giant snake" was an 8-headed and 8-tailed dragon slain by the god of wind and sea Susanoo, who discovered the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi in one of its tails.
Watatsumi 海神 "sea god" or Ryūjin 龍神 "dragon god" was the ruler of seas and oceans, described as a dragon capable of changing into human form. He lived in the undersea Ryūgū-jō 龍宮城 "dragon palace castle". Toyotama-hime 豊玉姫 "Luminous Pearl Princess" was Ryūjin's daughter, she purportedly was an ancestress of Japan's legendary first emperor. Wani 鰐 was a sea monster, translated as both "shark" and "crocodile". Kuma-wani 熊鰐 "bear shark/crocodile" are mentioned in two ancient legends. One says the sea god Kotoshiro-nushi-no-kami transformed into an "8-fathom kuma-wani" and fathered Toyotama-hime, the other says a kuma-wani piloted the ships of Emperor Chūai and his Empress Jingū. Mizuchi 蛟 or 虯 was a river water deity; the Nihongi records legendary Emperor Nintoku offering human sacrifices to mizuchi angered by his river engineering projects. The myths about Emperor Jimmu descending from Toyatama-hime evidence the folklore that Japanese Emperors descend from dragons. Compare the ancient Chinese tradition of dragons symbolizing the Emperor of China.
Dragons in Japanese folklore were influenced by Chinese and Indian myths. Kiyohime 清姫 "Purity Princess" was a teahouse waitress. After he spurned her, she studied magic, transformed into a dragon, killed him. Nure-onna 濡女 "Wet Woman" was a dragon with a snake's body, she was seen while washing her hair on a riverbank and would sometimes kill humans when angered. Zennyo Ryūō 善如龍王 "goodness-like dragon king" was a rain-god depicted either as a dragon with a snake on its head or as a human with a snake's tail. In the fairy tale "My Lord Bag of Rice", the Ryūō "dragon king" of Lake Biwa asks the hero Tawara Tōda 田原藤太 to kill a giant centipede. Urashima Tarō rescued a turtle which took him to Ryūgū-jō and turned into the attractive daughter of the ocean god Ryūjin. Inari, the god of fertility and agriculture, was sometimes depicted as a dragon or snake instead of a fox. Chinese dragon mythology is central to Japanese dragons. Japanese words for "dragon" are written with kanji, either simplified shinjitai 竜 or traditional kyūjitai 龍 from Chinese long 龍.
These kanji can be read tatsu in ryū or ryō in Sino-Japanese on ` yomi. Many Japanese dragon names are loanwords from Chinese. For instance, the Japanese counterparts of the astrological Four Symbols are: Seiryū < Qinglong 青龍 "Azure Dragon" Suzaku < Zhuque 朱雀 "Vermilion Bird" Byakko < Baihu 白虎 "White Tiger" Genbu < Xuanwu 玄武 "Black Tortoise"Japanese Shiryū 四竜 "4 dragon " are the legendary Chinese Longwang 龍王 "Dragon Kings" who rule the four seas. Gōkō < Aoguang 敖廣 "Dragon King of the East Sea" Gōkin < Aoqin 敖欽 "Dragon King of the South Sea" Gōjun < Aorun 敖閏 "Dragon King of the West Sea" Gōjun < Aoshun 敖順 "Dragon King of the North Sea"Some authors differentiate Japanese ryū and Chinese long dragons by the number of claws on their feet. "In Japan," writes Gould, "it is invariably figured as possessing three claws, whereas in China it has four or five, according as it is an ordinary or an Imperial emblem." During World War II, the Japanese military named many armaments after Chinese dragons. The Kōryū 蛟竜 < jiaolong 蛟龍 "flood dragon" was a midget submarine and the Shinryū 神竜 < shenlong 神龍 "spirit dragon" was a rocket kamikaze aircraft.
