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Hiragana (平仮名, ひらがな, IPA: [çiɾaɡaꜜna, çiɾaɡana(ꜜ)]) is a 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", as contrasted with kanji). [1] [2] [3]
The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana.Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis.
Usually, hiragana is the default syllabary, and katakana is used in certain special cases. Hiragana is used to write native Japanese words with no kanji representation (or whose kanji is thought obscure or difficult), as well as grammatical elements such as particles and inflections . Today katakana is most commonly used to write words of ...
One of the various meanings of the verb haneru (撥ねる) is to "make an upward brush-stroke" when writing, [10] which is a gesture that is involved in writing the kana ん and ン. Another meaning is rather specific, to 'pronounce "n" as a syllabic consonant', [ 10 ] in other words, to make the sounds represented by the kana ん and ン.
ふ, in hiragana, or フ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora.The hiragana is made in four strokes, while the katakana in one. It represents the phoneme /hɯ/, although for phonological reasons (general scheme for /h/ group, whose only phonologic survivor to /f/ ([ɸ]) remaining is ふ: b←p←f→h), the actual pronunciation is ⓘ, which is why it is ...
Baka (馬鹿, ばか in hiragana, or バカ in katakana) means "fool", or (as an adjectival noun) "foolish" and is the most frequently used pejorative term in the Japanese language. [1] The word baka has a long history, an uncertain etymology (possibly from Sanskrit or Classical Chinese ), and sociolinguistic complexities.
There are a small number of municipalities in Japan whose names are written in hiragana or katakana, together known as kana, rather than kanji as is traditional for Japanese place names. [1] Many city names written in kana have kanji equivalents that are either phonetic manyōgana, or whose kanji are outside of the jōyō kanji.
Some frequently used words may also be written in katakana in dialogs to convey an informal, conversational tone. Some examples include マンガ ("manga"), アイツ aitsu ("that guy or girl; he/him; she/her"), バカ baka ("fool"), etc. Words with difficult-to-read kanji are sometimes written in katakana (hiragana is also used for this purpose).