representative examples showing the historical and modern spellings and the kanji representation. The table at the bottom gives a more complete list of the changes in spelling patterns. Current usage Historical kana usage can be used to look up words in larger dictionaries and dictionaries specializing in old vocabulary, which are in print in Japan. Because of the great discrepancy between the pronunciation and spelling and the widespread adoption of modern kana usage, historical kana usage is almost never seen, except in a few special cases. Companies, shrines and people occasionally use historical kana conventions such as (Ebisu), notably in Yebisu beer, which is written webisu but pronounced ebisu. Also, some long-standing company names retain yōon in full-sized kana, like (Canon) or stamp manufacturer (Shachihata). In addition, alternate kana letterforms, known as hentaigana , have nearly disappeared. A few uses remain, such as kisoba, often written using obsolete kana on the signs of soba shops. The use of wo, he, and ha instead of o, e, and wa for the grammatical particles o, e, wa is a remnant of historical kana usage. Table of differences The following tables summarize every possible historical spelling for the syllables which were spelled differently under the historical system. When more than one historical spelling is given for a particular modern spelling, the various historical spellings were etymologically (and at one point phonetically) distinct and occurred in different words (i.e., are not merely different ways to spell the same word). The tables are sorted using the gojūon ordering system. Note that the dakuten (voicing mark) was frequently omitted as well, as in the station sign at right. Table references Notes The spellings in the first table only apply to word-medial kana: word-initial occurrences of わ, い, う, え,and お were never written as は, ひ, ふ, へ, or ほ, respectively. In modern Japanese orthography, ぢ (di) is only used in compound words where rendaku causes ち (chi) to become voiced. This is retained in order to avoid confusion (the usage of づ (du) in modern orthography is the same). The spelling rules that use ぢ in a modern spelling are referring to these cases only; they therefore will never apply to individual words. In historical kana, however, ぢ (and づ) were sometimes used where じ (or ず) are used in modern kana. This original represented a different phoneme (and still does in some dialects), but