Eachkana character corresponds to one phoneme or syllable, unlikekanji, which generally eachcorresponds to a morpheme. Apart from the five vowels, it is always CV (consonantonset with vowelnucleus), such aska,ki,sa,shi, etc., with the sole exception of the C grapheme fornasalcodas usually romanised asn. The structure has led some scholars to label the systemmoraic, instead ofsyllabic, because it requires the combination of two syllabograms to represent a CVC syllable with coda (e.g. CVn, CVm, CVng), a CVV syllable with complex nucleus (i.e. multiple or expressively long vowels), or a CCV syllable with complex onset (i.e. including aglide, CyV, CwV).
The limited number ofphonemes in Japanese, as well as the relatively rigid syllable structure, makes the kana system a very accurate representation ofspoken Japanese.
Etymology
'Kana' is a compound ofkari (仮, 'borrowed; assumed; false') andna (名, 'name'), which eventually collapsed intokanna and ultimately 'kana'.[3]
Today it is generally assumed that 'kana' were considered "false" kanji due to their purely phonetic nature, as opposed tomana (真名) which were "true" kanji used for their meanings. Yet originally,mana andkana were purely calligraphic terms withmana referring to Chinese characters written in theregular script (kaisho) andkana referring to those written in thecursive (sōsho) style (seehiragana). It was not until the 18th century that the early-nationalistkokugaku movement which wanted to move away fromSinocentric academia began to reanalyze the script from a phonological point of view.[4] In the following centuries, contrary to the traditional Sinocentric view,kana began to be considered a national Japanese writing system that was distinct from Chinese characters, which is the dominant view today.
Terms
Although the term 'kana' is now commonly understood as hiragana and katakana, it actually has broader application as listed below:[3]
Kana (仮名, false name) orkana (仮字, false character): asyllabary.
Magana (真仮名, true kana) orotokogana (男仮名, men's kana): phonetickanji used as syllabary characters, historically used by men (who were more educated).
Man'yōgana (万葉仮名, kana used in theMan'yōshū): the most prominent system of magana.
Hiragana (平仮名, flat kana),onnagana (女仮名, women's kana),onnamoji (女文字, women's script),onnade (女手, women's hands) orirohagana (伊呂波仮名): a syllabary derived from simplified sōgana, historically used by women (who were less educated), historically sorted inIroha order.
Hentaigana (変体仮名, variant kana) oritaigana (異体仮名): obsolete variants of hiragana.
Katakana (片仮名, fragmented kana) orgojūongana (五十音仮名, fifty-sound kana): a syllabary derived by using bits of characters in man'yōgana, historically sorted ingojūon order.
Yamatogana (大和仮名, Yamato's kana): hiragana and katakana, as opposed to kanji.
Ongana (音仮名, sound kana): magana for transcribing Japanese words, using, strict or loose, Chinese-derived readings (on'yomi). For example,yama (山, mountain) would be spelt as也末, with two magana with on'yomi forya andma; likewise,hito (人, human) spelt as 比登 forhi andto.
Kungana (訓仮名, learned kana): magana for transcribing Japanese words, usingnative words ascribed to kanji (native "readings" orkun'yomi). For example,Yamato (大和) would be spelt as八間跡, with three magana with kun'yomi forya,ma andto; likewise,natsukashi (懐かし, evoking nostalgia) spelt as 夏樫 fornatsu andkashi.
Mana (真名, true name),mana (真字, true character),otokomoji (男文字, men's script) orotokode (男手, men's hands): kanji used for meanings, historically used by men (who were more educated).
Shinkatakana (真片仮名, mana and katakana): mixed script including only kanji and katakana.
Hiragana and katakana
The following table reads, ingojūon order, asa,i,u,e,o (down first column), thenka,ki,ku,ke,ko (down second column), and so on.n appears on its own at the end. Asterisks mark unused combinations.
There are presently no kana forye,yi orwu, as corresponding syllables do not occur natively in modern Japanese.
The[jɛ] (ye) sound is believed to have existed in pre-Classical Japanese, mostly before the advent of kana, and can be represented by theman'yōgana kanji 江.[5][6] There was an archaic Hiragana ()[7] derived from theman'yōganaye kanji 江,[5] which is encoded into Unicode at code point U+1B001 (𛀁),[8][9] but it is not widely supported. It is believed thate andye first merged toye before shifting back toe during theEdo period.[6] As demonstrated by 17th century-era European sources, the syllablewe (ゑ・ヱ ) also came to be pronounced as[jɛ] (ye).[10] If necessary, the modern orthography allows [je] (ye) to be written as いぇ (イェ),[11] but this usage is limited and nonstandard.
The modern Katakanae, エ, derives from the man'yōgana 江, originally pronouncedye;[7] a "Katakana letter Archaic E" () derived from the man'yōgana 衣 (e)[7] is encoded into Unicode at code point U+1B000 (𛀀),[8] due to being used for that purpose in scholarly works on classical Japanese.[12]
Somegojūon tables published during the 19th century list additional Katakana in theye (),wu () andyi () positions.[13] These are not presently used, and the latter two sounds never existed in Japanese.[6][14] They were added to Unicode in version 14.0 in 2021.[15] These sources also list (Unicode U+1B006, 𛀆) in the Hiraganayi position, and in theye position.[13]
Although removed from the standard orthography with thegendai kanazukai reforms,wi andwe still see stylistic use, as in ウヰスキー forwhisky and ヱビス or ゑびす for Japanese kamiEbisu, andYebisu, a brand of beer named after Ebisu. Hiraganawi andwe are preserved in certainOkinawan scripts, while katakanawi andwe are preserved in theAinu language.
wo is preserved only as theaccusativeparticle, normally occurring only in hiragana.
si,ti,tu,hu,wi,we andwo are usually romanized respectively asshi,chi,tsu,fu,i,e ando instead, according to contemporary pronunciation.
thesokuon or smalltsu (っ/ッ) indicatesgemination and is romanized by repeating the following consonant. For example, って is romanizedtte (exception: っち becomestchi).
