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Hiragana:
Hiragana (平仮名, ひらがな,) is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji.
| Hiragana 平仮名 ひらがな | |
|---|---|
| |
| Script type | Syllabary |
| Time period | c. 800 – present |
| Direction | Vertical right-to-left, left-to-right |
| Languages | Japanese, Hachijō and the Ryukyuan languages |
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", as contrasted with kanji).
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 /a/ (hiragana あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as /ka/ (か); or /N/ (ん), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context and dialect, sounds either like English m, n or ng ([ŋ]) when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French, Portuguese or Polish. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of the aforementioned ん), 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.
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 syllabograms:
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| a | i | u | e | o | ya | yu | yo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monographs (gojūon) with diacritics (dakuten, handakuten) | Digraphs (yōon) with diacritics (dakuten, handakuten) | |||||||
| a | i | u | e | o | ya | yu | yo | |
| Monographs (gojūon) | Digraphs (yōon) | |||||||
| ∅ | あ a [a] | い i |
pyo [pʲo][/TD]
[/TR]
| a | i | u | e | o | ya | yu | yo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monographs (gojūon) with diacritics (dakuten, handakuten) | Digraphs (yōon) with diacritics (dakuten, handakuten) | |||||||
| G | が ga [ɡa] | ぎ gi [ɡi] | ぐ gu [ɡɯ] | げ ge [ɡe] | ご go [ɡo] | ぎゃ gya [ɡʲa] | ぎゅ gyu [ɡʲɯ] | ぎょ gyo [ɡʲo] |
| Z | ざ za [(d)za] | じ ji[(d)ʑi] | ず zu [(d)zɯ] | ぜ ze [(d)ze] | ぞ zo [(d)zo] | じゃ ja[(d)ʑa] | じゅ ju[(d)ʑɯ] | じょ jo[(d)ʑo] |
| D | だ da [da] | ぢ ji[(d)ʑi] | づ zu[(d)zɯ] | で de [de] | ど do [do] | ぢゃ ja[(d)ʑa] | ぢゅ ju[(d)ʑɯ] | ぢょ jo[(d)ʑo] |
| B | ば ba [ba] | び bi [bi] | ぶ bu [bɯ] | べ be [be] | ぼ bo [bo] | びゃ bya [bʲa] | びゅ byu [bʲɯ] | びょ byo [bʲo] |
| P | ぱ pa [pa] | ぴ pi [pi] | ぷ pu [pɯ] | ぺ pe [pe] | ぽ po [po] | ぴゃ pya [pʲa] | ぴゅ pyu [pʲɯ] | ぴょ pyo [pʲo] |
| n | kashiko | koto | sama | nari | mairasesoro | yori |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polysyllabic monographs (obsolete) | ||||||
| ん n [m n ɲ ŋ ɴ ɰ̃] |
kashiko |
koto [koto] |
/
sama [sama] |
nari [naɾi] |
/
mairasesoro [maiɾasesoːɾoː] | ゟ yori [joɾi] |
|
゙ goto |
| onfu | chōonpu | odoriji (monosyllable) | odoriji (polysyllable) |
|---|---|---|---|
| っ (indicates a geminate consonant) | ー (indicates a long vowel) | ゝ (reduplicates and unvoices syllable) | 〱 (reduplicates and unvoices syllable) |
| ゞ (reduplicates and voices syllable) | 〱゙ (reduplicates and voices syllable) | ||
| ゝ゚ (reduplicates and moves a h- or b-row syllable to the p-row) | 〱゚ (reduplicates and moves a h- or b-row syllable to the p-row) |
Spelling rules
With a few exceptions, such as for the three particles は (pronounced [wa] instead of [ha]), へ (pronounced [e] instead of [he]) and [o] (written を instead of お), 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 (じ and ぢ) and two hiragana pronounced zu (ず and づ), but to distinguish them, particularly when typing Japanese, sometimes ぢ is written as di and づ is written as du. These pairs are not interchangeable. Usually, ji is written as じ and zu is written as ず. 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 ちぢめる and tsuzuku ('to continue') is つづく.
For compound words where the dakuten reflects rendaku voicing, the original hiragana is used. For example, chi (血 'blood') is spelled ち in plain hiragana. When 鼻 hana ('nose') and 血 chi ('blood') combine to make hanaji (鼻血 'nose bleed'), the sound of 血 changes from chi to ji. So hanaji is spelled はなぢ. Similarly, tsukau (使う/遣う; 'to use') is spelled つかう in hiragana, so kanazukai (仮名遣い; 'kana use', or 'kana orthography') is spelled かなづかい in hiragana. However, there are cases where ぢ and づ are not used, such as the word for 'lightning', inazuma (稲妻). The first component, 稲, meaning 'rice plant', is written いな (ina). The second component, 妻 (etymologically 夫), meaning 'spouse', is pronounced つま (tsuma) when standalone or often as づま (zuma) when following another syllable, such in 人妻 (hitozuma, 'married woman'). Even though these components of 稲妻 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 いなずま is used instead of いなづま. Other examples include kizuna (きずな) and sakazuki (さかずき). 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, ぢ and づ do not occur word-initially pursuant to modern spelling rules. There were words such as ぢばん jiban 'ground' in the historical kana usage, but they were unified under じ in the modern kana usage in 1946, so today it is spelled exclusively じばん. However, づら zura 'wig' (from かつら katsura) and づけ zuke (a sushi term for lean tuna soaked in soy sauce) are examples of word-initial づ today.
