Kana are the syllabaries that form parts of the Japanese writing system, contrasted with the logographicChinese characters known in Japan as kanji. The modern Japanese writing system makes use of two syllabaries: cursivehiragana and angular katakana. Also classified as kana is the ancient syllabic use of kanji known as man'yōgana, which was ancestral to both hiragana and katakana. Hentaigana are historical variants of modern standard hiragana. In modern Japanese, hiragana and katakana have directly corresponding sets of characters representing the same series of sounds. Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as glosses for Chinese characters in Taiwan under Japanese rule. Each kana character corresponds to one sound in the Japanese language, unlike kanji regular script corresponding to meaning. That is why the character system is named kana, literally "false name". Apart from the five vowels, this is always CV, such as ka, ki, etc., or V, such as a, i, etc., with the sole exception of the C grapheme for nasal codas usually romanised as n. This structure has led some scholars to label the system moraic instead of syllabic, because it requires the combination of two syllabograms to represent a CVC syllable with coda, a CVV syllable with complex nucleus, or a CCV syllable with complex onset. Due to the limited number of phonemes in Japanese, as well as the relatively rigid syllable structure, the kana system is a very accurate representation of spoken Japanese.
The following table reads, in gojūon order, as a, i, u, e, o, then ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, and so on. n appears on its own at the end. Asterisks mark unused combinations.
There are presently no kana for ye, yi or wu, as corresponding syllables do not occur natively in modern Japanese.
*The sound is believed to have existed in pre-Classical Japanese, mostly before the advent of kana, and can be represented by the man'yōgana kanji 江. There was an archaic Hiragana derived from the man'yōgana ye kanji 江, which is encoded into Unicode at code point U+1B001, but it is not widely supported. It is believed that e and ye become both pronounced mostly as ye, and that the pronunciation e surpassed ye during the Edo period. A hiragana we, ゑ, which also came to be pronounced as , as demonstrated by 17th century-era European sources, still exists but is considered archaic, and it was eliminated from official orthography in 1946. In modern orthography, if necessary, may be written as いぇ ; however, this usage is limited and nonstandard.
*The modern Katakana e, エ, derives from the man'yōgana 江, originally pronounced ye; a "Katakana letter Archaic E" derived from the man'yōgana 衣 is encoded into Unicode at code point U+1B000, due to being used for that purpose in scholarly works on classical Japanese.
*Some gojūon tables published during the 19th century list additional Katakana in the ye, wu and yi positions. These are not presently used, and the latter two sounds never existed in Japanese. They do not presently exist in Unicode. These sources also list in the Hiragana yi position, and in the ye position.
While no longer part of standard Japanese orthography, wi and we are sometimes used stylistically, as in ウヰスキー for whisky and ヱビス or ゑびす for Japanese kami Ebisu, and Yebisu, a brand of beer named after Ebisu. Hiragana wi and we are still used in certain Okinawan scripts, while katakana wi and we are still used in Ainu.
si, ti, tu, hu, wi, we and wo are often romanized respectively as shi, chi, tsu, fu, i, e and o instead, according to contemporary pronunciation.
Diacritics
Syllables beginning with the voiced consonants , , and are spelled with kana from the corresponding unvoiced columns and the voicing mark, dakuten. Syllables beginning with are spelled with kana from the h column and the half-voicing mark, handakuten.
zi, di, and du are often transcribed into English as ji, ji, and zu instead, respectively, according to contemporary pronunciation.
Usually, , , , , are represented respectively by バ, ビ, ブ, ベ, and ボ, for example, in loanwords such as , but the distinction can be preserved by using ヴァ, ヴィ, ヴ, ヴェ, and ヴォ. Note that ヴ did not have a JIS-encoded Hiragana form until JIS X 0213, meaning that many Shift JIS flavours can only represent it as a katakana, although Unicode supports both.
Digraphs
Syllables beginning with palatalized consonants are spelled with one of the seven consonantal kana from the i row followed by small ya, yu or yo. These digraphs are called yōon.
k
s
t
n
h
m
r
ya
きゃ
しゃ
ちゃ
にゃ
ひゃ
みゃ
りゃ
yu
きゅ
しゅ
ちゅ
にゅ
ひゅ
みゅ
りゅ
yo
きょ
しょ
ちょ
にょ
ひょ
みょ
りょ
There are no digraphs for the semivowely and w columns.
The digraphs are usually transcribed with three letters, leaving out the i: CyV. For example, きゃ is transcribed as kya.
si+y* and ti+y* are often transcribed sh* and ch* instead of sy* and ty*. For example, しゃ is transcribed as sha.
