is a
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
syllabaryA syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
, one basic component of the
Japanese writing systemThe modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:*Kanji, adopted Chinese characters*Kana, a pair of syllabaries , consisting of:...
, along with
katakanais a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
,
kanjiKanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
, and the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
(rōmaji). Hiragana and katakana are both
kanaKana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
systems, in which each character represents one
moraMora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
. Each
kana is either a vowel such as
"a" (あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as
"ka" (か); or
"n" (ん), a
nasalA nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
sonorantIn phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; fricatives and plosives are not sonorants. Vowels are sonorants, as are consonants like and . Other consonants, like or , restrict the airflow enough to cause turbulence, and...
which, depending on the context, sounds either like English
m,
n, or
ng (ŋ), or like the
nasal vowelA nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
s of
FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
.
Hiragana is used to write native words for which there are no
kanjiKanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
, including
particlesJapanese particles, or , are suffixes or short words in Japanese grammar that immediately follow the modified noun, verb, adjective, or sentence. Their grammatical range can indicate various meanings and functions, such as speaker affect and assertiveness....
such as から
kara "from", and suffixes such as さん
~san "Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms." Likewise, hiragana is used in words for which the kanji form is obscure, not known to the writer or readers, or too formal for the writing purpose.
Verb and adjective inflectionsare kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to disambiguate kanji with multiple readings...
, as, for example,
be-ma-shi-ta (べました) in , are written in hiragana, often following a verb or adjective root (here, "食") that is written in kanji. Hiragana is also used to give the
pronunciationPronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....
of kanji in a reading aid called
furiganais a Japanese reading aid, consisting of smaller kana, or syllabic characters, printed next to a kanji or other character to indicate its pronunciation. In horizontal text, yokogaki, they are placed above the line of text, while in vertical text, tategaki, they are placed to the right of the line...
. The article
Japanese writing systemThe modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:*Kanji, adopted Chinese characters*Kana, a pair of syllabaries , consisting of:...
discusses in detail how the various systems of writing are used.
There are two main systems of ordering hiragana, the old-fashioned
irohaThe is a Japanese poem, probably written in the Heian era . Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian Period. The first record of its existence...
ordering, and the more prevalent
gojūonThe is a Japanese ordering of kana.It is named for the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed, but the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a...
ordering.
Writing system
The complete hiragana syllabary consists of 48 characters:
- 39 distinct consonant-vowel unions
- 5 singular vowels
- 1 singular consonant
- 1 particle that is pronounced as a vowel in modern Japanese
- 2 consonant-vowel unions that are pronounced as vowels and are obsolete in modern Japanese
These basic characters can be modified in various ways. By adding a
dakuten, colloquially ten-ten , is a diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced. Handakuten , colloquially maru , is a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should...
marker ( ゛), a voiceless consonant is turned into a voiced consonant:
k→
g,
s→
z,
t→
d,
h→
b and
ch/
sh→
j. Hiragana beginning with an
h can also add a
handakuten marker ( ゜) changing the
h to a
p.
A small version of the hiragana for
ya,
yu or
yo (ゃ, ゅ or ょ respectively) may be added to hiragana ending in
i. This changes the
i vowel sound to a glide (
palatalizationIn linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
) to
a,
u or
o. Addition of the small
y kana is called
yōonis a feature of the Japanese language in which a mora is formed with an added sound.Yōon are represented in hiragana using a kana ending in i, such as き , plus a smaller-than-usual version of one of the three y kana, ya, yu or yo. For example kyō, "today", is written きょう, using a small version of...
. を
wo is included (although pronounced the same as vowel お
o, [o]).
A small
tsu っ, called a
sokuonThe is a Japanese symbol consisting of a small hiragana or katakana tsu. In less formal language it is called or , meaning "little tsu". Compare to a full-sized tsu:The sokuon is used for various purposes...
, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). For example, compare さか
saka "hill" with さっか
sakka "author". It also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a
glottal stopThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
, as in いてっ! (iteʔ Ouch!). However, it cannot be used to double the
na,
ni,
nu,
ne,
no syllables' consonants – to double them, the singular
n (ん) is added in front of the syllable.
