Consider the gojuon layout of hiragana. There is 1 column for the vowels, 9 columns for syllables beginning with consonants, and finally "n".
Find a word or phrase in Japanese of 9 syllables (kana) such that the syllables come from the 9 consonant columns and use each column exactly once. Perhaps also permit vowel kana and "n", but they are ignored.
Such a word, a type of pangram, induces an ordering of the 9 columns, which would be an improvement over the traditional ordering K S T N H M Y R W (right to left: W R Y M H N T S K ) which makes no (modern) sense as it is a carryover from Sanskrit. What (if any) is the reason for the order of the letters/sounds in the Sanskrit alphabet?
Previously, we considered similarly reordering the letters of the Latin alphabet.
There are almost certainly Japanese mnemonics to memorize the traditional ordering.
We also have to specify an ordering of the vowels. However, a natural vowel ordering exists, namely I E A O U, corresponding to a compact path through the vowel chart in linguistics, or equivalently a compact path of the tongue through the mouth.
Incidentally, Japanese already has the impressive Iroha poem, which is a perfect pangram over all the hiragana, not just the columns. The poem is used as an ordering. Have there been subsequent attempts at better poems?
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