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ひ, in hiragana, or ヒ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one mora.Both can be written in two strokes, sometimes one for hiragana, and both are phonemically /hi/ although for phonological reasons, the actual pronunciation is ⓘ.
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). The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more ...
For example, yama (山, mountain) would be spelt as 也末, with two magana with on'yomi for ya and ma; likewise, hito (人, human) spelt as 比登 for hi and to. Kungana (訓仮名, translation kana): magana for transcribing Japanese words, using Japanese translations ascribed to kanji (native "readings" or kun'yomi).
In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; for example, compare さか, saka, "hill" with さっか, sakka, "author". However, it cannot be used to double an n – for this purpose, the singular n (ん) is added in front of the syllable, as in みんな ( minna , "all").
In the Japanese writing system kana ligatures (Japanese: 合略仮名, Hepburn: gōryaku-gana) are ligatures in the kana writing system, both hiragana and katakana.Kana such as koto (ヿ, from 事) and shite (𬼀, from 為) are not kana ligatures, but polysyllabic kana.
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Kanji (漢字, Japanese pronunciation:) are the logographic Chinese characters adapted from the Chinese script used in the writing of Japanese. [1] They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived syllabic scripts of hiragana and katakana.