Hiragana usually spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana. The
chōonpuThe , also known as ', ', or Katakana-Hiragana Prolonged Sound Mark by the Unicode Consortium, is a Japanese symbol which indicates a chōon, or a long vowel of two morae in length. Its form is a horizontal or vertical line in the center of the text with the width of one kanji or kana character...
(long vowel mark) (ー) used in katakana is rarely used with hiragana, for example in the word らーめん,
rāmenis a Japanese noodle dish. It consists of Chinese-style wheat noodles served in a meat- or fish-based broth, often flavored with soy sauce or miso, and uses toppings such as , , kamaboko, green onions, and occasionally corn...
, but this usage is considered non-standard. In informal writing, small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds (はぁ
haa, ねぇ
nee). Standard and voiced iteration marks are written in hiragana as ゝ and ゞ respectively.
Table of hiragana
The following table shows hiragana together with their
Hepburn romanizationThe is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887. The system was originally proposed by the in 1885...
and
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
transcription in the
gojūon order. Hiragana with
dakuten or
handakuten follow the
gojūon kana without them, with the
yōon kana following. Obsolete and normally unused kana are shown in
gray. For all syllables besides ん, the pronunciation indicated is for word-initial syllables, for mid-word pronunciations see below.
Hiragana syllabograms
| Monographs (gojūon The is a Japanese ordering of kana.It is named for the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed, but the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a...
) |
Digraphs (yōon is a feature of the Japanese language in which a mora is formed with an added sound.Yōon are represented in hiragana using a kana ending in i, such as き , plus a smaller-than-usual version of one of the three y kana, ya, yu or yo. For example kyō, "today", is written きょう, using a small version of...
) |
| a | | i | | u | | e | | o |
ya | | yu | | yo |
| ∅ |
あ
a a |
い
i i |
う
u u͍ |
え
e e |
お
o o |
|
| K |
か
ka ka |
き
ki ki |
く
ku ku͍ |
け
ke ke |
こ
ko ko |
きゃ
kya kʲa |
きゅ
kyu kʲu͍ |
きょ
kyo kʲo |
| S |
さ
sa sa |
し
shi ɕi |
す
su su͍ |
せ
se se |
そ
so so |
しゃ
sha ɕa |
しゅ
shu ɕu͍ |
しょ
sho ɕo |
| T |
た
ta ta |
ち
chi t͡ɕi |
つ
tsu t͡su͍ |
て
te te |
と
to to |
ちゃ
cha t͡ɕa |
ちゅ
chu t͡ɕu͍ |
ちょ
cho t͡ɕo |
| N |
な
na na |
に
ni nʲi |
ぬ
nu nu͍ |
ね
ne ne |
の
no no |
にゃ
nya nʲa |
にゅ
nyu nʲu͍ |
にょ
nyo nʲo |
| H |
は
ha (also particle "wa")ha |
ひ
hi çi |
ふ
fu ɸu͍ |
へ
he he |
ほ
ho ho |
ひゃ
hya ça |
ひゅ
hyu çu͍ |
ひょ
hyo ço |
| M |
ま
ma ma |
み
mi mi |
む
mu mu͍ |
め
me me |
も
mo mo |
みゃ
mya mʲa |
みゅ
myu mʲu͍ |
みょ
myo mʲo |
| Y |
や
ya ja |
|
ゆ
yu ju͍ |
|
よ
yo jo |
|
| R |
ら
ra ɽa |
り
ri ɽi |
る
ru ɽu͍ |
れ
re ɽe |
ろ
ro ɽo |
りゃ
rya ɽʲa |
りゅ
ryu ɽʲu͍ |
りょ
ryo ɽʲo |
| W |
わ
wa wa |
[ゐ|ゐ]]
i/wi i |
|
[ゑ|ゑ]]
e/we e |
を
o/wo (particle)o |
|
|
| * |
ん
n
n m ŋ before stop consonants;
ɴ ũ͍ ĩ elsewhere |
っ
(indicates a geminate consonant) |
ゝ
(reduplicates and
unvoices syllable) |
ゞ
(reduplicates and
voices syllable) |
|
| Diacritics (gojūon The is a Japanese ordering of kana.It is named for the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed, but the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a...
with (han)dakuten, colloquially ten-ten , is a diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced. Handakuten , colloquially maru , is a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should...
