Hiragana

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This entry makes use of Japanese characters and will require Japanese language support to be installed on your computer in order to avoid the characters being replaced by question marks, or blanked out.


Hiragana (平仮名 or ひらがな - the cursive syllabary) is one of the three scripts used in writing the Japanese language, along with kanji and katakana. Both hiragana and katakana are simplified Chinese characters adopted to form a phonetic syllabary. Hiragana consists of 46 basic characters (excluding two obsolete characters), as well as 58 variants to the basic characters, which represent every sound used in the Japanese language.

In theory, you should be able to write everything in hiragana, but as Japanese is written with no spaces between words, it would result in indecipherable text, as words and sentences would run into each other, givinganeffectsomethinglikethis, not to mention the problem of homophones. This is why kanji is still necessary.[1]

Hiragana is used mainly for grammatical purposes, or to replace words with extremely difficult or rare kanji, colloquial expressions, and occasionally onomatopoeia (although katakana is more commonly used for this last function). It's also often used printed alongside kanji, as a pronunciation guide for children and students of the language, to assist them in learning the kanji. In this form, it is referred to as furigana.

Contents

The Basic Hiragana Characters

あ = a い = i う = u え = e お = o
か = ka き = ki く = ku け = ke こ = ko
さ = sa し = shi す = su せ = se そ = so
た = ta ち = chi つ = tsu て = te と = to
な = na に = ni ぬ = nu ね = ne の = no
は = ha ひ = hi ふ = fu へ = he ほ = ho
ま = ma み = mi む = mu め = me も = mo
や = ya ゆ = yu よ = yo
ら = ra り = ri る = ru れ = re ろ = ro
わ = wa を = wo
ん = n

The Voiced (“Muddied”) Consonants

Less clipped versions of the consonants are created by the addition of a dakuten (濁点), which resembles a single quotation mark ("), or handakuten (半濁点) which resembles a small circle (˚). The addition of these creates what is called a “voiced consonant” dakuri (濁り), which literally means “to become muddied.”

The effect of adding a dakuten is as follows:

  • K consonants are pronounced as G
  • S consonants are pronounced as Z (the exception being "shi", which is pronounced "ji".
  • T consonants are pronounced as D (the exceptions being “chi” and “tsu” which are pronounced “zi” and “zu” respectively.)
  • H consonants are pronounced as B

Adding a handakuten has the effect of changing the pronunciation of an H consonant to a P.

Table of Voiced Consonants

が = ga ぎ = gi ぐ = gu げ = ge ご = go
ざ = za じ = ji ず = zu ぜ = ze ぞ = zo
だ = da ぢ = zi づ = zu で = de ど = do
ば = ba び = bi ぶ = bu べ = be ぼ = bo
ぱ = pa ぴ = pi ぷ = pu ぺ = pe ぽ = po

The Small や (ya), ゆ (yu) and よ (yo) Sounds

These are added to consonants to create a “-ya”, “-yo”, or “-yu” sound. For example, き is pronounced “ki”, but きゃ is pronounced “kya”, not “ki-ya”.

Table of Possible や (ya), ゆ (yu) and よ (yo) Sounds

や = ya ゆ = yu よ = yo
きゃ = kya きゅ = kyu きょ = kyo
しゃ = sya or sha しゅ = syu or shu しょ = syo or sho
ちゃ = tya or cha ちゅ = tyu or chu ちょ = tyo or cho
にゃ = nya にゅ = nyu にょ = nyo
ひゃ = hya ひゅ = hyu ひょ = hyo
みゃ = mya みゅ = myu みょ = myo
りゃ = rya りゅ = ryu りょ = ryo
ぎゃ = gya ぎゅ = gyu ぎょ = gyo
じゃ = ja じゅ = ju じょ = jo
びゃ = bya びゅ = byu びょ = byo
ぴゃ = pya ぴゅ = pyu ぴょ = pyo

The Small “tsu っ”

A small “っ” is inserted between two characters to carry the consonant sound of the second character to the end of the first character, in effect doubling the pronunciation of the consonant immediately following the “っ”. Again, this is best explained by way of an example:

If you take the symbols ra (ら) and ka (か) and separate them with a “っ”, so you have らっか , it is not pronounced “ra-ka”, but rather “rak-ka”.

It applies primarily to the consonants "p", "t", "s" and "k".

The Long Vowel Sound

The long vowel sound simply extends the duration of a vowel sound. You can extend the vowel sound of a character by adding either “a(あ)”, “i (い)” or “u (う)” depending on the preceding vowel, as follows:

  • “a”, add another “a (あ)”
  • ”i” or “e”, add an “i (い)”
  • “u” or “o”, add a “u (う)”

For example, if you wanted to create an extended vowel sound from ka(か), you would add あ to create かあ, pronounced “ka-a”, not “kaa”. The long vowel is the most frequent place where Westerners are caught out when learning to speak Japanese and a failure to hold the vowel sound long enough can result in some amusing mistakes. For example, you could be saying “here” (ko-ko ここ), instead of “high school” (ko-u-ko-u こうこう) or worse, calling your grandmother (o-ba-a-san おばあさん) a middle-aged lady (o-ba-san おばさん).

An exception to this is where "e" is followed by "(い)". This is pronounced "ay" (as in "acorn") rather than a long "e" sound. This is as a result of the blurring between the "e" and "i" sounds.

Intonation

Each character in hiragana corresponds to a vowel, or consonant and vowel syllable sound, with the single exception of the character,"ん". This system of a letter for each syllable sound makes pronunciation absolutely clear with no ambiguities. However, the simplicity of this system does not mean that pronunciation in Japanese is simple. In fact, the rigid structure of the fixed syllable sound in Japanese creates the problem of intonation in place of the difficulties that exist in separate consonant and vowel alphabets such as the English alphabet.

Intonation of high and low pitches is a crucial aspect of the spoken language. For example, homophones can have different pitches of low and high resulting in a slightly differently sounding of the word even if it is written with the same sounds. The largest barrier to proper and natural sounding speech is incorrect intonation. Many students often speak without paying attention to the correct enunciation of pitches making speech sound unnatural (the classic foreigner's accent).

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