An Imperial Japanese Army division, the 56th Division, was codenamed the Dragon Division. Coincidentally, the Dragon Division was annihilated in the Chinese town of Longling, whose name means "Dragon's Tomb"; when Buddhist monks from other parts of Asia brought their faith to Japan they transmitted dragon and snake legends from Buddhist and Hindu mythology. The most notable examples are the nāga 龍 "Nāga. "This is quite clear. Moreover, many Japanese dragons, to which Chinese legends were applied, were afterwards identified with nāga, so that a blending of ideas was the result." For instance, the undersea palace where nāga kings live is called Japanese ryūgū 龍宮 "dragon palace" from Chinese longgong 龍宮. Compare ryūgū-jō 龍宮城 "dragon palace castle", the sea-god Ryūjin's undersea residence. Jap
Ryūgū-jō
In Japanese folklore, Ryūgū-jō is the undersea palace of Ryūjin, the dragon kami of the sea. Depending on the version of the legend, it is built from solid crystal; the inhabitants of the palace were Ryūjin's servants, who were denizens of the sea. In some legends, on each of the four sides of the palace it is a different season, one day in the palace is equal to a century outside its boundaries; the most famous legend about the palace concerns Urashima Tarō's visit to Ryūgū-jō for three days. Katase-Enoshima Station in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, is designed to evoke the feeling of Ryūgū-jō. In the Ryukyuan religion, Ryūgū-jō is the source of fire for all village hearths; the Sea King and Vasilisa the Wise Eglė the Queen of Serpents
Saint Seiya
Saint Seiya known as Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac or Knights of the Zodiac, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masami Kurumada. It was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1986 to 1990, with the chapters collected into 28 tankōbon volumes by Shueisha; the story follows five mystical warriors called the "Saints" who fight wearing sacred armors named "Cloths", the designs of which derive from the various constellations the characters have adopted as their destined guardian symbols, empowered by a mystical energy called "Cosmo". The Saints have sworn to defend the reincarnation of the Greek goddess Athena in her battle against other Olympian gods who want to dominate Earth; the manga was adapted into an anime television series by Toei Animation that ran from 1986 to 1989, before being continued in the form of three original video animation series between 2002 and 2008. Four animated feature films were shown in Japanese theaters from 1987 to 1989, with a fifth in 2004 and a sixth in 2014.
Since 2006, creator Kurumada has been publishing a sequel manga titled Saint Seiya: Next Dimension. Several spin-off manga by different authors have been created, as well as a standalone anime and original net animation. Saint Seiya has been successful, with over 35 million copies sold as of 2017; the series began to be known in the West after it became popular in France in 1988, where it was given the name of Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque. Both the original manga and the anime adaptation were successful in other Asian and American countries, none of them were translated into English until 2003. In North America the manga is licensed by Viz Media, the anime has been released by both DIC Entertainment and ADV Films, the first four films were released by Discotek Media; the story focuses on an orphan named Seiya, forced to go to the Sanctuary in Greece to obtain the Bronze Cloth of the Pegasus constellation, a protective armor worn by the Greek goddess Athena's 88 warriors known as Saints. Upon awakening his Cosmos, the power of the Saints, an inner spiritual essence originated in the Big Bang, Seiya becomes the Pegasus Saint and returns to Japan to find his older sister.
Because his sister disappeared the same day Seiya went to the Sanctuary, Saori Kido, the granddaughter of Mitsumasa Kido makes a deal with him to go to fight in a tournament called the Galaxian Wars. In this tournament, all the orphans who survived and became Bronze Saints must fight to win the most powerful Cloth: The Sagittarius Gold Cloth. If Seiya goes to compete there and wins, Saori would start a search to find Seiya's sister; the tournament is interrupted by the revengeful Phoenix Bronze Saint, who wishes to eliminate track from the people who forced him undergo his training. He steals parts from the Sagittarius Cloth and fights against the remaining Bronze Saints: Seiya, Shiryū, Hyōga, to complete it. Upon Ikki's defeat, the Bronze Saints are attacked by the Silver Saints sent by the Sanctuary's Pope to eliminate them; when they remain victorious, the Bronze Saints learn that Saori is Athena's reincarnation and that the Pope once tried to kill her as a baby. The Sagittarius Gold Saint Aiolos saved Saori but was killed shortly afterwards and gave Saori to her adopted grandfather, Mitsumasa Kido.
