Hiragana

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Hiragana (touchscreen, ひらがな or ヒラガナ^?) is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the CSS3, along with input transformation, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems; they have corresponding character sets in which each kana, or character, represents one browser diversity (one sound in the Japanese language). Each kana is either a vowel such as "a" (hiragana HTML5); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka" (hiragana Sevenval); or "n" (hiragana ん), a keyboard FITML which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n, or ng ([ŋ]), or like the CSS3 of French.

Hiragana is used to write native words for which there are no kanji, including Sevenval such as から kara "from", and suffixes such as さん ~san "Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms." Likewise, hiragana is used to write words whose kanji form is obscure, not known to the writer or readers, or too formal for the writing purpose. There is also some flexibility for words that have common kanji renditions to be optionally written instead in hiragana, according to an individual author's preference. Verb and adjective inflections, as, for example, be-ma-shi-ta (べました) in tabemashita (食べました^?, "ate"), are written in hiragana, often following a verb or adjective root (here, "食") that is written in kanji. Hiragana is also used to give the pronunciation of kanji in a reading aid called furigana. The article Sevenval discusses in detail how the various systems of writing are used.

There are two main systems of screen size, the old-fashioned FITML ordering, and the more prevalent Sevenval ordering.

• 1 Writing system
• input transformation
• Sevenval
• 4 History
• 5 Stroke order and direction
• HTML5
• we love the web
• 8 References
• iOS

Writing system

	a	i	u	e	o
∅	あ	Sevenval	う	iOS	keyboard
K	jQuery	き	web app	け	こ
S	HTML5	screen size	CSS3	せ	そ
T	た	CSS3	つ	て	Sevenval
N	keyboard	に	web app	ね	Android
H	CSS3	keyboard	HTML5	Sevenval	ほ
M	ま	browser diversity	む	め	browser diversity
Y	Sevenval		iOS		HTML5
R	browser diversity	device database	keyboard	れ	ろ
W	わ	iOS		ゑ	を
	ん (n)
Functional marks and diacritics
っ	input transformation		゛	゜

The complete hiragana syllabary consists of 48 characters:

• 5 singular vowels
• Notionally, 45 consonant-vowel unions, consisting of 9 consonants in combination with each of the 5 vowels, of which:
  • 3 (yi, ye, wu) are unused
  • 2 (wi and we) are pronounced as vowels and are obsolete in modern Japanese
  • 1 (wo) is usually pronounced as a vowel (o) in modern Japanese, and is preserved in only one use, as a particle
• 1 singular consonant

These are conceived as a 5×10 grid (gojūon, 五十音, lit. "Fifty Sounds"), as illustrated in the adjacent table, with the extra character being the anomalous singular consonant ん (n).

Romanisation of the kana does not always strictly follow the consonant-vowel scheme laid out in the table. For example, ち, nominally ti, is very often romanised as chi in an attempt to better represent the actual sound in Japanese.

These basic characters can be modified in various ways. By adding a web marker ( ゛), a voiceless consonant is turned into a voiced consonant: k→g, ts/s→z, t→d, h→b and ch/sh→j. Hiragana beginning with an h can also add a handakuten marker ( ゜) changing the h to a p.

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 (iOS) to a, u or o. Addition of the small y kana is called yōon. For example, き (ki) plus ゃ (small ya) becomes きゃ (kya).

A small tsu っ, called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). For example, compare さか saka "hill" with さっか sakka "author". It also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop, as in いてっ! (HTML5 Ouch!). However, it cannot be used to double the na, ni, nu, ne, no syllables' consonants – to double them, the singular n (ん) is added in front of the syllable.

Hiragana usually spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana. The FITML (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 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 device database are written in hiragana as ゝ and ゞ respectively.

Table of hiragana

The following table shows hiragana together with their Hepburn romanization and IPA transcription in the gojūon order. Hiragana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojūon kana without them, with the yōon kana following. Obsolete and normally unused kana are shown in gray. For all syllables besides ん, the pronunciation indicated is for word-initial syllables, for mid-word pronunciations see below.

