Hiragana

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Hiragana 平仮名 ひらがな
Script type	Syllabary
Time period	~800 AD to the present
Direction	top-to-bottom, left-to-right
Languages	Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages
Related scripts
Parent systems	Oracle Bone Script Seal Script Clerical Script Regular script (Kanji) Man'yōgana Hiragana
Sister systems	Katakana, Hentaigana
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Hira, 410 , ​Hiragana
Unicode
Unicode alias	Hiragana
Unicode range	Hiragana: U+3040–U+309F Kana Extended-B: U+1AFF0–U+1AFFF Kana Supplement: U+1B000–U+1B0FF Kana Extended-A: U+1B100–U+1B12F Small Kana Extension: U+1B130–U+1B16F
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Japanese writing
Components
show Kanji Stroke order Radicals Kyōiku kanji Jōyō kanji Jinmeiyō kanji Hyōgai kanji List of kanji by stroke count List of kanji by concept
show Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Man'yōgana Sōgana Gojūon
show Typographic symbols Japanese punctuation Iteration mark
Uses
show Syllabograms Furigana Okurigana Braille
Romanization
show Rōmaji Hepburn (colloquial) Kunrei (ISO) Nihon (ISO transliteration) JSL (transliteration) Wāpuro (keyboard)
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Hiragana (平仮名, ひらがな, Japanese pronunciation: [çiɾaɡaꜜna])^{[note 1]} is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji and in some cases Latin script. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana literally means "ordinary" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrasted with kanji).^[1][2]

Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be either a vowel such as "a" (hiragana あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka" (か); or "n" (ん), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n or ng ([ŋ]) when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French, Portuguese or Polish. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of ん "n"), the kana are referred to as syllabic symbols and not alphabetic letters.^[3]

Hiragana is used to write okurigana (kana suffixes following a kanji root, for example to inflect verbs and adjectives), various grammatical and function words including particles, as well as miscellaneous other native words for which there are no kanji or whose kanji form is obscure or too formal for the writing purpose.^[4] Words that do have common kanji renditions may also sometimes be written instead in hiragana, according to an individual author's preference, for example to impart an informal feel. Hiragana is also used to write furigana, a reading aid that shows the pronunciation of kanji characters.

There are two main systems of ordering hiragana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.

Writing system[]

After the 1900 script reform, which deemed hundreds of characters hentaigana, the hiragana syllabary consists of 48 base characters, of which two (ゐ and ゑ) are only used in some proper names:

• 8 singular vowels: あ [a], い [i], う [ɯ], え [e], お [o],
  を [o] (only used as a particle and in some names),
  ゐ [i] and ゑ [e] (both only used in some names)
• 39 consonant–vowel unions (not including wi, we and wo; see below)
• 1 singular consonant (ん)

These are conceived as a 5×10 grid (gojūon, 五十音, "Fifty Sounds"), as illustrated in the adjacent table, read あ (a), い (i), う (u), え (e), お (o), か (ka), き (ki), く (ku), け (ke), こ (ko) and so forth, with the singular consonant ん (n) appended to the end. Of the 50 theoretically possible combinations, yi, ye, and wu are obsolete, while wi (ゐ), pronounced [i], and we (ゑ), pronounced [e], are extremely rare in modern Japanese. Wo (を), pronounced [o], is common as a particle but otherwise extremely rare.

These basic characters can be modified in various ways. By adding a dakuten marker ( ゛), a voiceless consonant is turned into a voiced consonant: k→g, ts/s→z, t→d, h→b and ch/sh→j. For example, か (ka) becomes が (ga). Hiragana beginning with an h sound can also add a handakuten marker ( ゜) changing the h to a p. For example, は (ha) becomes ぱ (pa).

A small version of the hiragana for ya, yu, or yo (ゃ, ゅ or ょ respectively) may be added to hiragana ending in i. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide (palatalization) to a, u or o. For example, き (ki) plus ゃ (small ya) becomes きゃ (kya). Addition of the small y kana is called yōon.

A small tsu っ, called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; for example, compare さか, saka, "hill" with さっか, sakka, "author". The sokuon also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop, as in いてっ! ([iteʔ], Ouch!). However, it cannot be used to double the na, ni, nu, ne, no syllables' consonants – to double these, the singular n (ん) is added in front of the syllable, as in みんな (minna, "all").

Hiragana usually spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana; for example, おかあさん (o-ka-a-sa-n, "mother"). The chōonpu (long vowel mark) (ー) used in katakana is rarely used with hiragana, for example in the word らーめん, rāmen, but this usage is considered non-standard in Japanese. However, the Okinawan language uses chōonpu with hiragana. In informal writing, small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds (はぁ, haa, ねぇ, nee). Standard and voiced iteration marks are written in hiragana as ゝ and ゞ respectively.

Table of hiragana[]

The following table shows the complete hiragana together with the Hepburn romanization and IPA transcription in the gojūon order.^[6] Hiragana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojūon kana without them, with the yōon kana following. Those in bold do not use the initial sound for that row. For all syllables besides ん, the pronunciation indicated is for word-initial syllables, for mid-word pronunciations see below.

Final nasal monograph	Polysyllabic monographs
n	kashiko	koto	sama	nari	mairasesoro	yori
ん n [ɴ m n ɲ ŋ ɰ̃]	kashiko [kaɕiko]	koto [koto]	sama [sama]	nari [naɾi]	/ mairasesoro [maiɾasesoːɾoː]	ゟ yori [joɾi]
		゙ goto [goto]

Spelling–phonology correspondence[]

In the middle of words, the g sound (normally [ɡ]) may turn into a velar nasal [ŋ] or velar fricative [ɣ]. An exception to this is numerals; 15 jūgo is considered^{[citation needed]} to be one word, but is pronounced as if it was jū and go stacked end to end: [d͡ʑɯːɡo].