) |
Digraphs with diacritics (yōon is a feature of the Japanese language in which a mora is formed with an added sound.Yōon are represented in hiragana using a kana ending in i, such as き , plus a smaller-than-usual version of one of the three y kana, ya, yu or yo. For example kyō, "today", is written きょう, using a small version of...
with (han)dakuten, colloquially ten-ten , is a diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced. Handakuten , colloquially maru , is a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should...
) |
| a | i | u | e | o |
ya | yu | yo |
| G |
が
ga ɡa |
ぎ
gi ɡi |
ぐ
gu ɡu͍ |
げ
ge ɡe |
ご
go ɡo |
ぎゃ
gya ɡʲa |
ぎゅ
gyu ɡʲu͍ |
ぎょ
gyo ɡʲo |
| Z |
ざ
za za |
じ
ji d͡ʑi |
ず
zu zu͍ |
ぜ
ze ze |
ぞ
zo zo |
じゃ
ja d͡ʑa |
じゅ
ju d͡ʑu͍ |
じょ
jo d͡ʑo |
| D |
だ
da da |
ぢ
(ji) d͡ʑi |
づ
(zu) zu͍ |
で
de de |
ど
do do |
ぢゃ
(ja) d͡ʑa |
ぢゅ
(ju) d͡ʑu͍ |
ぢょ
(jo) d͡ʑo |
| B |
ば
ba ba |
び
bi bi |
ぶ
bu bu͍ |
べ
be be |
ぼ
bo bo |
びゃ
bya bʲa |
びゅ
byu bʲu͍ |
びょ
byo bʲo |
| P |
ぱ
pa pa |
ぴ
pi pi |
ぷ
pu pu͍ |
ぺ
pe pe |
ぽ
po po |
ぴゃ
pya pʲa |
ぴゅ
pyu pʲu͍ |
ぴょ
pyo pʲo |
| V |
|
ゔ
vu v(u͍) |
|
An early, now obsolete, hiragana-esque form of
ye may have existed (
𛀁 je) in pre-Classical Japanese (prior to the advent of
kanaKana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
), but is generally represented for purposes of reconstruction by the kanji 江, and its hiragana form is not present in any known orthography. In modern orthography,
ye can also be written as いぇ (イェ in
katakanais a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
). Though
ye did appear in some textbooks during the
Meiji periodThe , also known as the Meiji era, is a Japanese era which extended from September 1868 through July 1912. This period represents the first half of the Empire of Japan.- Meiji Restoration and the emperor :...
along with another kana for
yi in the form of cursive 以.
In the middle of words, the
g sound (normally [ɡ]) often turns into a
velar nasalThe velar nasal is the sound of ng in English sing. It is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N....
[ŋ] and less often (although increasing recently) into the
voiced velar fricativeThe voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in various spoken languages. It is not found in English today, but did exist in Old English...
[ɣ]. An exception to this is numerals; 15
juugo is considered to be one word, but is pronounced as if it was
jū and
go stacked end to end: [d͡ʑu͍ːɡo].
Additionally, the
j sound (normally [d͡ʑ]) can be pronounced [ʑ] in the middle of words. For example すうじ
sūji [su͍ːʑi] 'number'.
In archaic forms of Japanese, there existed the
kwa ( kʷa) and
gwa ( ɡʷa) digraphs. In modern Japanese, these phonemes have been phased out of usage and only exist in the extended
katakanais a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
digraphs for approximating foreign language words.
The singular
n is pronounced [n] before
t,
ch,
ts,
n,
r,
z,
j and
d, [m] before
m,
b and
p, [ŋ] before
k and
g, [ɴ] at the end of utterances, [ũ͍] before vowels, palatal approximants (
y), consonants
s,
sh,
h,
f and
w, and finally [ĩ] after the vowel
i if another vowel, palatal approximant or consonant
s,
sh,
h,
f or
w follows.