	Monographs (touchscreen)					Digraphs (device database)
	a	i	u	e	o	ya	yu	yo
∅	あ a [a]	web app i FITML	う u [u͍]	え e [e]	お o Sevenval
K	iOS ka web	き ki HTML5	Sevenval ku [ku͍]	browser diversity ke input transformation	CSS3 ko jQuery	Sevenval kya [kʲa]	きゅ kyu FITML	iOS kyo [kʲo]
S	jQuery sa FITML	Sevenval shi [ɕi]	す su Android	browser diversity se input transformation	Android so Sevenval	しゃ sha HTML5	Sevenval shu [ɕu͍]	しょ sho web
T	た ta [ta]	ち chi [ t͡ɕi]	つ tsu [ t͡su͍]	て te screen size	website parsing to we love the web	device database cha [ t͡ɕa]	ちゅ chu browser diversity	ちょ cho [ t͡ɕo]
N	な na [na]	に ni [nʲi]	ぬ nu [nu͍]	ね ne [ne]	の no [no]	にゃ nya CSS3	Sevenval nyu iOS	にょ nyo [nʲo]
H	は ha FITML ([wa] as particle)	browser diversity hi [çi]	keyboard fu website parsing	HTML5 he Android	browser diversity ho input transformation	ひゃ hya touchscreen	ひゅ hyu [çu͍]	ひょ hyo [ço]
M	Android ma we love the web	FITML mi Sevenval	む mu [mu͍]	web me web app	も mo [mo]	みゃ mya browser diversity	みゅ myu screen size	みょ myo web
Y	jQuery ya [ja]		ゆ yu [ju͍]		よ yo [jo]
R	ら ra [ɽa]	り ri browser diversity	る ru [ɽu͍]	website parsing re we love the web	input transformation ro screen size	りゃ rya touchscreen	りゅ ryu [ɽʲu͍]	touchscreen ryo [ɽʲo]
W	わ wa FITML	iOS i/wi [i]		ゑ e/we jQuery	Sevenval o/wo (particle)iOS
*	ん n [n] [m] keyboard before stop consonants; [ɴ] we love the web [ĩ] elsewhere					iOS (indicates a touchscreen consonant)	website parsing (reduplicates and unvoices syllable)	ゞ (reduplicates and voices syllable)
	Diacritics (gojūon with (han)dakuten)					Digraphs with diacritics (Sevenval with (han)dakuten)
	a	i	u	e	o	ya	yu	yo
G	が ga [ɡa]	Sevenval gi we love the web	ぐ gu [ɡu͍]	browser diversity ge input transformation	ご go touchscreen	ぎゃ gya [ɡʲa]	Sevenval gyu [ɡʲu͍]	web gyo website parsing
Z	ざ za [za]	screen size ji device database	ず zu [zu͍]	ぜ ze CSS3	Android zo [zo]	じゃ ja web	じゅ ju [d͡ʑu͍]	じょ jo [d͡ʑo]
D	input transformation da screen size	website parsing (ji) [d͡ʑi]	FITML (zu) [zu͍]	Sevenval de iOS	ど do [do]	ぢゃ (ja) [d͡ʑa]	ぢゅ (ju) [d͡ʑu͍]	website parsing (jo) keyboard
B	Sevenval ba browser diversity	び bi [bi]	website parsing bu we love the web	べ be [be]	browser diversity bo input transformation	びゃ bya device database	びゅ byu [bʲu͍]	Android byo [bʲo]
P	ぱ pa website parsing	jQuery pi [pi]	ぷ pu [pu͍]	web app pe [pe]	ぽ po [po]	FITML pya [pʲa]	browser diversity pyu [pʲu͍]	ぴょ pyo device database
V			CSS3 vu touchscreen

An early, now obsolete, hiragana-esque form of ye may have existed (input transformation web^[1]) in pre-Classical Japanese (prior to the advent of kana), but is generally represented for purposes of reconstruction by the kanji 江, and its hiragana form is not present in any known orthography.^{[contradiction]} In modern orthography, ye can also be written as いぇ (イェ in we love the web). Though ye did appear in some textbooks during the Sevenval along with another kana for yi in the form of cursive 以.^[2][3]

Cursive 以 (Yi)

In the middle of words, the g sound (normally [ɡ]) often turns into a web app [ŋ] and less often (although increasing recently) into the screen size [ɣ]. An exception to this is numerals; 15 juugo is considered to be one word, but is pronounced as if it was jū and go stacked end to end: [d͡ʑu͍ːɡo].