Deciding to join forces with Saori, the Bronze Saints go to the Sanctuary to defeat the Pope, but upon their arrival, Saori is wounded by a gold arrow from a Silver Saint. Believing the Pope may be able to heal her, the Bronze Saints go to find him. To do so, they have to go through each one guarded by one Gold Saint. Following several battles, Seiya gets to the Pope's temple and learns that he is the Gold Saint Gemini Saga, who in his madness killed the real Pope to obtain more power. With help from his friends' Cosmos, Seiya is able to knock out Saga and use the shield from Athena's statue to heal Saori. Shortly afterwards, having come to his senses, commits suicide as a self-punishment. In the second story arc, the Greek god Poseidon reincarnates within the body of Julian Solo, the heir to a rich and powerful family, who follows his will of flooding the Earth. Saori goes to his Temple, where Julian offers her to reduce the flooding by absorbing the water inside the Oceans' Central Pillar. Following Saori, Seiya, Hyōga, Shun and Shiryū go to Poseidon's underwater Temple and are confronted by his underlings, the Marines.
As Seiya, Hyōga, Shiryū make their way to Julian, Ikki learns that the mastermind behind this war is Saga's twin, Gemini Kanon, manipulating Poseidon. During the final battle, Poseidon's spirit manages to defeat his opponents. Saved by the Saints from the Pillar, Saori seals Poseidon's soul within her amphora; the third and last arc follows how Hades, the Underworld god, is freed from his seal and revives the deceased Gold Saints and the Pope Aries Shion, alongside some of his 108 Specters, sends them to the Sanctuary to kill Athena. The remaining Gold Saints serving Athena are able to subdue the enemies, but Saori commits suicide; this act is instead meant to directly send her to the Underworld to face Hades, the Bronze Saints follow her. Shion reveals that the revived Gold Saints' true intentions were of giving Saori her own Cloth, gives it to Seiya's group before dying once again. In the Underworld, as the Saints fight Hades' Specters, Shun is possessed by Hades. Saori expels his soul from Shun's body.
H
Old Japanese
Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language. It is attested in documents from the Nara period, it evolved into Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, although the precise separation of these two languages is controversial. Old Japanese was an early member of the Japonic family. Old Japanese was written using Chinese characters, using an standardized and phonetic form that evolved into man'yōgana. For a Japonic language and for a step in the evolutionary line of modern Japanese, Old Japanese was a agglutinative language with subject–object–verb word ordering. However, the language was marked by a few phonemic differences from forms of Japanese, such as a simpler syllable structure and distinctions between several pairs of syllables pronounced identically in Early Middle Japanese and later; the phonetic realization of this differentiation is uncertain. Linguistic changes are gradual, the periodization of Japanese is "both delicate and controversial", with multiple competing methods and criteria for division.
For both practical and conventional reasons, these divisions correlate to political events shifts in power or changes of capital. Old Japanese is defined as the language of the Nara period, when the capital was Heijō-kyō; this is the period of the earliest connected texts in Japanese, the 112 songs included in the Kojiki. The other major literary sources of the period are the 128 songs included in the Nihon Shoki and the Man'yōshū, a compilation of over 4,500 poems. Shorter samples are the 21 poems of the Bussokuseki-kahi; the latter has the virtue of being an original inscription, whereas for all the other texts the oldest surviving manuscripts are the results of centuries of copying, with the attendant risk of scribal errors. Prose texts are more limited, but are thought to reflect the syntax of Old Japanese more than verse; the most important are the 27 Norito recorded in the Engishiki and the 62 Senmyō recorded in the Shoku Nihongi. A limited number of Japanese words personal names and place names, are recorded phonetically in ancient Chinese texts such as the "Wei Zhi" portion of the Records of the Three Kingdoms, but the transcriptions by Chinese scholars are unreliable.
