The designation of the Japanese word class "joshi" (in English known as particles, post-positional case markers, or relationals) by the term te-ni-wo-ha can be traced to the early superimposition of the Chinese writing system on Japanese speech. Because of the structural differences between the two languages and the existence of elements in Japanese not covered by the Chinese writing system, the Japanese developed a notational chart of dots to be added to the Chinese characters. Such a dot-code system was used to express relationships of the joshi and was designated te-ni-wo-ha by combining the names of the particles at the four corners of the chart. The term te-ni-wo-ha remains today even though the original dot-code system no longer exists and the Chinese characters used for writing Japanese are phonological representations containing no graphic, inherently syntactic indication of meaning. (VM)