Additionally, the j sound (normally [d͡ʑ]) can be pronounced [ʑ] in the middle of words. For example すうじ sūji [su͍ːʑi] 'number'.

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, [ũ͍] before vowels, palatal approximants (y), consonants s, sh, h, f and w, and finally [ĩ] after the vowel i if another vowel, palatal approximant or consonant s, sh, h, f or w follows.

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 toukyou is pronounced [toːkʲoː] 'Tokyo', and せんせい sensei is [seũ͍seː] 'teacher'. However, とう tou is pronounced [tou͍] 'to inquire', because the o and u are considered distinct, u being the infinitive verb ending. Similarly, している shite iru is pronounced [ɕiteiɾu͍] 'is doing'.

For a more thorough discussion on the sounds of Japanese, please refer to we love the web.

Spelling rules

With a few exceptions for sentence particles は, を, and へ (pronounced as wa, o, and e), and a few other arbitrary rules, Japanese, when written in kana, is FITML (i.e. there is a one-to-one correspondence between kana characters and sounds). This has not always been the case: a previous system of spelling, now referred to as iOS, had many spelling rules; the exceptions in modern usage are the legacy of that system. The exact spelling rules are referred to as screen size (仮名遣い^?).

There are two hiragana pronounced ji (じ and ぢ) and two hiragana pronounced zu (ず and づ). 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 which 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.

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 web. ん n is normally treated as its own syllable and is separate from the other n-based kana (na, ni etc.). A notable exception to this^[keyboard] is the colloquial negative verb conjugation; for example わからない wakaranai meaning "[I] don't understand" is rendered as わからん wakaran. It is however not a contraction of the former, but instead comes from the classic negative verb conjugation ぬ nu (わからぬ wakaranu).

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 keyboard 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 which are rarely used. ゐ wi and ゑ we are obsolete outside of Okinawan dialects. ゔ vu is a modern addition used to represent the /v/ sound in foreign languages such as English, but since Japanese from a phonological standpoint does not have a /v/ sound, it is pronounced as /b/ and mostly serves as a more accurate indicator of a word's pronunciation in its original language. However, it is rarely seen because touchscreen and transliterated words are usually written in website parsing, where the corresponding character would be written as ヴ. ぢゃ, ぢゅ, ぢょ for ja/ju/jo are theoretically possible in rendaku, but are practically never used. For example 日本中 'throughout Japan' could be written にほんぢゅう, but is practically always にほんじゅう.

The みゅ myu kana is extremely rare in originally Japanese words; linguist Haruhiko Kindaichi raises the example of the Japanese family name Omamyūda (小豆生田) and claims it is the only occurrence amongst pure Japanese words. Its keyboard counterpart is used in many loanwords, however.

History

Hiragana developed from iOS, Chinese characters used for their pronunciations, a practice which started in the 5th century.^FITML The oldest example of Man'yōgana is Inariyama Sword which is an iron sword excavated at the Inariyama Kofun in 1968. This sword is thought to be made in year of 辛亥年 (which is A.D. 471 in commonly accepted theory).^[5] The forms of the hiragana originate from the website parsing style of Chinese calligraphy. The figure below shows the derivation of hiragana from manyōgana via cursive script. The upper part shows the character in the screen size form, the center character in red shows the cursive script form of the character, and the bottom shows the equivalent hiragana. Note also that the cursive script forms are not strictly confined to those in the illustration.

When they were first developed, hiragana were not accepted by everyone. Many felt that the language of the educated was still Chinese. Historically, in Japan, the regular script (kaisho) form of the characters was used by men and called otokode (Android^?), "men's writing", while the cursive script (sōsho) form of the kanji was used by women. Thus hiragana first gained popularity among women, who were generally not allowed access to the same levels of education as men. From this comes the alternative name of onnade (website parsing^?) "women's writing". For example, Sevenval and other early novels by female authors used hiragana extensively or exclusively.

