仮名
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

are
syllabaries In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) morae which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (option ...
used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''
hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...
'' and ''
katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
''. It can also refer to their ancestor , which were
Chinese characters Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...
used phonetically to transcribe Japanese (e.g. ''
man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of t ...
''); and ''
hentaigana In the Japanese writing system, are variant forms of hiragana. Description In contrast to modern Japanese, originally hiragana had several forms for a single sound. For example, while the hiragana reading "ha" has only one form in modern ...
'', which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana. Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu. A number of systems exist to write the
Ryūkyūan languages The , also Lewchewan or Luchuan (), are the indigenous languages of the Ryukyu Islands, the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. Along with the Japanese language and the Hachijō language, they make up the Japonic language family. J ...
, in particular Okinawan, in hiragana.
Taiwanese kana Taiwanese kana (, , ) is a katakana-based writing system that was used to write Taiwanese Hokkien (commonly called "Taiwanese") when the island of Taiwan was under Japanese rule. It functioned as a phonetic guide to hanzi, much like furig ...
were used in
Taiwanese Hokkien Taiwanese Hokkien ( , ), or simply Taiwanese, also known as Taigi ( zh, c=臺語, tl=Tâi-gí), Taiwanese Southern Min ( zh, c=臺灣閩南語, tl=Tâi-uân Bân-lâm-gí), Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively ...
as ruby text for Chinese characters in
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...
when it was under Japanese rule. Each kana character corresponds to one phoneme or syllable, unlike
kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...
, which generally each corresponds to a morpheme. Apart from the five vowels, it is always CV (consonant onset with vowel nucleus), such as ''ka'', ''ki'', ''sa'', ''shi'', etc., with the sole exception of the C grapheme for
nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...
codas usually romanised as ''n''. The structure has led some scholars to label the system '' moraic'', instead of ''syllabic'', because it requires the combination of two syllabograms to represent a CVC syllable with coda (e.g. CV''n'', CV''m'', CV''ng''), a CVV syllable with complex nucleus (i.e. multiple or expressively long vowels), or a CCV syllable with complex onset (i.e. including a glide, C''y''V, C''w''V). The limited number of
phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...
s in Japanese, as well as the relatively rigid syllable structure, makes the kana system a very accurate representation of spoken Japanese.


Etymology

''Kana'' is a compound of and , which eventually collapsed into ''kanna'' and ultimately ''kana''. ''Kana'' were so called in contrast with which were kanji used "regularly" (kanji used for their meanings as they are now), or more specifically the writing of such kanji. It was not until the 18th century that the early-nationalist movement, which promoted a move away from Sinocentric academia, began to reanalyze the script from a phonological point of view. In the following centuries, contrary to the traditional Sinocentric view, ''kana'' began to be considered a national Japanese writing system that was distinct from Chinese characters, which is the dominant view today.


Terms

Although the term 'kana' is now commonly understood as hiragana and katakana, it actually has broader application as listed below: * or : a
syllabary In the Linguistics, linguistic study of Written language, written languages, a syllabary is a set of grapheme, written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) mora (linguistics), morae which make up words. A symbol in a syllaba ...
. ** or : phonetic
kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...
used as syllabary characters, historically used by men (who were more educated). ***: the most prominent system of magana. ****: cursive man'yōgana. *****, , , or : a syllabary derived from simplified sōgana, historically used by women (who were less educated), historically sorted in ''
Iroha The is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian period (794–1179). The first record of its existence ...
'' order. ****** or : obsolete variants of hiragana. **** or : a syllabary derived by using bits of characters in man'yōgana, historically sorted in ''
gojūon In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (''gojū'') in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are dis ...
'' order. ****: hiragana and katakana, as opposed to kanji. ***: magana for transcribing Japanese words, using, strict or loose, Chinese-derived readings (''
on'yomi , or the Sino-Japanese vocabulary, Sino-Japanese reading, is the reading of a kanji based on the historical Chinese pronunciation of the character. A single kanji might have multiple ''on'yomi'' pronunciations, reflecting the Chinese pronuncia ...
''). For example, would be spelt as , with two magana with on'yomi for ''ya'' and ''ma''; likewise, spelt as for ''hi'' and ''to''. ***: magana for transcribing Japanese words, using native words ascribed to kanji (native "readings" or ''
kun'yomi is the way of reading kanji characters using the native Japanese word that matches the meaning of the Chinese character when it was introduced. This pronunciation is contrasted with ''on'yomi'', which is the reading based on the original Chi ...
''). For example, would be spelt as , with three magana with kun'yomi for ''ya'', ''ma'' and ''to''; likewise, spelt as for ''natsu'' and ''kashi''. * , , or : kanji used for meanings, historically used by men (who were more educated). * : mixed script including only kanji and katakana.


