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Hiragana originated as simplified forms of similar-sounding Chinese characters. Hiragana character shapes were derived from Chinese cursive script (sōsho). Shown here is a sample of cursive script by 7th century calligrapher Sun Guoting. Note the character 為 (wei), indicated by the red arrow, closely resembles the hiragana character ゐ (wi).
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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.
Enclosed Ideographic Supplement (Unicode block) has a single hiragana character: U+1F200 Kana Supplement (Unicode block) has a single katakana and 255 hentaigana characters Kana Extended-A (Unicode block) continues with additional 31 hentaigana characters
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'Kana' is a compound of kari (仮, 'borrowed; assumed; false') and na (名, 'name'), which eventually collapsed into kanna and ultimately 'kana'. [2]Today it is generally assumed that 'kana' were considered "false" kanji due to their purely phonetic nature, as opposed to mana which were "true" kanji used for their meanings.
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Hiragana iteration mark. For example, はは (haha) could be written はゝ. ゞ: 2136: 1-1-22: 309E Hiragana iteration mark with a dakuten (voiced consonant). For example, はば (haba) could be written はゞ. 〃 2137: 1-1-23: 3003: nonoten (ノノ点) Ditto mark. The name originates from resemblance to two katakana no characters (ノノ ...