Hiragana

From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.

Hiragana are part of the Japanese writing system. Japanese writing normally consists of kanji which are used for the main words in a sentence, and hiragana which are used for the little words that make up the grammar (in English these would be words like “from” and “his”). Hiragana is also used for the endings of some of the words.

Hiragana is a syllabary, which means that each hiragana character stands for a syllable. It is therefore different from a language such as English which uses an alphabet in which most of the letters stand for one bit of sound (phoneme). There is also another syllabary called katakana which is mostly used for foreign words and names. The two kana systems are quite easy to learn, but kanji takes years of practice.

Sometimes the whole of a text may be written in hiragana to make it easy. This would be used in books for young children, or for students starting to learn Japanese, or when writing the lyrics for songs underneath the music where it is important to show how the words fit the music.

In Hiragana each character (kana) is either a vowel (such as a あ); a consonant followed by a vowel (such as ka か); or n ん, although sometimes this sounds more like an “m” or “ng”.

As an example of how the grammatical endings are used we can take the verb “to eat” which is食べル (taberu). Here the main part of the word “eat” (pronounced “ta” in this case) is the kanji 食. The other two syllables: “be-ru” are in hiragana (べル). To say “I ate” or “you ate” etc you would say “tabemashita”, written食べました (“be-ma-shi-ta” is written in hiragana).

Contents 1 Table of hiragana 2 See also 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Table of hiragana

The main hiragana characters are shown in this table.

vowels					yōon
あ a	い i	う u	え e	お o	(ya)	(yu)	(yo)
か ka	き ki	く ku	け ke	こ ko	きゃ kya	きゅ kyu	きょ kyo
さ sa	し shi	す su	せ se	そ so	しゃ sha	しゅ shu	しょ sho
た ta	ち chi	つ tsu	て te	と to	ちゃ cha	ちゅ chu	ちょ cho
な na	に ni	ぬ nu	ね ne	の no	にゃ nya	にゅ nyu	にょ nyo
は ha	ひ hi	ふ fu	へ he	ほ ho	ひゃ hya	ひゅ hyu	ひょ hyo
ま ma	み mi	む mu	め me	も mo	みゃ mya	みゅ myu	みょ myo
や ya		ゆ yu		よ yo
ら ra	り ri	る ru	れ re	ろ ro	りゃ rya	りゅ ryu	りょ ryo
わ wa	ゐ wi		ゑ we	を o/wo
				ん n
が ga	ぎ gi	ぐ gu	げ ge	ご go	ぎゃ gya	ぎゅ gyu	ぎょ gyo
ざ za	じ ji	ず zu	ぜ ze	ぞ zo	じゃ ja	じゅ ju	じょ jo
だ da	ぢ (ji)	づ (zu)	で de	ど do	ぢゃ (ja)	ぢゅ (ju)	ぢょ (jo)
ば ba	び bi	ぶ bu	べ be	ぼ bo	びゃ bya	びゅ byu	びょ byo
ぱ pa	ぴ pi	ぷ pu	ぺ pe	ぽ po	ぴゃ pya	ぴゅ pyu	ぴょ pyo

Notice that the sound “hu” is unknown in Japanese, so ふ is pronounced “fu” with an “f” which is blown lightly.

To write the voiced sounds for “g”, “d”, “z” and “b” two little lines called a dakuten (゛) are added after a character starting with the unvoiced sounds “k”, “t”, “s” and “h”. A circle, (゜), is added after a “h” for the sound “p”. For example: は gives the sound “ha”; ば gives the sound “ba”; ぱ gives the sound “pa”.

Sometimes when words are joined together to make compound words, a sound changes from unvoiced to voiced. For example: “hana”: はな (nose) + ち“chi” (blood) becomes はなぢ “hanaji” (nosebleed)

Some Japanese syllables which have sliding sounds add a small version of the hiragana for ya, yu or yo (ゃ, ゅ and ょ) This is called “yōon”. For example: “sha” sounds like “shi”+”ya” so “densha” (a tram) is written でんしゃ. A small “tsu” っ called a “sokuon” shows a doubled consonant: “Nippon” (Japan) is written にっぽん. Without the small “tsu” the first syllable would sound like the word “knee”.

If you want to learn to read and write kana you can start either with hiragana or katakana. However, if you are going to take reading Japanese seriously then hiragana will be the basis of learning Japanese script. But if you are going to visit Japan and want to recognize a few words then katakana will be more useful as it will enable you to read signs and names of things on restaurant menus.

[edit] See also

• Japanese language
• katakana
• kanji

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Learn how to read and write hiragana
• Test your hiragana knowledge