is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji (Chinese characters).
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", as contrasted with kanji).Dual 大辞林Translation: [the "hira" part of "hiragana"] means "ordinary, common" or "easy, simple" since at that time [the time that the name was given] it was a writing system for everyday use. While kanji was the official system used for letter-writing and important texts, hiragana was for personal use by people who had limited knowledge of kanji.
Historically, hiragana developed from cursive forms of kanji via man'yōgana, with each sign originating as a simplified cursive rendering of a whole kanji—for example, from .
Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be a vowel such as (hiragana ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as (); or the nasal sonorant (ん). Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of the aforementioned ), the kana are referred to as syllabic symbols and not alphabetic letters.
Hiragana is used to write okurigana (kana suffixes following a kanji root, for example to inflect verbs and adjectives), various grammatical and function words including particles, and miscellaneous other native words for which there are no kanji or whose kanji form is obscure or too formal for the writing purpose. Words that do have common kanji renditions may also sometimes be written instead in hiragana, according to an individual author's preference, for example to impart an informal feel. Hiragana is also used to write furigana, a reading aid that shows the pronunciation of kanji characters.
There are two main systems of ordering hiragana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.
Writing system + a i u e o∅kstnhmySee obsolete kana.rw (n) Main functional marks and diacritics
After the 1900 script reform, which deemed hundreds of characters hentaigana, the hiragana syllabary consists of 48 base characters, of which two ([ and ) are only used in some proper names:
5 singular vowels: /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/ (respectively pronounced , , , and ) 42 consonant–vowel unions: for example /ki/, /te/, /ho/, /yu/, /wa/ (respectively pronounced , , , and ) 1 singular consonant (), romanized as n.
These are conceived as a 5×10 grid (gojūon, , "Fifty Sounds"), as illustrated in the adjacent table, read and so forth (but si→shi, ti→chi, tu→tsu, hu→fu, wi→i, we→e, wo→o). Of the 50 theoretically possible combinations, yi, ye, and wu are completely unused. On the w row, and , pronounced and respectively, are uncommon in modern Japanese, while , pronounced , is common as a particle but otherwise rare. Strictly speaking, the singular consonant is considered to be outside the .
These basic characters can be modified in various ways. By adding a dakuten marker ( ゛), a voiceless consonant is turned into a voiced consonant: k→g, ts/s→z, t→d, h/f→b and ch/sh→j (also u→v(u)). For example, (ka) becomes (ga). Hiragana beginning with an h (or f) sound can also add a handakuten marker ( ゜) changing the h (f) to a p. For example, (ha) becomes (pa).
A small version of the hiragana for ya, yu, or yo (, , or respectively) may be added to hiragana ending in i. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide (palatalization) to a, u or o. For example, (ki) plus (small ya) becomes (kya). The addition of the small y kana is called yōon.
A small tsu , called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; for example, compare , saka, "hill" with , sakka, "author". However, it cannot be used to double an n – for this purpose, the singular n () is added in front of the syllable, as in (minna, "all"). The sokuon also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop, as in (, "Ouch!").
Two hiragana have pronunciations that depend on the context: is pronounced when used as a particle (otherwise, ). is pronounced when used as a particle (otherwise, ).
Hiragana usually spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana; for example, (o-ka-a-sa-n, "mother"). The chōonpu (long vowel mark) (ー) used in katakana is rarely used with hiragana, for example in the word , rāmen, but this usage is considered non-standard in Japanese. However, the Okinawan language uses chōonpu with hiragana. In informal writing, small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds (, haa, , nee). Plain (clear) and voiced iteration marks are written in hiragana as and , respectively. These marks are rarely used nowadays.
Table of hiragana The following table shows the complete hiragana together with the modified Hepburn romanization and IPA transcription, arranged in four categories, each of them displayed in the gojūon order. Those whose romanization are in bold do not use the initial consonant for that row. For all syllables besides ん, the pronunciation indicated is for word-initial syllables; for mid-word pronunciations see below.
