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hiragana

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Also known as Hira

is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji (Chinese characters).

AI overview

Hiragana is a Japanese alphabet made up of syllables (rather than individual letters) and is one of three main writing systems used in Japanese, alongside katakana and kanji. It matters because it's essential for reading and writing Japanese, as it's used to write native Japanese words and grammatical elements that kanji alone cannot express.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Key facts

Writing system.name: Hiragana
Writing system.type: Syllabary
Writing system.languages: Japanese, Hachijō and the Ryukyuan languages
Writing system.time: present
Writing system.fam1: Oracle bone script
Writing system.fam2: Seal script
Writing system.fam3: Clerical script
Writing system.fam4: Regular script (kanji)
Writing system.fam5: Man'yōgana
Writing system.sisters: Katakana, Hentaigana
Writing system.iso15924: Hira
Writing system.sample: ひ教科書体.svg
Writing system.imagesize: 100px

via Wikipedia infobox

~28 min read

Encyclopedic overview

21 sections

Contents

Writing system
Table of hiragana
Spelling–phonology correspondence
Spelling rules
Obsolete kana
Hentaigana
Polysyllabic kana
''e'' and ''i''
''yi'', ''ye'' and ''wu''
''yi''
''ye''
''wu''
History
Stroke order and direction
Unicode
See also
References
Citations
Sources
Notes
External links

is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji (Chinese characters).

It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", as contrasted with kanji).

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “hiragana” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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