kana
Sign in to saveare syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. In current usage, kana most commonly refers to hiragana and katakana. It can also refer to their ancestor , which were Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese (e.g. ''man'yōgana); and hentaigana'', which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana.
AI overview
Kana are two syllabaries—hiragana and katakana—used to write the sound units of Japanese, and they originated from Chinese characters that were adapted to represent Japanese phonetically. They matter because they form the foundation of Japanese writing, allowing speakers to represent the language's sounds in a systematic way.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Key facts
- Writing system.name
- Kana
- Writing system.sample
- Hiragana and katakana.svg
- Writing system.caption
- "Kana" written in katakana (left) and hiragana (right)
- Writing system.imagesize
- 220px
- Writing system.type
- Syllabary
- Writing system.languages
- Japanese, Ryukyuan languages, Ainu
- Writing system.fam1
- Oracle bone script
- Writing system.fam2
- Seal script
- Writing system.fam3
- Clerical script
- Writing system.fam4
- Regular script (Chinese characters)
- Writing system.fam5
- Kanji
- Writing system.time
- present
Article
14 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- Terms
- Hiragana and katakana
- Diacritics
- Digraphs
- Modern usage
- History
- Collation
- Disadvantages
- In Unicode
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
are syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. In current usage, kana most commonly refers to hiragana and katakana. It can also refer to their ancestor , which were Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese (e.g. ''man'yōgana); and hentaigana, which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana.
Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu. A number of systems exist to write the Ryūkyūan languages, in particular Okinawan, in hiragana. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as ruby text for Chinese characters in Taiwan when it was under Japanese rule.