In historical kana, where the geminate mark is used in the first, second, and fourth examples, a full-sized version of the original kana is used. However, in the third example, ("tsu") is used, even though an has been elided. The reason for this is that in Early Middle Japanese, when these sounds were borrowed from Middle Chinese, the Japanese language acquired a final in the Sino-Japanese morphemes that currently end in ("chi", ) or ("tsu", ). Later on, these acquired two forms, one with and one with (although in syllables beginning with , one form usually begins with , as is the case with ). So the semantic difference between Sino-Japanese syllables ending in or is almost always trivial, and the historical pronunciation was identical, so they were not distinguished in writing. Therefore, the previous examples would be written: