Kana

For Shogi player, see Kana Satomi.

Kana is the name for syllable-based writing systems used in the Japanese language.

There are three types of kana:

• Manyogana is the use of Chinese characters (or kanji) to represent each sound in spoken Japanese.
• Hiragana is the script used to write native Japanese words and grammatical elements.
• Katakana is the script used to write loanwords (or gairaigo) and onomatopoeia.

Although manyogana is the oldest of the three types of kana, being used as early as the seventh century, it was soon replaced by hiragana and katakana. Both of these characters came from the kanji characters that made up manyogana.

Today, there are 46 basic sounds in Japanese that are each represented by a hiragana and a corresponding katakana character as seen in the chart below. (The characters for the sounds wi and we are no longer used.) There are 25 other sounds that can be made by adding one of two diacritics: a dakuten or a handakuten. Also, 12 of the kana come in a smaller size to make other combinations of syllables.

Japanese sentences are usually written using a mix of hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Although it is possible to write a sentence in only hiragana or katakana characters, it is hard for most Japanese people to understand because the kanji symbols represent a concept which the kana do not show. Small kana symbols, however, can be put above kanji to show how it is pronounced (this is called furigana and is used a lot in karaoke).

Besides kana, Japanese sounds can also be written in Romaji (using the Roman alphabet) to help people who do not speak Japanese learn the language.

Japanese kana: hiragana (left) and katakana (right) (Image of this table) – k s t n h m y r w a あア かカ さサ たタ なナ はハ まマ やヤ らラ わワ i いイ きキ しシ ちチ にニ ひヒ みミ ※ りリ ゐヰ u うウ くク すス つツ ぬヌ ふフ むム ゆユ るル ※ e えエ けケ せセ てテ ねネ へヘ めメ ※ れレ ゑヱ o おオ こコ そソ とト のノ ほホ もモ よヨ ろロ をヲ

んン(n)

Kana Media

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  Read

• Katakana obsolete yi.svg to avoid an original research. The original description read: "Obsolete Katakana ye, proposed in early Meiji."
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  Read

• Katakana obsolete yi.svg to avoid an original research. The original description read: "Obsolete Katakana wu, proposed in early Meiji." As of v. 14 in 2021, Katakana Letter Archaic Wu has been encoded in the Unicode Standard at U+1B122.
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  The original description was "Obsolete Katakana yi, proposed in early Meiji." However, this explanation is somehow wrong. It's not an rotated "イ", either, but the left part of "以". See ja:五十音 for the details.

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  Development of hiragana and katakana

Other websites

• Kana Copybook (PDF)