In earlier Japanese, digraphs could also be formed with w-kana. Although obsolete in modern Japanese, the digraphs くゎ and くゐ/くうぃ, are still used 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.
g
j
b
p
ng
ya
ぎゃ
じゃ
びゃ
ぴゃ
き゚ゃ
yu
ぎゅ
じゅ
びゅ
ぴゅ
き゚ゅ
yo
ぎょ
じょ
びょ
ぴょ
き゚ょ
Note that the き゚ゃ, き゚ゅ and remaining entries in the rightmost column, though they exist, are not used in standard Japanese orthography.
jya, jyu, and jyo are often transcribed into English as ja, ju, and jo instead, respectively, according to contemporary pronunciation.
Modern usage
The difference in usage between hiragana and katakana is stylistic. Usually, hiragana is the default syllabary, and katakana is used in certain special cases. Hiragana is used to write native Japanese words with no kanji representation, as well as grammatical elements such as particles and inflections. Today katakana is most commonly used to write words of foreign origin that do not have kanji representations, as well as foreign personal and place names. Katakana is also used to represent onomatopoeia and interjections, emphasis, technical and scientific terms, transcriptions of the Sino-Japanese readings of kanji, and some corporate branding. Kana can be written in small form above or next to lesser-known kanji in order to show pronunciation; this is called furigana. Furigana is used most widely in children's or learners' books. Literature for young children who do not yet know kanji may dispense with it altogether and instead use hiragana combined with spaces.
History
The first kana was a system called man'yōgana, a set of kanji used solely for their phonetic values, much as Chinese uses characters for their phonetic values in foreign loanwords today. Man'yōshū, a poetry anthology assembled in 759, is written in this early script. Hiragana developed as a distinct script from cursive man'yōgana, whereas katakana developed from abbreviated parts of regular script man'yōgana as a glossing system to add readings or explanations to Buddhist sutras. Kana is traditionally said to have been invented by the Buddhist priestKūkai in the ninth century. Kūkai certainly brought the Siddhaṃ script of India home on his return from China in 806; his interest in the sacred aspects of speech and writing led him to the conclusion that Japanese would be better represented by a phonetic alphabet than by the kanji which had been used up to that point. The modern arrangement of kana reflects that of Siddhaṃ, but the traditional iroha arrangement follows a poem which uses each kana once. The present set of kana was codified in 1900, and rules for their usage in 1946.
a
i
u
e
o
=:≠
-
≠
≠
=
≠
=
2:3
k
=
=
=
≠
=
4:1
s
≠
=
≠
=
=
3:2
t
≠
≠
=
=
=
3:2
n
=
=
=
=
=
5:0
h
≠
=
=
=
=
4:1
m
=
≠
≠
=
=
3:2
y
=
=
=
3:0
r
=
=
≠
=
=
4:1
w
=
≠
=
≠
2:2
n
≠
0:1
=:≠
6:4
5:4
6:4
7:2
9:1
33:15
Collation
Kana are the basis for collation in Japanese. They are taken in the order given by the gojūon, though iroha ordering is used for enumeration in some circumstances. Dictionaries differ in the sequence order for long/short vowel distinction, small tsu and diacritics. As Japanese does not use word spaces, there can be no word-by-word collation; all collation is kana-by-kana.
In Unicode
The hiragana range in Unicode is U+3040... U+309F, and the katakana range is U+30A0... U+30FF. The obsolete and rare characters also have their proper code points. Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are hiragana small ka and small ke, respectively. U+30F5 and U+30F6 are their katakana equivalents. Characters U+3099 and U+309A are combining dakuten and handakuten, which correspond to the spacing characters U+309B and U+309C. U+309D is the hiragana iteration mark, used to repeat a previous hiragana. U+309E is the voiced hiragana iteration mark, which stands in for the previous hiragana but with the consonant voiced. U+30FD and U+30FE are the katakana iteration marks. U+309F is a ligature of yori sometimes used in vertical writing. U+30FF is a ligature of koto, also found in vertical writing. Additionally, there are halfwidth equivalents to the standard fullwidth katakana. These are encoded within the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block, starting at U+FF65 and ending at U+FF9F : There is also a small "Katakana Phonetic Extensions" range, which includes some additional small kana characters for writing the Ainu language. Further small kana characters are present in the "Small Kana Extension" block. Unicode also includes "Katakana letter archaic E", as well as 255 archaic Hiragana, in the Kana Supplement block. It also includes a further 31 archaic Hiragana in the Kana Extended-A block.