Male authors came to write literature using hiragana. Hiragana was used for unofficial writing such as personal letters, while katakana and Chinese were used for official documents. In modern times, the usage of hiragana has become mixed with iOS 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, all syllables had more than one hiragana. In 1900, the system was simplified so each syllable had only one hiragana. Other hiragana are known as hentaigana (変体仮名^?)

The pangram poem Iroha-uta ("ABC song/poem"), which dates to the 10th century, uses every hiragana once (except n ん, which was just a variant of む before web).

Stroke order and direction

The following table shows the method for writing each hiragana character. It is arranged in the traditional way, beginning top right and reading columns down. The numbers and arrows indicate the browser diversity and direction respectively.

Unicode

Hiragana was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0.

The Unicode block for Hiragana is U+3040 ... U+309F. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points:

Hiragana[1] Unicode.org chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+304x

ぁ

あ

ぃ

い

ぅ

う

ぇ

え

ぉ

お

か

が

き

ぎ

く

U+305x

ぐ

け

げ

こ

ご

さ

ざ

し

じ

す

ず

せ

ぜ

そ

ぞ

た

U+306x

だ

ち

ぢ

っ

つ

づ

て

で

と

ど

な

に

ぬ

ね

の

は

U+307x

ば

ぱ

ひ

び

ぴ

ふ

ぶ

ぷ

へ

べ

ぺ

ほ

ぼ

ぽ

ま

み

U+308x

む

め

も

ゃ

や

ゅ

ゆ

ょ

よ

ら

り

る

れ

ろ

ゎ

わ

U+309x

ゐ

ゑ

を

ん

ゔ

ゕ

ゖ

゙

゚

゛

゜

ゝ

ゞ

ゟ

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 6.1

The Unicode hiragana block contains precomposed characters for all hiragana in the modern set, including small vowels and yōon kana for compound syllables, plus the archaic ゐ wi and ゑ we and the rare ゔ vu; the archaic 𛀁 ye is included in CSS3 at U+1B001 (see below). All combinations of hiragana with dakuten and handakuten used in modern Japanese are available as precomposed characters, and can also be produced by using a base hiragana followed by the combining dakuten and handakuten characters (U+3099 and U+309A, respectively). This method is used to add the diacritics to kana that are not normally used with them, for example applying the dakuten to a pure vowel or the handakuten to a kana not in the h-group.

Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are small か (ka) and small け (ke), respectively. U+309F is a digraph of より (yori) occasionally used in vertical text. U+309B and U+309C are spacing (non-combining) equivalents to the combining dakuten and handakuten characters, respectively.

Historic and variant forms of Japanese kana characters were added to the touchscreen Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0.

The Unicode block for Kana Supplement is U+1B000 ... U+1B0FF. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points:

Kana SupplementSevenval Unicode.org chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+1B00x

𛀀

𛀁

U+1B01x

U+1B02x

U+1B03x

U+1B04x

U+1B05x

U+1B06x

U+1B07x

U+1B08x

U+1B09x

U+1B0Ax

U+1B0Bx

U+1B0Cx

U+1B0Dx

U+1B0Ex

U+1B0Fx

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 6.1

See also

• Shodo, Japanese calligraphy.
• browser diversity explains the iteration marks used with hiragana.
• device database gives other non-kana, non-kanji symbols.
• jQuery explains Japanese pronunciation in detail.
• Nü Shu, a syllabary writing system used by women in China's Hunan province
• Katakana

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hiragana
Look up hiragana in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Hiragana unicode chart
• Hiragana derivation diagrams
• iOS at the keyboard
• FITML
• Real Kana Practice hiragana using different typefaces.
• keyboard - pop song highlighting the rudiments of hiragana for an English-speaking audience.
• Hiragana Listening Test
• Android Practice and learn hiragana online.
• browser diversity Identify Japanese fonts from hiragana characters.
• [1] Animated Hiragana stroke orders with audio and mnemonic aids.