In kanji readings, the diphthongs
ou and
ei are today usually pronounced [oː] (long o) and [eː] (long e) respectively. For example とうきょう
toukyou is pronounced [toːkʲoː] 'Tokyo', and せんせい
sensei is [seũ͍seː] 'teacher'. However, とう
tou is pronounced [tou͍] 'to inquire', because the
o and
u are considered distinct,
u being the infinitive verb ending. Similarly, している
shite iru is pronounced [ɕiteiɾu͍] 'is doing'.
For a more thorough discussion on the sounds of Japanese, please refer to
Japanese phonologyThis article deals with the phonology of the Japanese language.-Consonants:The Japanese vowels are pronounced as monophthongs, unlike in English; except for , they are similar to their Spanish or Italian counterparts....
.
Spelling rules
With a few exceptions for sentence particles は, を, and へ , and a few other arbitrary rules, Japanese is phonemically orthographic. This has not always been the case: a previous system of spelling, now referred to as
historical kana usageThe , or , refers to the in general use until orthographic reforms after World War II; the current orthography was adopted by Cabinet order in 1946. By that point the historical orthography was no longer in accord with Japanese pronunciation...
, had many spelling rules; the exceptions in modern usage are the legacy of that system. The exact spelling rules are referred to as .
There are two hiragana pronounced
ji (じ and ぢ) and two hiragana pronounced
zu (ず and づ). These pairs are not interchangeable. Usually,
ji is written as じ and
zu is written as ず. There are some exceptions. If the first two syllables of a word consist of one syllable without a
dakuten, colloquially ten-ten , is a diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced. Handakuten , colloquially maru , is a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should...
and the same syllable with a
dakuten, the same hiragana is used to write the sounds. For example
chijimeru ('to boil down' or 'to shrink') is spelled ちぢめる and
tsuzuku ('to continue') is つづく. For compound words where the dakuten reflects
rendakuis a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of the non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word...
voicing, the original hiragana is used. For example,
chi ( 'blood') is spelled ち in plain hiragana. When
hana ('nose') and
chi ('blood') combine to make
hanaji 'nose bleed'), the sound of 血 changes from
chi to
ji. So
hanaji is spelled はなぢ according to ち: the basic hiragana used to transcribe . Similarly,
tsukau is spelled つかう in hiragana, so
kanazukai is spelled かなづかい in hiragana.
However, this does not apply when kanji are used phonetically to write words which do not relate directly to the meaning of the kanji (see also
atejiIn modern Japanese, primarily refers to kanji used phonetically to represent native or borrowed words, without regard to the meaning of the underlying characters. This is analogous to man'yōgana in pre-modern Japanese...
). The Japanese word for 'lightning', for example, is
inazuma . The component means 'rice plant', is written いな in hiragana and is pronounced:
ina. The component means 'wife' and is pronounced
tsuma (つま) when written in isolation—or frequently as
zuma (ずま) when it features after another syllable. Neither of these components have anything to do with 'lightning', but together they do when they compose the word for 'lightning'. In this case, the default spelling in hiragana いなずま rather than いなづま is used.
Officially, ぢ and づ do not occur word-initially pursuant to modern spelling rules. There were words such as ぢばん
jiban 'ground' in the
historical kana usageThe , or , refers to the in general use until orthographic reforms after World War II; the current orthography was adopted by Cabinet order in 1946. By that point the historical orthography was no longer in accord with Japanese pronunciation...
, but they were unified under じ in the modern kana usage in 1946, so today it is spelled exclusively じばん. However, づら
zura 'wig' (from かつら
katsura) and づけ
zuke (a sushi term for lean tuna soaked in soy sauce) are examples of word-initial づ today. Some people write the word for hemorrhoids as ぢ (normally じ) for emphasis.
No standard Japanese words begin with the kana ん (
n). This is the basis of the word game
shiritoriShiritori is a Japanese word game in which the players are required to say a word which begins with the final kana of the previous word. No distinction is made between hiragana, katakana and kanji...
. ん
n is normally treated as its own syllable and is separate from the other
n-based kana (
na,
ni etc.). A notable exception to this is the colloquial negative verb conjugation; for example わからない
wakaranai meaning "[I] don't understand" is rendered as わからん
wakaran. It is however not a contraction of the former, but instead comes from the classic negative verb conjugation ぬ
nu (わからぬ
wakaranu).