The oldest surviving native inscriptions, dating from the 5th or early 6th centuries, include those on the Suda Hachiman Shrine Mirror, the Inariyama Sword and the Eta Funayama Sword. These inscriptions are written in Classical Chinese, but contain several Japanese names transcribed phonetically using Chinese characters; such inscriptions become more common from the Suiko period. These fragments are considered a form of Old Japanese. Artifacts inscribed with Chinese characters dated as early as the 1st century AD have been found in Japan, but it appears that detailed knowledge of the script did not arrive in the islands until the early 5th century. According to the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, it was brought by scholars from Baekje; the earliest texts found in Japan are written in Classical Chinese by immigrant scribes. "hybrid" texts show the influence of Japanese grammar, such as the word order. Chinese and Koreans had long used Chinese characters to write non-Chinese terms and proper names phonetically, by selecting characters for Chinese words that sounded like each syllable.
Koreans used the characters phonetically to write Korean particles and inflections added to Chinese texts as an aid to reading. In Japan, the practice was developed into man'yōgana, a complete script for the Japanese language using Chinese characters phonetically, the ancestor of modern kana syllabaries; this system was in use in the verse parts of the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki. For example, the first line of the first poem in the Kojiki was written with five characters: This method of writing Japanese syllables by using characters for their Chinese sounds was supplemented with indirect methods in the complex mixed script of the Man'yōshū. In man'yōgana, each Old Japanese syllable was represented by a Chinese character. Although any one of several characters could be used for a given syllable, a careful analysis revealed that 88 syllables were distinguished in the Kojiki: The system has the same gaps of yi and wu found in forms of Japanese. However, many syllables that have a modern i, e or o occurred in two forms, termed types A and B, denoted by subscripts 1 and 2 in the above table.
The syllables mo1 and mo2 are not distinguished in the later Nihon Shoki and Man'yōshū, reducing the syllable count to 87. All of these pairs had merged by the Early Middle Japanese of the Heian period. Several different notations for the type A/B distinction are found in the literature, including: There is no consensus on the pronunciation of the syllables distinguished by man'yōgana. One difficulty is that the Middle Chinese pronunciations of the characters used are disputed, since their reconstruction is based on Sino-Japanese pronunciations, there is a danger of circular reasoning. Additional evidence has been drawn from phonological typology, subsequent developments in the Japanese pronunciation, comparative study of the Ryukyuan languages. Old Japanese had open syllables, of the form V, subject to additional restrictions: Words do not begin with r or the voiced plosives b, d, z and g, with the exception of a few loanwords. A
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words. By extension, the term "the etymology" means the origin of the particular word and for place names, there is a specific term, toponymy. For Greek—with a long written history—etymologists make use of texts, texts about the language, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods and when they entered the language. Etymologists apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about languages that are too old for any direct information to be available. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots have been found that can be traced all the way back to the origin of, for instance, the Indo-European language family. Though etymological research grew from the philological tradition, much current etymological research is done on language families where little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian.
The word etymology derives from the Greek word ἐτυμολογία, itself from ἔτυμον, meaning "true sense", the suffix -logia, denoting "the study of". In linguistics, the term etymon refers to a word or morpheme from which a word derives. For example, the Latin word candidus, which means "white", is the etymon of English candid. Etymologists apply a number of methods to study the origins of words, some of which are: Philological research. Changes in the form and meaning of the word can be traced with the aid of older texts, if such are available. Making use of dialectological data; the form or meaning of the word might show variations between dialects, which may yield clues about its earlier history. The comparative method. By a systematic comparison of related languages, etymologists may be able to detect which words derive from their common ancestor language and which were instead borrowed from another language; the study of semantic change. Etymologists must make hypotheses about changes in the meaning of particular words.