No standard Japanese words begin with the kana ん (n). This is the basis of the word game shiritori. ん n is normally treated as its own syllable and is separate from the other n-based kana (na, ni etc.).
ん 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 きんえん kin'en 'smoking forbidden', きねん kinen 'commemoration', きんねん 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 じゅんいちろう Jun'ichirō pronounced [dʑɯɰ̃itɕiɾoː]
There are a few hiragana that are rarely used. Outside of Okinawan orthography, ゐ wi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Japanese and ゑ we [e] are only used in some proper names. ? e was an alternate version of え e before spelling reform, and was briefly reused for ye during initial spelling reforms, but is now completely obsolete. ゔ vu is a modern addition used to represent the /v/ sound in foreign languages such as English, but since Japanese from a phonological standpoint does not have a /v/ sound, it is pronounced as /b/ and mostly serves as a more accurate indicator of a word's pronunciation in its original language. However, it is rarely seen because loanwords and transliterated words are usually written in katakana, where the corresponding character would be written as ヴ. The digraphs ぢゃ, ぢゅ, ぢょ for ja/ju/jo are theoretically possible in rendaku, but are nearly never used in modern kana usage; for example, the word 夫婦茶碗, meoto-jawan (couple bowls), spelled めおとぢゃわん, where 茶碗 alone is spelled ちゃわん (chawan).
The みゅ myu kana is extremely rare in originally Japanese words; linguist Haruhiko Kindaichi raises the example of the Japanese family name Omamyūda (小豆生田) and claims it is the only occurrence amongst pure Japanese words. Its katakana counterpart is used in many loanwords, however.
Stroke order and direction:
The following table shows the method for writing each hiragana character. The table is arranged in a traditional manner, beginning top right and reading columns down. The numbers and arrows indicate the stroke order and direction respectively.
Unicode
The Unicode block for Hiragana is U+3040–U+309F:
| Hiragana[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
| U+304x | ぁ | あ | ぃ | い | ぅ | う | ぇ | え | ぉ | お | か | が | き | ぎ | く | |
| U+305x | ぐ | け | げ | こ | ご | さ | ざ | し | じ | す | ず | せ | ぜ | そ | ぞ | た |
| U+306x | だ | ち | ぢ | っ | つ | づ | て | で | と | ど | な | に | ぬ | ね | の | は |
| U+307x | ば | ぱ | ひ | び | ぴ | ふ | ぶ | ぷ | へ | べ | ぺ | ほ | ぼ | ぽ | ま | み |
| U+308x | む | め | も | ゃ | や | ゅ | ゆ | ょ | よ | ら | り | る | れ | ろ | ゎ | わ |
| U+309x | ゐ | ゑ | を | ん | ゔ | ゕ | ゖ | ゙ | ゚ | ゛ | ゜ | ゝ | ゞ | ゟ | ||
| Notes1.^ As of Unicode version 16.02.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points |
Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are small か (ka) and small け (ke), respectively. U+309F is a ligature of より (yori) occasionally used in vertical text. U+309B and U+309C are spacing (non-combining) equivalents to the combining dakuten and handakuten characters, respectively.
Historic and variant forms of Japanese kana characters were first added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0, with significantly more added in 2017 as part of Unicode 10.
Writing system
| Basic hiragana characters |
| Only used in some proper names |
After the 1900 script reform, which deemed hundreds of characters hentaigana, the hiragana syllabary consists of 48 base characters, of which two (ゐ and ゑ) are only used in some proper names:
- 5 singular vowels: あ /a/, い /i/, う /u/, え /e/, お /o/ (respectively pronounced [a], https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Japanese, [ɯ], [e] and [o])
[*]42 consonant–vowel unions: for example き /ki/, て /te/, ほ /ho/, ゆ /ju/, わ /wa/ (respectively pronounced [ki], [te], [ho], [jɯ] and [wa])
[*]1 singular consonant (ん), romanized as n.
- 5 singular vowels: あ /a/, い /i/, う /u/, え /e/, お /o/ (respectively pronounced [a], https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Japanese, [ɯ], [e] and [o])
These are conceived as a 5×10 grid (gojūon, 五十音, "Fifty Sounds"), as illustrated in the adjacent table, read あ (a), い (i), う (u), え (e), お (o), か (ka), き (ki), く (ku), け (ke), こ (ko) 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, ゐ and ゑ, pronounced https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Japanese and [e] respectively, are uncommon in modern Japanese, while を, pronounced [o], is common as a particle but otherwise rare. Strictly speaking, the singular consonant ん (n) is considered as outside the gojūon.
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, か (ka) becomes が (ga). Hiragana beginning with an h (or f) sound can also add a handakuten marker ( ゜) changing the h (f) to a p. For example, は (ha) becomes ぱ (pa).
A small version of the hiragana for ya, yu, or yo (ゃ, ゅ or ょ 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, き (ki) plus ゃ (small ya) becomes きゃ (kya). Addition of the small y kana is called yōon.
A small tsu っ, called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; for example, compare さか, saka, "hill" with さっか, sakka, "author". However, it cannot be used to double an n – for this purpose, the singular n (ん) is added in front of the syllable, as in みんな (minna, "all"). The sokuon also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop, as in いてっ! ([iteʔ], "Ouch!").
Two hiragana have pronunciations that depend on the context:
Source:Wiki.
You think I'd miss a day when even my health is declining or i can't remember much.
Never!
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