Hiragana and katakana

The following table reads, in
gojūon In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (''gojū'') in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are dis ...
order, as ''a'', ''i'', ''u'', ''e'', ''o'' (down first column), then ''ka'', ''ki'', ''ku'', ''ke'', ''ko'' (down second column), and so on. ''n'' appears on its own at the end. Asterisks mark unused combinations. *There are presently no kana for ''ye'', ''yi'' or ''wu'', as corresponding syllables do not occur natively in modern Japanese. **The (''ye'') sound is believed to have existed in pre-Classical Japanese, mostly before the advent of kana, and can be represented by the
man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of t ...
kanji 江. There was an archaic Hiragana () derived from the
man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of t ...
''ye'' kanji 江, which is encoded into Unicode at code point U+1B001 (𛀁), but it is not widely supported. It is believed that ''e'' and ''ye'' first merged to ''ye'' before shifting back to ''e'' during the
Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...
. As demonstrated by 17th century-era European sources, the syllable ''we'' (ゑ・ヱ ) also came to be pronounced as (''ye''). If necessary, the modern orthography allows e(''ye'') to be written as いぇ (イェ), but this usage is limited and nonstandard. **The modern Katakana ''e'', エ, derives from the man'yōgana 江, originally pronounced ''ye''; a "Katakana letter Archaic E" () derived from the man'yōgana 衣 (''e'') is encoded into Unicode at code point U+1B000 (𛀀), due to being used for that purpose in scholarly works on classical Japanese. **Some
gojūon In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (''gojū'') in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are dis ...
tables published during the 19th century list additional Katakana in the ''ye'' (), ''wu'' () and ''yi'' () positions. These are not presently used, and the latter two sounds never existed in Japanese. They were added to Unicode in version 14.0 in 2021. These sources also list (Unicode U+1B006, 𛀆) in the Hiragana ''yi'' position, and in the ''ye'' position. *Although removed from the standard orthography with the ''gendai kanazukai'' reforms, ''wi'' and ''we'' still see stylistic use, as in ウヰスキー for ''whisky'' and ヱビス or ゑびす for Japanese kami Ebisu, and Yebisu, a brand of beer named after Ebisu. Hiragana ''wi'' and ''we'' are preserved in certain Okinawan scripts, while katakana ''wi'' and ''we'' are preserved in the
Ainu language Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu (), is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isola ...
. *''wo'' is preserved only as the
accusative In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", " ...
particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...
, normally occurring only in hiragana. *''si'', ''ti'', ''tu'', ''hu'', ''wi'', ''we'' and ''wo'' are usually romanized respectively as ''shi'', ''chi'', ''tsu'', ''fu'', ''i'', ''e'' and ''o'' instead, according to contemporary pronunciation. *the
sokuon The is a Japanese typographic symbols, Japanese symbol in the form of a small hiragana or katakana , as well as the various consonants represented by it. In less formal language, it is called or , meaning "small ". It serves multiple purposes ...
or small ''tsu'' (っ/ッ) indicates
gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...
and is romanized by repeating the following consonant. For example, って is romanized ''tte'' (exception: っち becomes ''tchi'').


Diacritics

Syllables beginning with the voiced consonants and are spelled with kana from the corresponding unvoiced columns (''k'', ''s'', ''t'' and ''h'') and the voicing mark, ''
dakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a mora should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing). The , coll ...
''. Syllables beginning with are spelled with kana from the ''h'' column and the half-voicing mark, ''
handakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese language, Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a Mora (linguistics), mora should be pronounced Voice (phonetics), voiced, for instance, on sounds that ...
''. * Note that the か゚, ら゚ and the remaining entries in the two rightmost columns, though they exist, are not used in standard Japanese orthography. *''zi'', ''di'', and ''du'' are often transcribed into English as ''ji'', ''ji'', and ''zu'' instead, respectively, according to contemporary pronunciation. * Usually, a i u e oare represented respectively by バ aiue and ボ o for example, in loanwords such as バイオリン (''baiorin'' "violin"), but (less usually) the distinction can be preserved by using -with voicing marks or by using uand a vowel kana, as in ヴァ(ヷ), ヴィ(ヸ), ヴ, ヴェ(ヹ), and ヴォ(ヺ). Note that ヴ did not have a JIS-encoded Hiragana form (ゔ) until
JIS X 0213 JIS X 0213 is a Japanese Industrial Standard defining coded character sets for encoding the characters used in Japan. This standard extends JIS X 0208. The first version was published in 2000 and revised in 2004 (JIS2004) and 2012. As well as ad ...
, meaning that many
Shift JIS Shift JIS (also SJIS, MIME name Shift_JIS, known as PCK in Solaris contexts) is a character encoding for the Japanese language, originally developed by the Japanese company ASCII Corporation in conjunction with Microsoft and standardized as JIS ...
flavours (including the Windows and HTML5 version) can only represent it as a katakana, although
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
supports both.