In many accents, the j and z sounds are pronounced as affricates ([d͡ʑ] and [d͡z], respectively) at the beginning of utterances and fricatives [ʑ, z] in the middle of words. For example, すうじ sūji [sɯːʑi] 'number', ざっし zasshi [d͡zaɕɕi] 'magazine'.

In archaic forms of Japanese, there existed the kwa (くゎ [kʷa]) and gwa (ぐゎ [ɡʷa]) digraphs. In modern Japanese, these phonemes have been phased out of usage and only exist in the extended katakana digraphs for approximating foreign language words.

The singular n is pronounced [n] before t, ch, ts, n, r, z, j and d, [m] before m, b and p, [ŋ] before k and g, [ɴ] at the end of utterances, and some kind of high nasal vowel [ɰ̃] before vowels, palatal approximants (y), and fricative consonants (s, sh, h, f and w).

In kanji readings, the diphthongs ou and ei are today usually pronounced [oː] (long o) and [eː] (long e) respectively. For example, とうきょう (lit. toukyou) is pronounced [toːkʲoː] 'Tokyo', and せんせい sensei is [seɯ̃seː] 'teacher'. However, とう tou is pronounced [toɯ] 'to inquire', because the o and u are considered distinct, u being the verb ending in the dictionary form. Similarly, している shite iru is pronounced [ɕiteiɾɯ] 'is doing'.

For a more thorough discussion on the sounds of Japanese, please refer to Japanese phonology.

Obsolete kana[]

This article contains uncommon Unicode characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of the intended characters.

Hentaigana[]

Polysyllabic kana[]

Yi, ye and wu[]

Spelling rules[]

With a few exceptions, such as for the three particles は (pronounced [ɰa] instead of [ha]), へ (pronounced [e] instead of [he]) and [o] (written を instead of お), Japanese when written in kana is phonemically orthographic, i.e. there is a one-to-one correspondence between kana characters and sounds, leaving only words' pitch accent unrepresented. This has not always been the case: a previous system of spelling, now referred to as historical kana usage, differed substantially from pronunciation; the three above-mentioned exceptions in modern usage are the legacy of that system.

There are two hiragana pronounced ji (じ and ぢ) and two hiragana pronounced zu (ず and づ), but to distinguish them, particularly when typing Japanese, sometimes ぢ is written as di and づ is written as du. These pairs are not interchangeable. Usually, ji is written as じ and zu is written as ず. There are some exceptions. If the first two syllables of a word consist of one syllable without a dakuten and the same syllable with a dakuten, the same hiragana is used to write the sounds. For example, chijimeru ('to boil down' or 'to shrink') is spelled ちぢめる and tsuzuku ('to continue') is つづく. For compound words where the dakuten reflects rendaku voicing, the original hiragana is used. For example, chi (血 'blood') is spelled ち in plain hiragana. When 鼻 hana ('nose') and 血 chi ('blood') combine to make hanaji (鼻血 'nose bleed'), the sound of 血 changes from chi to ji. So hanaji is spelled はなぢ according to ち: the basic hiragana used to transcribe 血. Similarly, tsukau (使う/遣う; 'to use') is spelled つかう in hiragana, so kanazukai (仮名遣い; 'kana use', or 'kana orthography') is spelled かなづかい in hiragana.

However, this does not apply when kanji are used phonetically to write words that do not relate directly to the meaning of the kanji (see also ateji). The Japanese word for 'lightning', for example, is inazuma (稲妻). The 稲 component means 'rice plant', is written いな in hiragana and is pronounced: ina. The 妻 component means 'wife' and is pronounced tsuma (つま) when written in isolation—or frequently as zuma (ずま) when it features after another syllable. Neither of these components have anything to do with 'lightning', but together they do when they compose the word for 'lightning'. In this case, the default spelling in hiragana いなずま rather than いなづま is used.^{[disputed – discuss]}

Officially, ぢ and づ do not occur word-initially pursuant to modern spelling rules. There were words such as ぢばん jiban 'ground' in the historical kana usage, but they were unified under じ in the modern kana usage in 1946, so today it is spelled exclusively じばん. However, づら zura 'wig' (from かつら katsura) and づけ zuke (a sushi term for lean tuna soaked in soy sauce) are examples of word-initial づ today. Some people write the word for hemorrhoids as ぢ (normally じ) for emphasis.

No standard Japanese words begin with the kana ん (n). This is the basis of the word game shiritori. ん n is normally treated as its own syllable and is separate from the other n-based kana (na, ni etc.).

ん is sometimes directly followed by a vowel (a, i, u, e or o) or a palatal approximant (ya, yu or yo). These are clearly distinct from the na, ni etc. syllables, and there are minimal pairs such as きんえん kin'en 'smoking forbidden', きねん kinen 'commemoration', きんねん kinnen 'recent years'. In Hepburn romanization, they are distinguished with an apostrophe, but not all romanization methods make the distinction. For example, past prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's first name is actually じゅんいちろう Jun'ichirō pronounced [d͡ʑu͍ũ͍it͡ɕiɾoː]

There are a few hiragana that are rarely used. Outside of Okinawan orthography, ゐ wi [i] and ゑ we [e] are only used in some proper names.