Today's language lesson comes from Asia, a continent I like as much as I like all the other continents.The three characters you see in the column to the left above are Chinese characters - hànzì in Chinese. In Japanese they are called "kanji". The first character, 己, is today pronounced "jǐ". However, a thousand years ago or so, it was probably pronounced more like "ki" or "ke".
The second character, 止, is today pronounced "zhǐ", but back then, it was probably more of "te". The bottom character, 毛, is today pronounced "máo" - yes, like chairman 毛 of the Chinese communist party. A thousand years ago, however, he would probably be called chairman "Maw" or something like that.
That was the first column.
The Japanese, who did not have any writing system themselves 1500 years ago, decided to use the Chinese characters. They took 己 and decided to pronounce it "ko" - almost like the Chinese. However, they decided to simplify 己, and instead wrote コ. Or こ. Likewise they made two different versions of 止: ト and と to write "to". And chairman 毛 was used to write "mo" in the simplified shapes of モ and も. The variants you find in the second column are called "katakana" and the variants you find in the third column are called "hiragana".
Now, you probably guessed what the fourth column is. Yes, it is exactly the same three characters again! It is the hiragana variant written in a font inspired by the 12th century poet and calligrapher Fujiwara no Teika (藤原定家).
The font's name is Kazuraki (かづらき). If you also want to be able to write Japanese in a way so people will not be able to read it, you can buy it from Adobe.
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The above and many other ancient Chinese pronunciations can be found at Rinet. A lot of what we know about ancient Chinese pronunciation comes from the works of Karlgren.
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