Digraphs

Syllables beginning with palatalized consonants are spelled with one of the seven
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...
al kana from the ''i'' row followed by small ''ya'', ''yu'' or ''yo''. These digraphs are called
yōon The is a feature of the Japanese language in which a mora is formed with an added sound, i.e., palatalized, or (more rarely in the modern language) with an added sound, i.e. labialized. ''Yōon'' are represented in hiragana using a kana end ...
. * There are no digraphs for the
semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are ''y ...
''y'' and ''w'' columns. * The digraphs are usually transcribed with three letters, leaving out the ''i'': C''y''V. For example, きゃ is transcribed as ''kya'' to distinguish it from the two-kana きや, ''kiya''. * ''si''+''y''* and ''ti''+''y''* are often transcribed ''sh*'' and ''ch*'' instead of ''sy*'' and ''ty*''. For example, しゃ is transcribed as ''sha'', and ちゅ is transcribed as ''chu''. * In earlier Japanese, digraphs could also be formed with ''w''-kana. Although obsolete in modern Japanese, the digraphs くゎ (/kʷa/) and くゐ/くうぃ(/kʷi/), are preserved in certain Okinawan orthographies. In addition, the kana え can be used in Okinawan to form the digraph くぇ, which represents the /kʷe/ sound. * In loanwords, digraphs with a small ''e''-kana can be formed. For example, キェ (or きぇ in hiragana), which is transcribed as ''kye''. * Note that the き゚ゃ, き゚ゅ and き゚ょ, though they exist, are not used in standard Japanese orthography. * ''zi''+''y''* and ''di''+''y''* are often transcribed ''j*'' instead of ''zy*'' and ''dy*'', according to contemporary pronunciation. The form ''jy*'' is also used in some cases.


Modern usage

The difference in usage between hiragana and katakana is stylistic. Usually, hiragana is the default syllabary, and katakana is used in certain special cases. Hiragana is used to write native Japanese words with no
kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...
representation (or whose kanji is thought obscure or difficult), as well as grammatical elements such as
particles In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...
and inflections (
okurigana are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to force a particular kanji to have a specific meaning and be read a certain way. For example, the plain verb f ...
). Today katakana is most commonly used to write words of foreign origin that do not have kanji representations, as well as foreign personal and place names. Katakana is also used to represent
onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetics, phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as Oin ...
and interjections, emphasis, technical and scientific terms, transcriptions of the Sino-Japanese readings of kanji, and some corporate branding. Kana can be written in small form above or next to lesser-known kanji in order to show pronunciation; this is called
furigana is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana (syllabic characters) printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also know ...
. Furigana is used most widely in children's or learners' books. Literature for young children who do not yet know kanji may dispense with it altogether and instead use hiragana combined with spaces. Systems supporting only a limited set of characters, such as Wabun code for
Morse code Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...
telegrams and single-byte digital
character encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using computers. The numerical v ...
s such as
JIS X 0201 JIS X 0201, a Japanese Industrial Standards, Japanese Industrial Standard developed in 1969, was the first Japanese electronic character set to become widely used. The character set was initially known as JIS C 6220 before the JIS category reform. ...
or EBCDIK, likewise dispense with kanji, instead using only katakana. This is not necessary in systems supporting double-byte or variable-width encodings such as
Shift JIS Shift JIS (also SJIS, MIME name Shift_JIS, known as PCK in Solaris contexts) is a character encoding for the Japanese language, originally developed by the Japanese company ASCII Corporation in conjunction with Microsoft and standardized as JIS ...
,
EUC-JP Extended Unix Code (EUC) is a multibyte character encoding system used primarily for Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese (characters). The most commonly used EUC codes are variable-length encodings with a character belonging to an compl ...
,
UTF-8 UTF-8 is a character encoding standard used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode Transformation Format 8-bit''. Almost every webpage is transmitted as UTF-8. UTF-8 supports all 1,112,0 ...
or
UTF-16 UTF-16 (16-bit Unicode Transformation Format) is a character encoding that supports all 1,112,064 valid code points of Unicode. The encoding is variable-length as code points are encoded with one or two ''code units''. UTF-16 arose from an earli ...
.