Syllables beginning with the voiced consonants [g], [z], [d] and [b] are spelled with kana from the corresponding unvoiced columns (k,s,t andh) and the voicing mark,dakuten. Syllables beginning with [p] are spelled with kana from theh column and the half-voicing mark,handakuten.
zi,di, anddu are often transcribed into English asji,ji, andzu 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バイオリン (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) untilJIS X 0213, meaning that manyShift JIS flavours (includingthe Windows and HTML5 version) can only represent it as a katakana, althoughUnicode supports both.
Digraphs
Syllables beginning withpalatalized consonants are spelled with one of the sevenconsonantal kana from thei row followed by smallya,yu oryo. Thesedigraphs are calledyōon.
There are no digraphs for thesemivowely andw columns.
The digraphs are usually transcribed with three letters, leaving out thei: CyV. For example, きゃ is transcribed askya to distinguish it from the two-kana きや,kiya.
si+y* andti+y* are often transcribedsh* andch* instead ofsy* andty*. For example, しゃ is transcribed assha, and ちゅ is transcribed aschu.
In earlier Japanese, digraphs could also be formed withw-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 smalle-kanacan be formed. For example, キェ (or きぇ in hiragana), which is transcribed askye.[16][17]
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 nokanji representation (or whose kanji is thought obscure or difficult), as well as grammatical elements such asparticles 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 representonomatopoeia and interjections, emphasis, technical and scientific terms, transcriptions of theSino-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 calledfurigana. 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.
Old Japanese was written entirely in kanji, and a set of kanji calledman'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 askungana (訓仮名, "meaning kana") orongana (音仮名, "sound kana"), making decipherment problematic. Theman'yōshū, a poetry anthology assembled sometime after 759 and the eponym ofman'yōgana, exemplifies this phenomenon, where as many as almost twenty kanji were used for the moraka. The consistency of the kana used was thus dependent on the style of the writer.Hiragana developed as a distinct script fromcursiveman'yōgana, whereaskatakana developed from abbreviated parts ofregular scriptman'yōgana as aglossing system to add readings or explanations to Buddhistsutras. Both of these systems were simplified to make writing easier. The shapes of many hiragana resembled theChinese cursive script, as did those of many katakana the Koreangugyeol, suggesting that the Japanese followed the continental pattern of their neighbors.[18]
Kana is traditionally said to have been invented by theBuddhist priestKūkai in the ninth century. Kūkai certainly brought theSiddhaṃ script of India home on his return fromChina in 806;[citation needed] his interest in the sacred aspects ofspeech andwriting 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 Siddhaṃ, but the traditionaliroha arrangement follows a poem which uses each kana once.
However, hiragana and katakana did not quickly supplantman'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 ashentaigana (変体仮名, "variant kana"). Rules for their usage as per the spelling reforms of 1946, thegendai kana-zukai (現代仮名遣い, "present-day kana usage"), which abolished the kana forwi (ゐ・ヰ),we (ゑ・ヱ), andwo (を・ヲ) (except that the last was reserved as the accusative particle).[18]
Identical man’yōgana roots of katakana and hiragana glyphs
a
i
u
e
o
=:≠
–
≠
≠
=
≠
=
2:3
k
=
=
=
≠
=
4:1
s
≠
=
≠
=
=
3:2
t
≠
≠
=
=
=
3:2
n
=
=
=
=
=
5:0
h
≠
=
=
=
=
4:1
m
=
≠
≠
=
=
3:2
y
=
=
=
3:0
r
=
=
≠
=
=
4:1
w
=
≠
=
≠
2:2
n
≠
0:1
=:≠
6:4
5:4
6:4
7:2
9:1
33:15
Collation
Kana are the basis forcollation in Japanese. They are taken in the order given by thegojūon (あ い う え お ... わ を ん), thoughiroha (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, smalltsu 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.
The hiragana range inUnicode is U+3040 ... U+309F, and the katakana range is U+30A0 ... U+30FF. The obsolete and rare characters (wi andwe) also have their proper code points.
Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are hiraganasmallka and smallke, respectively. U+30F5 and U+30F6 are their katakana equivalents. Characters U+3099 and U+309A are combiningdakuten andhandakuten, which correspond to the spacing characters U+309B and U+309C. U+309D is the hiraganaiteration 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 becomesg,h becomesb, etc.). U+30FD and U+30FE are the katakana iteration marks. U+309F is a ligature ofyori (より) sometimes used in vertical writing. U+30FF is a ligature ofkoto (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 theAinu 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 255archaic Hiragana, in the Kana Supplement block.[19] It also includes a further 31 archaic Hiragana in the Kana Extended-A block.[20]
