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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).
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; Kana Extended-B (Unicode block) continues with additional kana for Taiwanese Hokkien
For example, メール mēru is the gairaigo for e-mail taken from the English word "mail"; the ー lengthens the e. There are some exceptions, such as ローソク (rōsoku (蝋燭, "candle")) or ケータイ (kētai (携帯, "mobile phone")), where Japanese words written in katakana use the elongation mark, too.
The list is sorted by Japanese reading (on'yomi in katakana, then kun'yomi in hiragana), in accordance with the ordering in the official Jōyō table. This list does not include characters that were present in older versions of the list but have since been removed (勺, 銑, 脹, 錘, 匁).
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A (hiragana: あ, katakana: ア) is a Japanese kana that represents the mora consisting of single vowel [a]. The hiragana character あ is based on the sōsho style of kanji 安, while the katakana ア is from the radical of kanji 阿. In the modern Japanese system of alphabetical order, it occupies the first position of the alphabet, before い.
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 ...