Such hypotheses are tested against the general knowledge of semantic shifts. For example, the assumption of a particular change of meaning may be substantiated by showing that the same type of change has occurred in other languages as well. Etymological theory recognizes that words originate through a limited number of basic mechanisms, the most important of which are language change, borrowing. While the origin of newly emerged words is more or less transparent, it tends to become obscured through time due to sound change or semantic change. Due to sound change, it is not obvious that the English word set is related to the word sit, it is less obvious that bless is related to blood. Semantic change may occur. For example, the English word bead meant "prayer", it acquired its modern meaning through the practice of counting the recitation of prayers by using beads. English derives from Old English, a West Germanic variety, although its current vocabulary includes words from many languages; the Old English roots may be seen in the similarity of numbers in English and German seven/sieben, eight/acht, nine/neun, ten/zehn.
Pronouns are cognate: I/mine/me and ich/mein/mich. However, language change has eroded many grammatical elements, such as the noun case system, simplified in modern English, certain elements of vocabulary, some of which are borrowed from French. Although many of the words in the English lexicon come from Romance languages, most of the common words used in English are of Germanic origin; when the Normans conquered England in 1066, they brought their Norman language with them. During the Anglo-Norman period, which united insular and continental territories, the ruling class spoke Anglo-Norman, while the peasants spoke the vernacular English of the time. Anglo-Norman was the conduit for the introduction of French into England, aided by the circulation of Langue d'oïl literature from France; this led to many paired words of English origin. For example, beef is related, through borrowing, to modern French bœuf, veal to veau, pork to porc, poultry to poulet. All these words and English, refer to the meat rather than to the animal.
Words that refer to farm animals, on the other hand, tend to be cognates of words in other Germanic languages. For example, swine/Schwein, cow/Kuh, calf/Kalb, sheep/Schaf; the variant usage has been explained by the proposition that it was the Norman rulers who ate meat and the Anglo-Saxons who farmed the animals. This explanation has been disputed. English has proved accommodating to words from many languages. Scientific terminology, for example, relies on words of Latin and Greek origin, but there are a great many non-scientific examples. Spanish has contributed many words in the southwestern United States. Examples include buckaroo, rodeo and states' names such as Colorado and Florida. Albino, lingo and coconut from Portuguese. Modern French has contributed café, naive and many more. Smorgasbord, slalom
Izanagi
Izanagi is a deity born of the seven divine generations in Japanese mythology and Shinto, his name in the Kojiki is translated to as "he-who-invites". He is known as Izanagi-no-mikoto or Izanagi-no-Ōkami, he with his spouse and younger sister Izanami gave birth to the many islands of Japan, begat numerous deities of Shintoism. But she died after giving birth to the fire-god Kagu-tsuchi. Izanagi executed the fire god with the "ten-grasp sword". Afterwards, he paid his wife a visit in Yomi-no-kuni in the hopes of retrieving her, but she had partaken of food cooked in the furnace of the Underworld, rendering her return impossible. Izanagi betrayed his promise not to look at her, lit up a fire, only to behold her in her monstrous and hellish state. To avenge her shame, she dispatched the lightning god Yakusa no ikazuchi no kami and the horrible hag Yomotsu-shikome to chase after him. Izanagi escaped. Izanagi retorted that a five hundred will be born every day. In the cleansing right after his return, he beget Amaterasu from his left eye, Tsukuyomi from his right eye and Susanoo from his nose.
Izanagi's visit to his wife Izanami in Yomi-no-kuni somewhat parallels the Greek Orpheus's visit to Eurydice in the underworld, but a more striking resemblance is his wife's inability to return after eating the food in hell, matched by Persephone of Greek myth. Izanagi Plate Shinto in popular culture
