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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.
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 ).
The Tartessian or Southwestern script is typologically intermediate between a pure alphabet and the Paleohispanic full semi-syllabaries. Although the letter used to write a stop consonant was determined by the following vowel, as in a full semi-syllabary, the following vowel was also written, as in an alphabet. Some scholars treat Tartessian as ...
Katakana are often (but not always) used for transcription of Japanese company names. For example, Suzuki is written スズキ , and Toyota is written トヨタ . As these are common family names, Suzuki being the second most common in Japan, [ 7 ] using katakana helps distinguish company names from surnames in writing.
Katakana is now relegated to special uses such as recently borrowed words (i.e., since the 19th century), names in transliteration, the names of animals, in telegrams, and for emphasis. Originally, for all syllables there was more than one possible hiragana. In 1900, the system was simplified so each syllable had only one hiragana.
To alleviate any confusion on how to pronounce the names of other Japanese people, most official Japanese documents require Japanese to write their names in both kana and kanji. [32] Chinese place names and Chinese personal names appearing in Japanese texts, if spelled in kanji, are almost invariably read with on'yomi. Especially for older and ...
In earlier Japanese, digraphs could also be formed with w-kana. Although obsolete in modern Japanese, the digraphs くゎ (/kʷa/) and くゐ/くうぃ(/kʷi/), are preserved in certain Okinawan orthographies. In addition, the kana え can be used in Okinawan to form the digraph くぇ, which represents the /kʷe/ sound.
Note: Characters in bold are used in the names of prefectures. Jōyō kanji followed by a character in brackets are not included in JIS X 0208; the character in brackets is the unofficial print variant JIS X 0208 does have. JIS X 0208 also lacks 𠮟, but does include the official variant 叱.