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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.
'Kana' is a compound of kari (仮, 'borrowed; assumed; false') and na (名, 'name'), which eventually collapsed into kanna and ultimately 'kana'. [3]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.
In addition to native words and placenames, kanji are used to write Japanese family names and most Japanese given names. Centuries ago, hiragana and katakana, the two kana syllabaries, derived their shapes from particular kanji pronounced in the same way. However, unlike kanji, kana have no meaning, and are used only to represent sounds.
For example, in standard Japanese the kana おう can be pronounced in two different ways: as /oː/ meaning "king" (王), [2] and as /oɯ/ meaning "to chase" (追う). [3] Kunrei and Hepburn spell the two differently as ô / ō and ou , because the former is a long vowel while the latter has an o that happens to be followed by a u ; however ...
る, in hiragana, or ル in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represent one mora. The hiragana is written in one stroke; the katakana in two. Both represent the sound ⓘ. The Ainu language uses a small katakana ㇽ to represent a final r sound after an u sound (ウㇽ ur).
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. It is not clear whether the calligraphic gesture involved in writing the kana or some phonetic gesture involved in producing the sounds gives the names hatsuon and haneru-on .
There are many synonyms in Japanese because the Japanese language draws from several different languages for loanwords, notably Chinese and English, as well as its own native words. [1] In Japanese, synonyms are called dōgigo (kanji: 同義語) or ruigigo (kanji: 類義語). [2] Full synonymy, however, is rare.