Hiragana

The Role of Hiragana

Hiragana is the primary phonetic script in Japanese and forms the foundation of The Japanese Writing System. It consists of 46 basic characters, each representing a single syllable or mora. Unlike Kanji, which represents meaning, hiragana is strictly phonetic.

While Katakana is primarily used for foreign loanwords, hiragana is used for native Japanese words. It is essential for writing grammatical particles, verb and adjective inflections (okurigana), and words that either lack kanji or have kanji that are too obscure for everyday use. Additionally, smaller hiragana characters called furigana are often written above or beside kanji to indicate their pronunciation.

The Basic Hiragana Table (Gojūon)

The standard hiragana chart is known as the Gojūon (fifty sounds). It is organized by consonants and the five vowels: a, i, u, e, o.

Note: The character is almost exclusively used as a grammatical particle. The characters and are pronounced as "wa" and "e" respectively when functioning as particles.

Diacritics (Dakuten and Handakuten)

By adding two small markers to the top right of certain hiragana, the consonant sound changes.

• The dakuten (゛) changes unvoiced consonants to voiced ones (k → g, s → z, t → d, h → b).
• The handakuten (゜) is exclusively applied to the H-row to change it to a "p" sound.

Note: and are extremely common, while and appear rarely and almost exclusively in specific native compound words.

Contracted Sounds (Yōon)

Hiragana characters ending in the "i" sound can be combined with a small (ya), (yu), or (yo) to create a single merged syllable.

Double Consonants (Sokuon)

A small "tsu" () is used to indicate a double consonant, inserting a brief pause before the following syllable. It creates a stutter-step rhythm in the pronunciation of a word.

For example:

• vs
• vs