Hiragana

Epic card · No. 14378

Hiragana (平仮名, ひらがな; IPA: [çì.ɾä́.ɡä́.nä̀, -nä́, -ŋä́-]) is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji (Chinese characters). It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", as contrasted with kanji). Historically, hiragana developed from cursive forms of kanji via man'yōgana, with each sign originating as a simplified cursive rendering of a whole kanji—for example, あ (a) from 安 (an). Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be a vowel such as /a/ (hiragana あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as /ka/ (か); or the nasal sonorant /N/ (ん). Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of the aforementioned ん), the kana are referred to as syllabic symbols and not alphabetic letters. Hiragana is used to...

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