Hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji.
Katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script.
In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or moras which make up words.
Man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this type of kana is not clear, but it was in use since at least the mid-7th century. The name "man'yōgana" derives from the Man'yōshū, a Japanese poetry anthology from the Nara period written with man'yōgana.
In the Japanese writing system, hentaigana are variant forms of hiragana.
The dakuten, colloquially ten-ten, is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a mora should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku.
The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis. Almost all written Japanese sentences contain a mixture of kanji and kana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to a large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is considered to be one of the most complicated currently in use.
の, in hiragana, and ノ, in katakana, are Japanese kana, both representing one mora. In the gojūon system of ordering of Japanese morae, it occupies the 25th position, between ね (ne) and は (ha). It occupies the 26th position in the iroha ordering. Both represent the sound. The katakana form is written similar to the Kangxi radical 丿, radical 4.
A is a Japanese kana that represents the mora consisting of single vowel. The hiragana character あ is based on the sōsho style of kanji 安, while the katakana ア is from the radical of kanji 阿. In the modern Japanese system of alphabetical order, it occupies the first position of the alphabet, before い. Additionally, it is the 36th letter in Iroha, after て, before さ. The Unicode for あ is U+3042, and the Unicode for ア is U+30A2.
I is one of the Japanese kana each of which represents one mora. い is based on the sōsho style of the kanji character 以, and イ is from the radical of the kanji character 伊. In the modern Japanese system of sound order, it occupies the second position of the mora chart, between あ and う. Additionally, it is the first letter in Iroha, before ろ. Both represent the sound. In the Ainu language, katakana イ is written as y in their Latin-based mora chart, and a small ィ after another katakana represents a diphthong.
In the Japanese language, the gojūon (五十音, Japanese pronunciation:[ɡo(d)ʑɯꜜːoɴ], lit. "fifty sounds") is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (gojū) in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed. Each kana, which may be a hiragana or katakana character, corresponds to one sound in Japanese. As depicted at the right using hiragana characters, the sequence begins with あ (a), い (i), う (u), え (e), お (o), then continues with か (ka), き (ki), く (ku), け (ke), こ (ko), and so on and so forth for a total of ten rows of five columns.
The chōonpu, also known as chōonkigō (長音記号), onbiki (音引き), bōbiki (棒引き), or Katakana-Hiragana Prolonged Sound Mark by the Unicode Consortium, is a Japanese symbol that indicates a chōon, or a long vowel of two morae in length. Its form is a horizontal or vertical line in the center of the text with the width of one kanji or kana character. It is written horizontally in horizontal text and vertically in vertical text. The chōonpu is usually used to indicate a long vowel sound in katakana writing, rarely in hiragana writing, and never in romanized Japanese. The chōonpu is a distinct mark from the dash, and in most Japanese typefaces it can easily be distinguished. In horizontal writing it is similar in appearance to, but should not be confused with, the kanji character 一 ("one").
U is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. In the modern Japanese system of alphabetical order, they occupy the third place in the modern Gojūon (五十音) system of collating kana. In the Iroha, they occupied the 24th position, between む and ゐ. In the Gojūon chart, う lies in the first column and the third row. Both represent the sound. In the Ainu language, the small katakana ゥ represents a diphthong, and is written as w in the Latin alphabet.
In Japanese writing, the kana え (hiragana) and エ (katakana) occupy the fourth place, between う and お, in the modern Gojūon (五十音) system of collating kana. In the Iroha, they occupy the 34th, between こ and て. In the table at right, え lies in the first column and the fourth row. Both represent.
Half-width kana are katakana characters displayed compressed at half their normal width, instead of the usual square (1:1) aspect ratio. For example, the usual (full-width) form of the katakana ka is カ while the half-width form is ｶ. Additionally, half-width hiragana is included in Unicode, and it is usable on Web or in e-books via CSS's font-feature-settings: "hwid" 1 with Adobe-Japan1-6 based OpenType fonts. Finally, half-width kanji is usable on modern computers, and is used in some receipt printers, electric bulletin board and old computers.
Wi is an obsolete Japanese kana, which is normally pronounced in current-day Japanese. The combination of a W-column kana letter with ゐ゙ in hiragana was introduced to represent in the 19th century and 20th century. It is presumed that 'ゐ' represented, and that 'ゐ' and 'い' represented distinct pronunciations before merging to sometime between the Kamakura and Taishō periods. Along with the kana for we, this kana was deemed obsolete in Japanese with the orthographic reforms of 1946, to be replaced by 'い/イ' in all contexts. It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia and foreign words, the katakana form 'ウィ' (U-[small-i]) is used for the mora.
ゑ in hiragana, or ヱ in katakana, is an obsolete Japanese kana that is normally pronounced in current-day Japanese. The combination of a W-column kana letter with "ゑ゙" in hiragana was introduced to represent [ve] in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Wu is a Japanese mora or a kana used to write it, though it has never been in standard use.
Yi is a Japanese mora or a kana used to write it, though it has never been in standard use.
Ye is a Japanese mora or a kana used to write it, no longer in standard use.