History

Old Japanese was written entirely in kanji, and a set of kanji called ''
man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of t ...
'' were first used to represent the phonetic values of grammatical particles and morphemes. As there was no consistent method of sound representation, a phoneme could be represented by multiple kanji, and even those kana's pronunciations differed in whether they were to be read as or , making decipherment problematic. The , a poetry anthology assembled sometime after 759 and the eponym of ''man'yōgana'', exemplifies this phenomenon, where as many as almost twenty kanji were used for the mora ''ka''. The consistency of the kana used was thus dependent on the style of the writer.
Hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...
developed as a distinct script from cursive ''man'yōgana'', whereas
katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
developed from abbreviated parts of
regular script The regular script is the newest of the major Chinese script styles, emerging during the Three Kingdoms period , and stylistically mature by the 7th century. It is the most common style used in modern text. In its traditional form it is the t ...
''man'yōgana'' as a glossing system to add readings or explanations to Buddhist
sutra ''Sutra'' ()Monier Williams, ''Sanskrit English Dictionary'', Oxford University Press, Entry fo''sutra'' page 1241 in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a ...
s. Both of these systems were simplified to make writing easier. The shapes of many hiragana resembled the Chinese cursive script, as did those of many katakana the Korean ''
gugyeol Gugyeol, or kwukyel, is a system for rendering texts written in Classical Chinese into understandable Korean. It was used chiefly during the Joseon dynasty, when readings of the Chinese classics were of paramount social importance. Thus, i ...
'', suggesting that the Japanese followed the continental pattern of their neighbors. Kana is traditionally said to have been invented by the Buddhist priest
Kūkai , born posthumously called , was a Japanese Buddhist monk, calligrapher, and poet who founded the Vajrayana, esoteric Shingon Buddhism, Shingon school of Buddhism. He travelled to China, where he studied Tangmi (Chinese Vajrayana Buddhism) und ...
in the ninth century. Kūkai certainly brought the
Siddhaṃ script (also ') is an Brahmic scripts, Indic script used in India from the 6th century to the 13th century. Also known in its later evolved form as Siddhamātṛkā, Siddham is a medieval Brahmic scripts, Brahmic abugida, derived from the Gupta sc ...
of India home on his return from
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
in 806; his interest in the sacred aspects of
speech Speech is the use of the human voice as a medium for language. Spoken language combines vowel and consonant sounds to form units of meaning like words, which belong to a language's lexicon. There are many different intentional speech acts, suc ...
and
writing Writing is the act of creating a persistent representation of language. A writing system includes a particular set of symbols called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which they encode a particular spoken language. Every written language ...
led him to the conclusion that Japanese would be better represented by a phonetic alphabet than by the kanji which had been used up to that point. The modern arrangement of kana reflects that of the devanagari order used for
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
in the
Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
Siddhaṃ script hybrid known by the Japanese at the time, before, the traditional ''
iroha The is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian period (794–1179). The first record of its existence ...
'' arrangement used to follow the order of a poem which uses each kana once. Kana's vowel (a-i-u-e-o) and consonant (k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, w) order coincide with the Sanskrit order, except for the letter s, but that is explained by the properties of Old Japanese and the version of Siddham buddhist monks learnt at the time. However, the first time this order was used in Japanese was during the
Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kammu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means in Japanese. It is a ...
by Myōkaku, a priest and Sanskrit scholar of the 12th century, member of the same order of Kūkai and credited as reviving Saskrit studies. In 1695, a priest named Keichū published a 5 volume book that is considered to be fundamental in fixing the sound order to this day; and this work, in turn, was probably based on an earlier 3 volume systematic study of the grammar and the writing system of the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, written by another priest, Kakugen, in 1681, also member of the order of Kūkai and Myōkaku. However, hiragana and katakana did not quickly supplant ''man'yōgana''. It was only in 1900 that the present set of kana was codified. All the other forms of hiragana and katakana developed before the 1900 codification are known as . Rules for their usage as per the spelling reforms of 1946, the , which abolished the kana for ''wi'' (ゐ・ヰ), ''we'' (ゑ・ヱ), and ''wo'' (を・ヲ) (except that the last was reserved as the accusative particle).


