are [[syllabaries|syllabary]] used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''[[hiragana]]''
Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu language. A Okinawan scripts 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.
Each syllabogram corresponds to one phoneme or syllable, unlike kanji, which generally each logogram. Apart from the five vowels, it is always CV (consonant syllable onset with vowel syllable nucleus), such as ka, ki, sa, shi, etc., with the sole exception of the C grapheme for nasal consonant syllable coda usually romanised as n. The structure has led some scholars to label the system moraic, instead of syllabic, because it requires the combination of two syllabograms to represent a CVC syllable with coda (e.g. CV n, CV m, CV ng), a CVV syllable with complex nucleus (i.e. multiple or expressively long vowels), or a CCV syllable with complex onset (i.e. including a semivowel, C yV, C wV).
The limited number of in Japanese, as well as the relatively rigid syllable structure, makes the kana system a very accurate representation of spoken Japanese.
Etymology
Kana is a compound of and , which eventually collapsed into
kanna and ultimately
kana.
were so called in contrast with which were kanji used "regularly" (kanji used for their meanings as they are now), or more specifically the kaisho writing of such kanji.
[ Nihon Kokugo Daijiten][ Daijisen][ Kōjien]
It was not until the 18th century that the early-nationalist kokugaku movement, which promoted a move away from Sinocentrism academia, began to reanalyze the script from a phonological point of view.
Terms
Although the term 'kana' is now commonly understood as hiragana and katakana, it actually has broader application as listed below:
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, or : a syllabary.
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, or , : phonetic kanji used as syllabary characters, historically used by men (who were more educated).
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, : the most prominent system of magana.
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, : cursive man'yōgana.
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, , , , , , , or : a syllabary derived from simplified sōgana, historically used by women (who were less educated), historically sorted in Iroha order.
-
, or : obsolete variants of hiragana.
-
, or , : a syllabary derived by using bits of characters in man'yōgana, historically sorted in gojūon order.
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, : hiragana and katakana, as opposed to kanji.
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, : magana for transcribing Japanese words, using, strict or loose, Chinese-derived readings ( on'yomi). For example, would be spelt as 也末, with two magana with on'yomi for ya and ma; likewise, spelt as 比登 for hi and to.
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, : magana for transcribing Japanese words, using wago ascribed to kanji (native "readings" or kun'yomi). For example, Yamato would be spelt as 八間跡, with three magana with kun'yomi for ya, ma and to; likewise, spelt as 夏樫 for natsu and kashi.
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, , , , or , : kanji used for meanings, historically used by men (who were more educated).
-
, : mixed script including only kanji and katakana.
Hiragana and katakana
The following table reads, in gojūon order, as
a,
i,
u,
e,
o (down first column), then
ka,
ki,
ku,
ke,
ko (down second column), and so on.
n appears on its own at the end. Asterisks mark unused combinations.
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|}
-
There are presently no kana for ye, yi or wu, as corresponding syllables do not occur natively in modern Japanese.
-
The ( ye) sound is believed to have existed in pre-Classical Japanese, mostly before the advent of kana, and can be represented by the man'yōgana kanji 江.
[More information is available at ヤ行エ on the Japanese Wikipedia.] but it is not widely supported. It is believed that e and ye first merged to ye before shifting back to e during the Edo period.
-
The modern Katakana e, エ, derives from the man'yōgana 江, originally pronounced ye;
-
Some gojūon tables published during the 19th century list additional Katakana in the ye (), wu () and yi () positions.
[More information is available at わ行う, ヤ行イ and 五十音#51全てが異なる字・音: 江戸後期から明治 on the Japanese Wikipedia.] They were added to Unicode in version 14.0 in 2021.
-
Although removed from the standard orthography with the gendai kanazukai reforms, wi and we still see stylistic use, as in ウヰスキー for whisky and ヱビス or ゑびす for Japanese kami Ebisu, and Yebisu, a brand of beer named after Ebisu. Hiragana wi and we are preserved in certain Okinawan scripts, while katakana wi and we are preserved in the Ainu language.
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wo is preserved only as the accusative case particle, normally occurring only in hiragana.
