Downtown Nanjing near the old city - we went to see a confucius temple.

Downtown Nanjing near the old city - we went to see a confucius temple.

Location
ChinaNanjing
Photographer
John Hovell
Date taken

Comments

  • Do you know what language is above and below the English? Characters look identical, but one is much longer.

    — Margaret Hovell

  • The one below the English is Japanese. Japanese writing uses Chinese characters (kanji) which as I understand it almost always represent the same concepts as their Chinese counterparts (but are pronounced differently), thus the similar strings of characters. The somewhat less complex rounded characters are hiragana, I think, which are phonetic syllabaries used for neologisms or words that don't exist in kanji. There's probably also be katakana characters in there but that is only based on my understanding that katakana characters are used for foreign words and words borrowed from other languages, technical jargon, etc.

    — John Hovell