Japanese Hiragana
46 characters
Hiragana is one of the three main writing systems used in Japanese, alongside katakana and kanji. It is a syllabary consisting of forty six basic characters, each representing a distinct syllable rather than an individual consonant or vowel. Hiragana is considered the foundational script of Japanese literacy and is the first writing system taught to children in Japan. Its flowing, cursive forms are used for native Japanese words, grammatical particles, verb endings, and any word for which kanji is not used or not known.
Origin & History
Hiragana developed during the Heian period in the eighth and ninth centuries as a simplified form of Chinese characters known as man'yogana. Court women, who were generally discouraged from studying the formal Chinese writing system used by men, adapted cursive forms of certain kanji to create a phonetic script for personal correspondence and literary composition. For this reason, hiragana was historically referred to as onnade or women's hand. Some of the greatest works of classical Japanese literature, including The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, were written primarily in hiragana. Over the following centuries, the script gained broader acceptance and was eventually standardized by the Japanese government in 1900, reducing the many variant forms to the single set of forty six characters used today.
Characters
| Character | Name | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| あ | A | /a/ |
| い | I | /i/ |
| う | U | /ɯ/ |
| え | E | /e/ |
| お | O | /o/ |
| か | Ka | /ka/ |
| き | Ki | /ki/ |
| く | Ku | /kɯ/ |
| け | Ke | /ke/ |
| こ | Ko | /ko/ |
| さ | Sa | /sa/ |
| し | Shi | /ɕi/ |
| す | Su | /sɯ/ |
| せ | Se | /se/ |
| そ | So | /so/ |
| た | Ta | /ta/ |
| ち | Chi | /tɕi/ |
| つ | Tsu | /tsɯ/ |
| て | Te | /te/ |
| と | To | /to/ |
| な | Na | /na/ |
| に | Ni | /ni/ |
| ぬ | Nu | /nɯ/ |
| ね | Ne | /ne/ |
| の | No | /no/ |
| は | Ha | /ha/ |
| ひ | Hi | /çi/ |
| ふ | Fu | /ɸɯ/ |
| へ | He | /he/ |
| ほ | Ho | /ho/ |
| ま | Ma | /ma/ |
| み | Mi | /mi/ |
| む | Mu | /mɯ/ |
| め | Me | /me/ |
| も | Mo | /mo/ |
| や | Ya | /ja/ |
| ゆ | Yu | /jɯ/ |
| よ | Yo | /jo/ |
| ら | Ra | /ɾa/ |
| り | Ri | /ɾi/ |
| る | Ru | /ɾɯ/ |
| れ | Re | /ɾe/ |
| ろ | Ro | /ɾo/ |
| わ | Wa | /wa/ |
| を | Wo | /o/ |
| ん | N | /ɴ/ |
How Many Letters?
Modern hiragana consists of forty six basic characters. Five of these represent pure vowels, forty represent consonant-vowel combinations, and one represents the standalone nasal consonant N. With the addition of dakuten and handakuten diacritical marks plus combination characters, the total number of distinct syllables that can be represented rises to over one hundred.
Each hiragana character represents one mora, a unit of sound timing in Japanese phonology. The forty six basic characters cover five pure vowels and forty one consonant-vowel combinations. Additional sounds are created through diacritical marks called dakuten and handakuten, which modify certain base characters to represent voiced or semi-voiced consonants. Combination characters, formed by appending smaller versions of the ya, yu, or yo characters, further expand the range of representable sounds. In modern Japanese writing, hiragana appears alongside kanji and katakana in virtually every sentence. It serves several essential functions: spelling out the grammatical endings of verbs and adjectives known as okurigana, providing phonetic readings above kanji characters as furigana to aid comprehension, writing particles and conjunctions, and substituting for kanji that a writer may not know. The script also plays a critical role in early education, as Japanese children learn hiragana before being introduced to the thousands of kanji characters required for full literacy. The aesthetic quality of hiragana is highly valued in Japanese calligraphy, where the smooth curves of the characters are celebrated as an art form.
Frequently Asked Questions
Both are syllabaries representing the same set of sounds, but hiragana is used for native Japanese words and grammar while katakana is used primarily for foreign loanwords, onomatopoeia, and emphasis.
Kanji conveys meaning through logographic characters, while hiragana and katakana provide phonetic representation. Using all three allows Japanese to express nuance, origin of words, and grammatical structure efficiently.
Yes. Hiragana is typically taught first in preschool or the first year of elementary school before children begin learning katakana and kanji.
Dakuten are two small diagonal strokes added to certain hiragana characters to indicate a voiced consonant, such as changing ka to ga or ta to da.
It evolved during the Heian period from cursive simplifications of Chinese characters, originally used by court women for personal writing and literary works.