ん is sometimes directly followed by a vowel (
a,
i,
u,
e or
o) or a palatal approximant (
ya,
yu or
yo). These are clearly distinct from the
na,
ni etc. syllables, and there are
minimal pairIn phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phonological element, such as a phone, phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have distinct meanings...
s such as きんえん
kin'en 'smoking forbidden', きねん
kinen 'commemoration', きんねん
kinnen 'recent years'. In Hepburn romanization, they are distinguished with an apostrophe, but not all romanization methods make the distinction. For example past prime minister
Junichiro Koizumiis a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 2001 to 2006. He retired from politics when his term in parliament ended.Widely seen as a maverick leader of the Liberal Democratic Party , he became known as an economic reformer, focusing on Japan's government debt and the...
's first name is actually じゅんいちろう
Jun'ichirō pronounced [d͡ʑu͍ũ͍it͡ɕiɾoː]
There are a few hiragana which are rarely used. ゐ
wi and ゑ
we are obsolete outside of Okinawan dialects. ゔ
vu is a modern addition used to represent the /v/ sound in foreign languages such as English, but since Japanese from a phonological standpoint does not have a /v/ sound, it is pronounced as /b/ and mostly serves as a more accurate indicator of a word's pronunciation in its original language. However, it is rarely seen because
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s and
transliteratedTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
words are usually written in
katakanais a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
, where the corresponding character would be written as ヴ. ぢゃ, ぢゅ, ぢょ for
ja/
ju/
jo are theoretically possible in
rendakuis a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of the non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word...
, but are practically never used. For example 日本中 'throughout Japan' could be written にほんぢゅう, but is practically always にほんじゅう.
The みゅ
myu kana is extremely rare in originally Japanese words; linguist
Haruhiko KindaichiHaruhiko Kindaichi was a Japanese linguist and a scholar of Japanese linguistics Kokugogaku. He was well known as an editor of Japanese dictionaries and his research in Japanese dialects. His medal for merit is . He took the Doctor of Literature degree at Tokyo University, in 1962...
raises the example of the Japanese family name Omamyūda (小豆生田) and claims it is the only occurrence amongst pure Japanese words. Its
katakanais a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
counterpart is used in many loanwords, however.
History
Hiragana developed from
man'yōgana,
ChineseThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
characters used for their pronunciations, a practice which started in the 5th century. The oldest example of Man'yōgana is
Inariyama SwordThe iron or was excavated at the Inariyama Kofun in 1968. Inariyama Kofun is located in Saitama Prefecture. In 1978, X-ray analysis revealed a gold-inlaid inscription that comprises more than 115 Chinese characters. This sword was described as the discovery of the century for the study of...
which is an iron sword excavated at the Inariyama Kofun in 1968. This sword is thought to be made in year of 辛亥年 (which is A.D. 471 in commonly accepted theory).
The forms of the hiragana originate from the
cursive scriptCursive script , sometimes translated as Grass script is a style of Chinese calligraphy. Cursive script is faster to write than other styles, but difficult to read for those unfamiliar with it. It functions primarily as a kind of shorthand script or calligraphic style...
style of Chinese calligraphy. The figure below shows the derivation of hiragana from manyōgana via cursive script. The upper part shows the character in the
regular scriptRegular script , also called 正楷 , 真書 , 楷体 and 正書 , is the newest of the Chinese script styles Regular script , also called 正楷 , 真書 (zhēnshū), 楷体 (kǎitǐ) and 正書 (zhèngshū), is the newest of the Chinese script styles Regular script , also called 正楷 , 真書 (zhēnshū), 楷体 (kǎitǐ) and 正書 (zhèngshū), is...
form, the center character in red shows the cursive script form of the character, and the bottom shows the equivalent hiragana. Note also that the cursive script forms are not strictly confined to those in the illustration.