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si, ti, tu, hu, wi, we and wo are usually romanized respectively as shi, chi, tsu, fu, i, e and o instead, according to contemporary pronunciation.
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the sokuon or small tsu (っ/ッ) indicates gemination and is romanized by repeating the following consonant. For example, って is romanized tte (exception: っち becomes tchi).
Diacritics
Syllables beginning with the voiced consonants g, z, d and b are spelled with kana from the corresponding unvoiced columns (
k,
s,
t and
h) and the voicing mark,
dakuten. Syllables beginning with p are spelled with kana from the
h column and the half-voicing mark,
handakuten.
| +Dakuten diacritic marks, hiragana (left) and katakana (right)
!
! g
! z
! d
! b
! p
! ng
! l |
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Note that the か゚, ら゚ and the remaining entries in the two rightmost columns, though they exist, are not used in standard Japanese orthography.
-
zi, di, and du are often transcribed into English as ji, ji, and zu instead, respectively, according to contemporary pronunciation.
-
Usually, va, vi, vu, ve, vo are represented respectively by バba, ビbi, ブbu, ベbe, and ボbo, for example, in loanwords such as ( baiorin "violin"), but (less usually) the distinction can be preserved by using w- with voicing marks or by using wu and a vowel kana, as in ヴァ(ヷ), ヴィ(ヸ), ヴ, ヴェ(ヹ), and ヴォ(ヺ). Note that ヴ did not have a JIS-encoded Hiragana form (ゔ) until JIS X 0213, meaning that many Shift JIS flavours (including the Windows and HTML5 version) can only represent it as a katakana, although Unicode supports both.
Digraphs
Syllables beginning with palatalized consonants are spelled with one of the seven
kana from the
i row followed by small
ya,
yu or
yo. These digraphs are called yōon.
| +Yōon digraphs, hiragana
!
! k
! s
! t
! n
! h
! m
! r |
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-
There are no digraphs for the semivowel y and w columns.
-
The digraphs are usually transcribed with three letters, leaving out the i: C yV. For example, きゃ is transcribed as kya to distinguish it from the two-kana きや, kiya.
-
si+ y* and ti+ y* are often transcribed sh* and ch* instead of sy* and ty*. For example, しゃ is transcribed as sha, and ちゅ is transcribed as chu.
-
In earlier Japanese, digraphs could also be formed with w-kana. Although obsolete in modern Japanese, the digraphs くゎ (/kʷa/) and くゐ/くうぃ(/kʷi/), are preserved in certain Okinawan orthographies. In addition, the kana え can be used in Okinawan to form the digraph くぇ, which represents the /kʷe/ sound.
-
In loanwords, digraphs with a small e-kana can be formed. For example, キェ (or きぇ in hiragana), which is transcribed as kye.
| +Yōon digraphs, hiragana
!
! g
! j (z)
! j (d)
! b
! p
! ng |
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Note that the き゚ゃ, き゚ゅ and き゚ょ, though they exist, are not used in standard Japanese orthography.
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zi+ y* and di+ y* are often transcribed j* instead of zy* and dy*, according to contemporary pronunciation. The form jy* is also used in some cases.
Modern usage
The difference in usage between hiragana and katakana is stylistic. Usually, hiragana is the default syllabary, and katakana is used in certain special cases. Hiragana is used to write native Japanese words with no
kanji representation (or whose kanji is thought obscure or difficult), as well as grammatical elements such as particles and inflections (
okurigana). Today katakana is most commonly used to write words of foreign origin that do not have kanji representations, as well as foreign personal and place names. Katakana is also used to represent
onomatopoeia and interjections, emphasis, technical and scientific terms, transcriptions of the Sino-Japanese readings of kanji, and some corporate branding.
Kana can be written in small form above or next to lesser-known kanji in order to show pronunciation; this is called furigana. Furigana is used most widely in children's or learners' books. Literature for young children who do not yet know kanji may dispense with it altogether and instead use hiragana combined with spaces.
