Koto (kana)

ヿ, read as koto, is a typographic ligature in the Japanese language, consisting of a combination of the katakana graphs of コ ([ko]) and ト ([to]), and thus represents their combined sound, コト ([koto]). It is drawn with one stroke. It is uncommon and used only in vertical writing.

In Unicode

See also

Koto

Koto may refer to:

Languages

See also

Koto (traditional clothing)

The koto or kotomisse is a traditional dress from the Afro-Surinamese women or Creoles in Suriname. The koto was developed during the slavery period in Suriname; its special purpose was to protect the Afro-Surinamese woman against their masters’ sexual interest.

Different kotos exist for various occasions like weddings or funerals. The development of the koto as regular dress is not complete but it is still used in special occasions like the koto-dansi.

With the koto, women wear a head or body covering called an angisa or anisa. The folding of the angisa sends a social message, for example “Let them talk.”

Gallery

1904-1933

1904-1933

Koto, 1885

Koto, 1885

Doll in koto

Doll in koto

Doll in koto

Doll in koto

References

External links

Koto (instrument)

The koto (Japanese: 箏) is a traditional Japanese stringed musical instrument originated from the Chinese zheng, and similar to the Mongolian yatga, the Korean gayageum, and the Vietnamese đàn tranh. The koto is the national instrument of Japan. Koto are about 180 centimetres (71 in) length, and made from kiri wood (Paulownia tomentosa). They have 13 strings that are strung over 13 movable bridges along the width of the instrument, and there is also a 17-string koto variant. Players can adjust the string pitches by moving the white bridges before playing. To play the instrument, the strings are plucked using three finger picks, otherwise known as plectra (on thumb, index finger, and middle finger), to pluck the strings.

Name

The character for koto is 箏, although 琴 is often used. However, 琴 usually refers to another instrument, the kin. 箏, in certain contexts, is also read as sō. However, many times the character 箏 is used in titles, while 琴 is used in telling the number of kotos used.

Kana

Kana (仮名) are syllabic Japanese scripts, a part of the Japanese writing system contrasted with the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji (漢字). There are three kana scripts: modern cursive hiragana (ひらがな) that in past time known as a women script (women handwriting), modern angular katakana (カタカナ), and the old syllabic use of kanji known as man’yōgana (万葉仮名) that was ancestral to both. Hentaigana (変体仮名, "variant kana") are historical variants of modern standard hiragana. In modern Japanese, hiragana and katakana have directly corresponding character sets (different sets of characters representing the same sounds).

Katakana with a few additions is also used to write Ainu. Kana was used in Taiwanese as a gloss (furigana) for Chinese characters during the Japanese administration of Taiwan. See Taiwanese kana.

Each kana character (syllabogram) corresponds to one sound in the Japanese language. This is always CV (consonant onset with vowel nucleus), such as ka, ki, etc., or V (vowel), such as a, i, etc., with the sole exception of the C grapheme for nasal codas usually romanised as n. This structure had some scholars label the system moraic instead of syllabic, because it requires the combination of two syllabograms to represent a CVC syllable with coda (i.e. CVn, CVm, CVng), a CVV syllable with complex nucleus (i.e. multiple or expressively long vowels), or a CCV syllable with complex onset (i.e. including a glide, CyV, CwV).

Kanał

Kanał (Polish pronunciation: [ˈkanaw], Sewer) is a 1956 Polish film directed by Andrzej Wajda. It was the first film made about the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, telling the story of a company of Home Army resistance fighters escaping the Nazi onslaught through the city's sewers. Kanał is the second film of Wajda's War Trilogy, preceded by A Generation and followed by Ashes and Diamonds.

The film was the winner of the Special Jury Award at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.

Plot

It is 25 September 1944, during the last days of the Warsaw Uprising. Lieutenant Zadra leads a unit of 43 soldiers and civilians to a new position amidst the ruins of the now isolated southern Mokotów district of Warsaw.

The composer Michał manages to telephone his wife and child in another part of the city that is being overrun by the Germans. After a few words, she tells him that the Germans are clearing the building and that they are coming for her. Then the line goes dead. The next morning, 23-year-old Officer Cadet Korab apologizes after walking into a room to find the second in command, Lieutenant Mądry, and messenger girl Halinka in bed together (Halinka later reveals that Mądry is her first lover). A German attack is beaten off, but Korab is wounded while disabling a Goliath tracked mine.

Kana Software

KANA Software, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Verint Systems (NASDAQ: VRNT) and provides on-premises and cloud computing hosted customer engagement optimization (CEO) products to many of the Fortune 500, mid-market businesses and government agencies.

History

Mark Gainey founded KANA in 1996 to market a software package designed to help businesses manage email and Web-based communications. It grew around this core offering. In 1999, KANA Communications (as it was then known) acquired Connectify followed by Business Evolution and NetDialog. In 2000, KANA made its then-largest acquisition, Silknet Software. The purchase price was $4.2 billion, despite the fact that both companies were relatively small. Silknet was an early multichannel marketing software company. Industry analysts were generally cool to the purchase though some said it made sense strategically. In 2001, KANA merged with BroadBase software. KANA was a major stock market success during the dot-com bubble, and while it contracted significantly during the following downturn, it remained in business as an independent company through the following decade.