+Hiragana syllabogramsMonographs (gojūon) Digraphs (yōon) a i u e o ya yu yo∅ a i u e o K ka ki ku ke ko kya kyu kyo S sa shi su se so sha shu sho T ta chi tsu te to cha chu cho N na ni nu ne no nya nyu nyo H ha (wa as particle) hi fu he (e as particle) ho hya hyu hyo M ma mi mu me mo mya myu myo Y ya i yu e yo R ra ri ru re ro rya ryu ryo W wa i u e o Monographs (gojūon) with diacritics (dakuten, handakuten)Digraphs (yōon) with diacritics (dakuten, handakuten) a i u e o ya yu yoG ga gi gu ge go gya gyu gyo Z za ji zu ze zo ja ju jo D da ji zu de do ja ju jo B ba bi bu be bo bya byu byo P pa pi pu pe po pya pyu pyo Final nasal monograph (hatsuon) Polysyllabic monographs (obsolete) n kashiko koto sama nari mairasesoro yori n kashiko koto sama nari mairasesoro yori goto
Functional graphemes sokuonfu chōonpu odoriji (monosyllable) odoriji (polysyllable) (indicates a geminate consonant) (indicates a long vowel) (reduplicates andunvoices syllable) (reduplicates andunvoices syllable) (reduplicates andvoices syllable) (reduplicates andvoices syllable) (reduplicates andmoves a h- or b-row syllable to the p-row) (reduplicates andmoves a h- or b-row syllable to the p-row)
Spelling–phonology correspondence
In the middle of words, the g sound (normally ) may turn into a velar nasal or velar fricative . For example, (kagi, key) is often pronounced . However, (jūgo, fifteen) is pronounced as if it was jū and go stacked end to end: .
In many accents, the j and z sounds are pronounced as affricates ( and , respectively) at the beginning of utterances and fricatives in the middle of words. For example, sūji 'number', zasshi 'magazine'.
The singular n is pronounced before m, b and p, before plosives (t, d), affricates (ch, ts, j), r, n, and z, before k and g, at the end of utterances, and some kind of high nasal vowel before vowels, palatal approximants (y), and some fricative consonants (s, sh, h, f and w).
In kanji readings, the grapheme combinations ou and ei are usually pronounced (long o) and (long e) respectively. For example, ( toukyou) is pronounced 'Tokyo', and sensei is 'teacher'. However, tou is pronounced 'to inquire', because the o and u are considered distinct, u being the verb ending in the dictionary form. Similarly, shite iru is pronounced , present progressive form of (suru, "to do").
In archaic forms of Japanese, there existed the kwa ( ) and gwa ( ) digraphs. In modern Japanese, these phonemes have been phased out of usage.
Spelling rules
With a few exceptions, such as for the three particles は (pronounced instead of ), (pronounced instead of ) and (written instead of ), Japanese when written in kana is phonemically orthographic, i.e. there is a one-to-one correspondence between kana characters and sounds, leaving only words' pitch accent unrepresented. This has not always been the case: a previous system of spelling, now referred to as historical kana usage, differed substantially from pronunciation; the three above-mentioned exceptions in modern usage are the legacy of that system.
There are two hiragana pronounced ji ( and ) and two hiragana pronounced zu ( and ), but to distinguish them, particularly when typing Japanese, sometimes is written as di and is written as du. These pairs are not interchangeable. Usually, ji is written as and zu is written as . There are some exceptions. If the first two syllables of a word consist of one syllable without a dakuten 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 and tsuzuku ('to continue') is .
For compound words where the dakuten reflects rendaku voicing, the original hiragana is used. For example, chi ( 'blood') is spelled in plain hiragana. When hana ('nose') and chi ('blood') combine to make hanaji ( 'nose bleed'), the sound of changes from chi to ji. So hanaji is spelled . Similarly, tsukau (; 'to use') is spelled in hiragana, so kanazukai (; 'kana use', or 'kana orthography') is spelled in hiragana. However, there are cases where and are not used, such as the word for 'lightning', inazuma (). The first component, , meaning 'rice plant', is written (ina). The second component, (etymologically ), meaning 'spouse', is pronounced (tsuma) when standalone or often as (zuma) when following another syllable, such in (hitozuma, 'married woman'). Even though these components of are etymologically linked to 'lightning', it is generally arduous for a contemporary speaker to consciously perceive inazuma as separable into two discrete words. Thus, the default spelling is used instead of . Other examples include kizuna () and sakazuki (). Although these rules were officially established by a Cabinet Notice in 1986 revising the modern kana usage, they have sometimes faced criticism due to their perceived arbitrariness.
Officially, and do not occur word-initially pursuant to modern spelling rules. There were words such as jiban 'ground' in the historical kana usage, but they were unified under in the modern kana usage in 1946, so today it is spelled exclusively . However, zura 'wig' (from katsura) and zuke (a sushi term for lean tuna soaked in soy sauce) are examples of word-initial today.
No standard Japanese words begin with the kana (n). This is the basis of the word game shiritori. n is normally treated as its own syllable and is separate from the other n-based kana (na, ni etc.).
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 pairs such as kin'en 'smoking forbidden', kinen 'commemoration', 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 Koizumi's first name is actually Jun'ichirō pronounced