Hiragana

Hiragana (平仮名 or ひらがな) is one of three Japanese syllabary, a component of the Japanese writing system along with Katakana, Kanji, and Romaji. It contains 48 characters. Hiragana and Katakana are both kana systems, with the rule that each character represents one mora. Additionally, each kana is either a vowel such as "a" (あ) or a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka" (か), or "n" (ん).

Hiragana is used for words that have no kanji attached to them, which includes particles such as kara から (meaning "from"), and suffixes such as -san さん. Hiragana is also used in situations where the reader or author does not know the particular kanji for the word, like hiragana is used in preschool and children's books, also a situation where it would be considered too formal for the writing purpose. Adjective and verb inflections (altering a word) are written in hiragana, in this case part of the root is then written in kanji. Hiragana is also commonly used to provide a reading aid in the pronunciation of Kanji, which is called Furigana. There are hiragana characters for wi and we although they aren't used frequently:: ゐ (wi) and ゑ (we).

Basic Hiragana

Page A I U E O Vowels あ い う え お K か き く け こ S さ し す せ そ T た ち つ て と N な に ぬ ね の ん H は ひ ふ へ ほ M ま み む め も Y や ゆ よ R ら り る れ ろ W わ を あ makes the sound a, it's (for some reason) the icon of hiragana of most apps. ｏｒｉｇｉｎ：安 し unlike what you think, this letter makes the sound shi (ši), not si. Adding ゃ、ゅ　or ょ can get you (sha, shu, sho). ち yes another exception (tchi instead of ti), if you look at ipa instead, you'll notice that is tši, (adding only a š between them).Adding ゃ、ゅ　or ょ can get you (cha, chu, cho). The other form of this is ji, written in the uncommon way. つ this letter makes the sound tsu, also known as цу (in cyrillic), Adding ゃ、ゅ　or ょ can get you (tsa, tsu, tso). 𛀁 (ye) ye is a lost hiragana, if you have ipad, you cloud not see it. Originated from 江 ye, in cursive and not cursive ゐ (Wi), lost hiragana, but typable by keyboard, (founded on a *6&*=;*=) ゑ (We), lost hiragana, but typable by keyboard. oftenly described as a る doing surf. を this letter majes the sound o. (o instead of wo), this letter has a variant called を̨, click the link to get more info. External links Romaji to Hiragana A tool to convert Rōmaji to Hiragana or Katakana. Gallery A chart showing the yōon (digraphs). Hiragana characters with dakuten (diacritics) A basic hiragana chart.