Collation

Kana are the basis for
collation Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fi ...
in Japanese. They are taken in the order given by the ''
gojūon In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (''gojū'') in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are dis ...
'' (あ い う え お ... わ を ん), though
iroha The is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian period (794–1179). The first record of its existence ...
(い ろ は に ほ へ と ... せ す (ん)) ordering is used for enumeration in some circumstances. Dictionaries differ in the sequence order for long/short vowel distinction, small ''tsu'' and diacritics. As Japanese does not use word spaces (except as a tool for children), there can be no word-by-word collation; all collation is kana-by-kana.


In Unicode

The hiragana range in
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
is U+3040 ... U+309F, and the katakana range is U+30A0 ... U+30FF. The obsolete and rare characters (''wi'' and ''we'') also have their proper code points. Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are hiragana small ''ka'' and small ''ke'', respectively. U+30F5 and U+30F6 are their katakana equivalents. Characters U+3099 and U+309A are combining
dakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a mora should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing). The , coll ...
and
handakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese language, Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a Mora (linguistics), mora should be pronounced Voice (phonetics), voiced, for instance, on sounds that ...
, which correspond to the spacing characters U+309B and U+309C. U+309D is the hiragana
iteration mark Iteration marks are characters or punctuation marks that represent a duplicated character or word. Chinese In Chinese, or (usually appearing as , equivalent to the modern ideograph ) or is used in casual writing to represent a doubled char ...
, used to repeat a previous hiragana. U+309E is the voiced hiragana iteration mark, which stands in for the previous hiragana but with the consonant voiced (''k'' becomes ''g'', ''h'' becomes ''b'', etc.). U+30FD and U+30FE are the katakana iteration marks. U+309F is a ligature of ''yori'' ( より) sometimes used in vertical writing. U+30FF is a ligature of ''koto'' ( コト), also found in vertical writing. Additionally, there are halfwidth equivalents to the standard fullwidth katakana. These are encoded within the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block (U+FF00–U+FFEF), starting at U+FF65 and ending at U+FF9F (characters U+FF61–U+FF64 are halfwidth punctuation marks): There is also a small "Katakana Phonetic Extensions" range (U+31F0 ... U+31FF), which includes some additional small kana characters for writing the
Ainu language Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu (), is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isola ...
. Further small kana characters are present in the "Small Kana Extension" block. Unicode also includes "Katakana letter archaic E" (U+1B000), as well as 255 archaic Hiragana, in the Kana Supplement block. It also includes a further 31 archaic Hiragana in the Kana Extended-A block. The Kana Extended-B block was added in September, 2021 with the release of version 14.0:


See also

*
Furigana is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana (syllabic characters) printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also know ...
*
Okurigana are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to force a particular kanji to have a specific meaning and be read a certain way. For example, the plain verb f ...
*
Yotsugana are a set of four specific kana, じ, ぢ, ず, づ (in the Nihon-shiki romanization system: ''zi'', ''di'', ''zu'', ''du''), used in the Japanese writing system. They historically represented four distinct voiced morae (syllables) in ...
*
Gojūon In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (''gojū'') in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are dis ...
*
Hentaigana In the Japanese writing system, are variant forms of hiragana. Description In contrast to modern Japanese, originally hiragana had several forms for a single sound. For example, while the hiragana reading "ha" has only one form in modern ...
*
Historical kana orthography The , 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 pronunciati ...
*
Man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of t ...
*
Romanization of Japanese The romanization of Japanese is the use of Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as . Japanese is normally written in a combination of logographic characters borrowed from Ch ...
*
Transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or L ...
and
Transcription (linguistics) In linguistics, transcription is the systematic representation of spoken language in written form. The source can either be utterances (''speech'' or ''sign language'') or preexisting text in another writing system A writing system compris ...


References


Further reading

* An illustrated book on the development of magana into kana


External links


Hiragana & katakana chart and writing practice sheet





Kana web translator
– Transliterate Kana to Rōmaji
Kana Copybook (PDF)

Katakana and Hiragana study tool
{{Authority control Heian period Japanese writing system Japanese writing system terms Nara period de:Japanische Schrift#Kana