When they were first developed, hiragana were not accepted by everyone. Many felt that the language of the educated was still Chinese. Historically, in Japan, the regular script (
kaisho) form of the characters was used by men and called , "men's writing", while the cursive script (
sōsho) form of the kanji was used by women. Thus hiragana first gained popularity among women, who were generally not allowed access to the same levels of education as men. From this comes the alternative name of "women's writing". For example,
The Tale of Genjiis a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century, around the peak of the Heian period. It is sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first psychological novel or the first novel still to be...
and other early novels by female authors used hiragana extensively or exclusively.
Male authors came to write literature using hiragana. Hiragana was used for unofficial writing such as personal letters, while katakana and Chinese were used for official documents. In modern times, the usage of hiragana has become mixed with
katakanais a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
writing. Katakana is now relegated to special uses such as recently borrowed words (i.e., since the 19th century), names in
transliterationTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
, the names of animals, in telegrams, and for emphasis.
Originally, all syllables had more than one hiragana. In 1900, the system was simplified so each syllable had only one hiragana. Other hiragana are known as
The
pangramA pangram , or holoalphabetic sentence, is a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and keyboarding...
poem
IrohaThe is a Japanese poem, probably written in the Heian era . Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian Period. The first record of its existence...
-uta ("ABC song/poem"), which dates to the 10th century, uses every hiragana once (except
n ん, which was just a variant of む before Muromachi era).
Stroke order and direction
The following table shows the method for writing each hiragana character. It is arranged in the traditional way, beginning top right and reading columns down. The numbers and arrows indicate the
stroke orderStroke order refers to the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character are written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument on a writing surface. Chinese characters are used in various forms in Chinese, Japanese, and in Korean...
and direction respectively.
Unicode
Hiragana was added to the
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0.
The Unicode block for Hiragana is U+3040 ... U+309F. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points:
The Unicode hiragana block contains precomposed characters for all hiragana in the modern set, including small vowels and yōon kana for compound syllables, plus the archaic ゐ
wi and ゑ
we and the rare ゔ
vu; the archaic 뀁
ye is included in plane 1 at U+1B001 (see below). All combinations of hiragana with
dakuten and
handakuten used in modern Japanese are available as precomposed characters, and can also be produced by using a base hiragana followed by the combining dakuten and handakuten characters (U+3099 and U+309A, respectively). This method is used to add the diacritics to kana that are not normally used with them, for example applying the dakuten to a pure vowel or the handakuten to a kana not in the h-group.
Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are small か (
ka) and small け (
ke), respectively. U+309F is a digraph of
より, read as yori, is a typographic ligature in the Japanese language, consisting of a combination of the hiragana graphs of and , and thus represents their combined sound, より . It is drawn with two strokes. It is uncommon and found almost exclusively in vertical writing.-In Unicode:...
(
yori) occasionally used in vertical text. U+309B and U+309C are spacing (non-combining) equivalents to the combining dakuten and handakuten characters, respectively.
Historic and variant forms of Japanese kana characters were added to the
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0.
The Unicode block for Kana Supplement is U+1B000 ... U+1B0FF. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points:
See also
- Shodo
"Shōdō" is the fortieth single by B'z, released on January 25, 2006. This song is one of B'z many number-one singles in Oricon charts. This song was the opening theme of Case Closed.- External links :*...
, Japanese calligraphy.
- Iteration mark
Iteration marks are characters or punctuation marks that represent a duplicated character or word.-Chinese:In Chinese, 二 or 々 is used in casual writing to represent a doubled character, but it is never used in formal writing or printed matter...
explains the iteration marks used with hiragana.
- Japanese typographic symbols
This page lists Japanese typographic symbols which are not included in kana or kanji.The links in the Unicode column lead to the Unihan database.-Repetition marks:-Brackets and quotation marks:-Phonetic marks:-Punctuation marks:...
gives other non-kana, non-kanji symbols.
- Japanese phonology
This article deals with the phonology of the Japanese language.-Consonants:The Japanese vowels are pronounced as monophthongs, unlike in English; except for , they are similar to their Spanish or Italian counterparts....
explains Japanese pronunciation in detail.
- Nü Shu
Nüshu , is a syllabic script, a simplification of Chinese characters that was used exclusively among women in Jiangyong County in Hunan province of southern China.-Language:...
, a syllabary writing system used by women in China's Hunan' is a province of South-Central China, located to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting...
province
- Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
External links