Kana Kana Kingsley Amis Category="Japanese terms"Category="Kana"

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Japanese writing

Kanji 漢字

Kana 仮名

Uses Romaji ローマ字

Category

For other meanings of Kana, see Kana (disambiguation).

Kana is a general term for the syllabic Japanese scripts Hiragana (ひらがな) and Katakana (カタカナ) as well as the old system known as Manyogana. These were developed as an alternative and adjunct to ideograph based characters of Chinese origin, or Kanji (漢字).

Table of the Japanese kana
Hiragana and Katakana (grouped vertically).
Syllables in parenthesis are archaic. (Image of this table.)
vowelkstnhmyrwn
あア かカ さサ たタ なナ はハ まマ やヤ らラ わワ んン
akasatanahamayarawan
いイきキしシちチにニひヒみミりリゐヰ
ikishichinihimi* ri(wi)
うウくクすスつツぬヌふフむムゆユるル
ukusutsunufumuyuru
えエけケせセてテねネへヘめメれレゑヱ
ekeseteneheme* re(we)
おオこコそソとトのノほホもモよヨろロをヲ
okosotonohomoyoro(w)o

*Japanese does not have, and has never had, kana to represent ye or yi sounds.

Modern usage

Hiragana is mostly used to indicate grammatical aspects of the language. It is also used to represent an entire word (usually of Japanese, rather than Chinese origin) in place of Kanji. See the article Hiragana for details.

Today katakana is most commonly used to write words of foreign origin that do not have a kanji representation. For example, "George W. Bush" can be expressed as ジョージ・W.・ブッシュ. Katakana is also used for sound effects, biological terms, and some corporate branding. See the article Katakana for details.

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 books. Literature for young children who do not know kanji may dispense with it altogether and use hiragana combined with spaces instead.

History of kana

Both Hiragana and Katakana developed from the ancient kana system man'yōgana, a kind of phonetic characters using kanji. Man'yōshū, a poetry anthology written in 759, is written in this early script.

Kana is traditionally said to have been invented by the Buddhist Priest Kūkai in the 9th century. Kūkai certainly brought the Siddham script 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.

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 ordering is used for enumeration in some circumstances. Dictionaries differ in the sequence order for long/short vowel distinction, small tsu and diacritics. As the Japanese do not use word spaces (except for children), there can be no word-by-word collation; all collation is kana-by-kana.

Kana in Unicode

The Hiragana range in Unicode is U+3040 ... U+309F, and the Katakana range is U+30A0 ... U+30FF. The obsolete characters (WI and WE) also have their proper codepoints, except for Hentaigana, as hentaigana are considered Glyph variants of more common kana.

0123456789ABCDEF
304xぁあぃいぅうぇえぉおかがきぎく
305xぐけげこごさざしじすずせぜそぞた
306xだちぢっつづてでとどなにぬねのは
307xばぱひびぴふぶぷへべぺほぼぽまみ
308xむめもゃやゅゆょよらりるれろゎわ
309xゐゑをんゔゕゖ゙゚゛゜ゝゞゟ
30Ax゠ァアィイゥウェエォオカガキギク
30Bxグケゲコゴサザシジスズセゼソゾタ
30Cxダチヂッツヅテデトドナニヌネノハ
30Dxバパヒビピフブプヘベペホボポマミ
30Exムメモャヤュユョヨラリルレロヮワ
30Fxヰヱヲンヴヵヶヷヸヹヺ・ーヽヾヿ

Code points U+3040, U+3097, and U+3098 are unassigned as of Unicode 4.1. Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are hiragana small ka and 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 kana 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):

0123456789ABCDEF
FF60｡｢｣､･ｦｧｨｩｪｫｬｭｮｯ
FF70ｰｱｲｳｴｵｶｷｸｹｺｻｼｽｾｿ
FF80ﾀﾁﾂﾃﾄﾅﾆﾇﾈﾉﾊﾋﾌﾍﾎﾏ
FF90ﾐﾑﾒﾓﾔﾕﾖﾗﾘﾙﾚﾛﾜﾝﾞﾟ

There is also a small "Katakana Phonetic Extensions" range (U+31F0 ... U+31FF), which includes some extra characters for writing the Ainu language.

  0123456789ABCDEF
31F0 ㇰㇱㇲㇳㇴㇵㇶㇷㇸㇹㇺㇻㇼㇽㇾㇿ
  ｸｼｽﾄﾇﾊﾋﾌﾍﾎﾑﾗﾘﾙﾚﾛ

See also: