Today Japanese uses three different writing systems, kanji for showing the meanings of words, and hiragana and katakana for showing the sounds of words. While Japanese does not use spacing, native Japanese speakers can still tell apart words quickly because the three different types of writing look quite different from each other, and each writing system is usually used for a certain kind of word. Kanji is usually used to write native Japanese words, Chinese loanwords, and the roots of content words (nouns, adjective, adjectives, adverbs). Hiragana is usually used for common phrases, particles, and the inflections of content words. Katakana is usually used for loanwords from languages other than Chinese, onomatopoeia, and for extra emphasis.
Also like Chinese, it used no punctuation until after it had major interactions with Western countries, and it did not have any punctuation until the Meiji Period, when Japan quickly modernized.
The first sentence below is sentence written in Japanese using hiragana, katakana and kanji without spaces between words. The second is written in hiragana, katakana and kanji with spaces in between words (including particles). The third is written only in hiragana and katakana. The fourth is written entirely in romaji (Japanese written in the Latin alphabet). The fifth is the sentence translated translated in English. The sixth is written using "scriptio continua" entirely in kanji and man'yōgana.
Pennant Hills, New South Wales
Pennant Hills is a suburb located in the Northern Suburbs of Sydney, Australia.
École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris
École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris is a graduate engineering school in France. It is in a campus of the PSL Reseach University (Northern France).
Its different curricula lead to the following French & European degrees :
Academic activities and industrial applied research are performed mainly in French and English languages. Students from a dozen of nationalities participate to the different curricula at Mines ParisTech.
Admission to the Mines ParisTech engineering Programme implemented at Mines ParisTech is possible after two/three year scientific undergraduate studies.
The Mines ParisTech Programme typically lasts three years and results in a master's degree, augmented with international experience. Thus undergraduate studies + the Mines Programme account for more than a cumulated 300 ECTS credits as applicable in the European education system.
Research activities at Mines ParisTech relate to the following topics:
Wikimedia Bangladesh
Wikimedia Bangladesh Foundation (aka Wikimedia Bangladesh or WikimediaBD) is a registered charity established in Bangladesh who work to support volunteers on Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia. It is a Wikimedia chapter approved by the Wikimedia Foundation. It has a temporary office in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
South Luzon Expressway
The South Luzon Expressway, more commonly known by its abbreviation SLEx or SLEX, is a controlled-access highway in the Philippines. It connects the National Capital Region (or Metro Manila) to the provinces of the southern part of Luzon, the main island in the country. Measuring 51 kilometers or 32 miles long, it starts at an intersection with Quirino Avenue in the district of Paco in Manila. It then passes through the settlements of Makati, Pasay, Parañaque, Taguig, and Valenzuela in the capital area and the provinces of Cavite and Laguna in Southern Luzon. It ends at an exit in the settlement of Santo Tomas in the province of Batangas, where it continues as Southern Tagalog Arterial Road (or better known as STAR Tollway).
Pulilan
Pulilan is a municipality (or a town) in the province of Bulacan, Philippines. It lies 50 kilometers northwest of Manila and is located at the west-central part of the province. It is surrounded by the settlements of Apalit in Pampanga; by Baliuag in the north; by Plaridel in the south; and by Calumpit in the west.
According to the 2015 national census (a total count of the country's population) of the Philippines, it has 97,323 people.
The town is famous for its Carabao Festival, which happens once a year in May. This is where the carabaos (a kind of water buffalo in the Philippines) are walked together on the streets and kneel as they pass in front of San Isidro Labrador Parish Church, in honor to Saint Isidore the Laborer, the town's patron saint.
Pulilan is divided into 19 barangays (villages). These barangays are:
Yamato kotoba
Yamato kotoba (kanji: 大和言葉, hiragana: やまとことば) are words that are native to the Japanese language. The word itself is also a native Japanese word, interestingly enough. Yamato kotoba can also be called by its Chinese based name, wago (kanji: 和語, hiragana: わご). It is one of the three main sources of Japanese words, along with "kango" (kanji: 漢語, hiragana: かんご), or Chinese loanwords, and "gairaigo" (kanji: 外来語, hiragana: がいらいご), or loanwords borrowed from languages other than Chinese (especially English since the post-WWII era).
Yamato kotoba in Japanese has much in common with native English words in that most of the everyday vocabulary comes from yamato kotoba, while Chinese loanwords words (much like Latin and French loanwords in English) are used for more formal situations (usually writing) and for specialized terms.
Usually, words with only one kanji are yamato kotoba, such as "katana" (kanji: 刀, hiragana: かたな, meaning: sword), "sakana" (kanji: 魚, hiragana: さかな, meaning: fish), "kami" (kanji: 紙, hiragana: かみ, meaning: paper), "yama" (kanji: 山, hiragana: やま, meaning: mountain) "te" (kanji: 手, hiragana: て, meaning: hand), and "oyogu" (kanji and hiragana: 泳ぐ, hiragana only: およぐ, meaning: to swim). Most kanji (the Japanese version of Chinese characters) have two different kinds of pronunciation, on'yomi (the pronunciation of the kanji borrowed from Chinese) and kun'yomi (the native pronunciation of Japanese words that use the kanji). Yamato kotoba words use the kanji's kun'yomi.
Since on'yomi came from Chinese monosyllables (words with only one syllable), they themselves are also only one syllable, and like Chinese, they can have a CV or CVC structure. For example, the on'yomi for the following kanji 刀, 魚, 紙, 山, 手, and 泳 are "tō, shi, san, shu, and ei." However, kun'yomi can have one or multiple syllables, and those syllables are usually a CV structure, like the examples given above.
Since Japanese uses three different writing systems interchangeably, even yamato kotoba can be written in several different ways. For example, the word "sushi" can be written entirely in hiragana as すし, entirely in katakana as スシ, in kanji as 鮨 or 鮓, or in ateji (kanji used only to show a word's pronunciation and not its meaning) as 寿司 or 壽司.
Kanji usually show the root meaning of the word. While nouns are usually written only with kanji, they can also be written in kana if they are very common words, like "sushi", or if their kanji is not well known, not part of the "jōyō kanji" (a standard list of 1,945 kanji all Japanese adults are expected to know) or too difficult to remember how to write, like "bara," whose kanji is 薔薇, but is usually only written as ばら in hiragana or as バラ in katakana.