の, in

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 ノ, in

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 ...

, are Japanese

kana are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , wh ...

, both representing one mora. In the system of ordering of Japanese morae, it occupies the 25th position, between ね (ne) and は (ha). It occupies the 26th position in the

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 ...

ordering. Both represent the sound . The katakana form is written similar to the

Kangxi radical The ''Kangxi'' radicals (), also known as ''Zihui'' radicals, are a set of 214 Chinese character radicals, radicals that were collated in the 18th-century ''Kangxi Dictionary'' to aid categorization of Chinese characters. They are primarily sor ...

radical 4 Radical 4 or radical slash () meaning "slash" or "bend" is one of 6 of the 214 Kangxi radicals that are composed of only one stroke. In the ''Kangxi Dictionary'', there are 33 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical. It is ...

Stroke order

To write の, begin slightly above the center, stroke downward diagonally, then round upward and continue curve around, leaving a small gap at the bottom. To write ノ, simply do a swooping curve from top-right to bottom left.

Other communicative representations

* Full Braille representation * Computer encodings

History

The leftmost, predominantly vertical segment of 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 ...

was used to create the katakana . When the kanji is written in the highly cursive, flowing '' grass script'' style, it begins to resemble the hiragana .

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 ...

and

gyaru-moji or is a style of obfuscated (cant (language), cant) Japanese writing system, Japanese writing popular amongst urban Japanese youth. As the name suggests ( meaning "gal"), this writing system was created by and remains primarily employed by yo ...

variant kana forms of ''no'' can also be found.

Usage

の is a

dental nasal The voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol ...

consonant, articulated on the upper teeth, combined with a close-mid back rounded vowel to form one mora. In the Japanese language, as well as forming words, の may be a

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 ...

showing possession. For example, the phrase "わたしのでんわ” ''watashi no denwa'' means "my telephone."

In Chinese

の has also proliferated on signs and labels in the Chinese-speaking world. It is used in place of the Modern Chinese possessive marker ''de'' or

Classical Chinese Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary ...

possessive marker ''zhī'', and の is pronounced in the same way as the Chinese character it replaces. This is usually done to "stand out" or to give an "exotic/Japanese feel", e.g. in commercial brand names, such as the fruit juice brand , where the の can be read as both 之 ''zhī'', the possessive marker, and as 汁 ''zhī'', meaning "juice". In Hong Kong, the Companies Registry has extended official recognition to this practice, and permits の to be used in Chinese names of registered businesses; it is thus the only non-Chinese symbol to be granted this treatment (aside from punctuation marks with no pronunciation value).Business' Required to be Registered and Application for Business Registration: Business Name"

Inland Revenue Department (Hong Kong) The Inland Revenue Department (IRD) is the Hong Kong government department responsible for collecting taxes and duties. History The Inland Revenue Department was established on 1 April 1947. Initially it administered only one piece of legisla ...

References

External links

Information on ''kana-no'' from ''Nuthatch Graphics''
{{DEFAULTSORT:No (Kana) Specific kana