Systems supporting only a limited set of characters, such as Wabun code for Morse code telegrams and SBCS digital character encodings such as JIS X 0201 or EBCDIK, likewise dispense with kanji, instead using only katakana. This is not necessary in systems supporting double-byte or variable-width encodings such as Shift JIS, EUC-JP, UTF-8 or UTF-16.
History
Old Japanese was written entirely in kanji, and a set of kanji called
man'yōgana were first used to represent the phonetic values of grammatical particles and morphemes. As there was no consistent method of sound representation, a phoneme could be represented by multiple kanji, and even those kana's pronunciations differed in whether they were to be read as or , making decipherment problematic. The man'yōshū, a poetry anthology assembled sometime after 759 and the eponym of
man'yōgana, exemplifies this phenomenon, where as many as almost twenty kanji were used for the mora
ka. The consistency of the kana used was thus dependent on the style of the writer.
Hiragana developed as a distinct script from cursive
man'yōgana, whereas
katakana developed from abbreviated parts of
regular script man'yōgana as a glossing system to add readings or explanations to Buddhist
. Both of these systems were simplified to make writing easier. The shapes of many hiragana resembled the Chinese cursive script, as did those of many katakana the Korean
gugyeol, suggesting that the Japanese followed the continental pattern of their neighbors.
Kana is traditionally said to have been invented by the bhikkhu Kūkai in the ninth century. Kūkai certainly brought the Siddhaṃ script of India home on his return from China in 806; his interest in the sacred aspects of speech and writing led him to the conclusion that Japanese would be better represented by a phonetic alphabet than by the kanji which had been used up to that point. The modern arrangement of kana reflects that of the Devanagari used for Sanskrit in the Buddhist Siddhaṃ script hybrid known by the Japanese at the time,
However, hiragana and katakana did not quickly supplant man'yōgana. It was only in 1900 that the present set of kana was codified. All the other forms of hiragana and katakana developed before the 1900 codification are known as . Rules for their usage as per the spelling reforms of 1946, the , which abolished the kana for wi (ゐ・ヰ), we (ゑ・ヱ), and wo (を・ヲ) (except that the last was reserved as the accusative particle).[
]
| + Identical man’yōgana roots of katakana and hiragana glyphs |
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Collation
Kana are the basis for collation in Japanese. They are taken in the order given by the gojūon (あ い う え お ... わ を ん), though iroha (い ろ は に ほ へ と ... せ す (ん)) ordering is used for enumeration in some circumstances. Dictionaries differ in the sequence order for long/short vowel distinction, small tsu and diacritics. As Japanese does not use word spaces (except as a tool for children), there can be no word-by-word collation; all collation is kana-by-kana.
In Unicode
The hiragana range in Unicode is U+3040 ... U+309F, and the katakana range is U+30A0 ... U+30FF. The obsolete and rare characters ( wi and we) also have their proper code points.
Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are hiragana small ke, respectively. U+30F5 and U+30F6 are their katakana equivalents. Characters U+3099 and U+309A are combining dakuten and handakuten, which correspond to the spacing characters U+309B and U+309C. U+309D is the hiragana iteration mark, used to repeat a previous hiragana. U+309E is the voiced hiragana iteration mark, which stands in for the previous hiragana but with the consonant voiced ( k becomes g, h becomes b, etc.). U+30FD and U+30FE are the katakana iteration marks. U+309F is a ligature of yori (より) sometimes used in vertical writing. U+30FF is a ligature of koto (コト), also found in vertical writing.
Additionally, there are halfwidth equivalents to the standard fullwidth katakana. These are encoded within the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block (U+FF00–U+FFEF), starting at U+FF65 and ending at U+FF9F (characters U+FF61–U+FF64 are halfwidth punctuation marks):
There is also a small "Katakana Phonetic Extensions" range (U+31F0 ... U+31FF), which includes some additional small kana characters for writing the Ainu language. Further small kana characters are present in the "Small Kana Extension" block.
Unicode also includes "Katakana letter archaic E" (U+1B000), as well as 255 hentaigana, in the Kana Supplement block.
The Kana Extended-B block was added in September, 2021 with the release of version 14.0:
See also
Further reading
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An illustrated book on the development of magana into kana
External links
