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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]
Kana (仮名, Japanese pronunciation:) are syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae.In current usage, kana most commonly refers to hiragana [1] and katakana.
Syllabaries often begin as simplified logograms, as shown here with the Japanese katakana writing system. To the left is the modern letter, with its original Chinese character form on the right. Multilingual stop sign employing the Latin alphabet and the Cherokee syllabary in Tahlequah, Oklahoma
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.
Katakana (片仮名、カタカナ, IPA: [katakaꜜna, kataꜜkana]) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, [2] kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji).
Remembering the Kana: A Guide to Reading and Writing the Japanese Syllabaries in 3 hours each [8] is a book by James Heisig for remembering hiragana and katakana. It uses mostly the same imaginative memory technique as Remembering the Kanji I, though some katakana are prompted to be learned as simplified forms of their hiragana counterparts.
The preceding conversation would be written in Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Roots of words would be written in Kanji, the traditional Japanese ideograms that the Japanese borrowed from the Chinese. Particles, like "wa"and "o" and verb inflections would be spelled out syllable by syllable in Hiragana, one of the two Japanese syllabaries.
Syllabaries are best suited to languages with relatively simple syllable structure, since a different symbol is needed for every syllable. Japanese, for example, contains about 100 moras, which are represented by moraic hiragana .