Kana
Template:Short description Template:Pp-sock Template:Use dmy dates Template:Other uses Template:Italic title Template:Infobox writing system Template:Japanese writing
Template:Nihongo are syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. In current usage, kana most commonly refers to hiragana<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and katakana. It can also refer to their ancestor Template:Nihongo,<ref name=daijirin>Template:Cite book</ref> which were Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese (e.g. man'yōgana); and hentaigana, which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana.
Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu. A number of systems exist to write the Ryūkyūan languages, in particular Okinawan, in hiragana. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as ruby text for Chinese characters in Taiwan when it was under Japanese rule.
Each kana character corresponds to one phoneme or syllable, unlike kanji, which generally each corresponds to a morpheme. Apart from the five vowels, it is always CV (consonant onset with vowel nucleus), such as ka, ki, sa, shi, etc., with the sole exception of the C grapheme for nasal codas usually romanised as n. The structure has led some scholars to label the system moraic, instead of syllabic, 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 a glide, CyV, CwV).
The limited number of phonemes in Japanese, as well as the relatively rigid syllable structure, makes the kana system a very accurate representation of spoken Japanese.
Etymology
[edit]'Kana' is a compound of Template:Nihongo and Template:Nihongo, which eventually collapsed into kanna and ultimately 'kana'.<ref name=daijirin />
Today it is generally assumed that 'kana' were considered "false" kanji due to their purely phonetic nature, as opposed to Template:Nihongo which were "true" kanji used for their meanings. Yet originally, mana and kana were purely calligraphic terms with mana referring to Chinese characters written in the regular script (kaisho) and kana referring to those written in the cursive (sōsho) style (see hiragana). It was not until the 18th century that the early-nationalist Template:Lang movement which wanted to move away from Sinocentric academia began to reanalyze the script from a phonological point of view.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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
[edit]Although the term 'kana' is now commonly understood as hiragana and katakana, it actually has broader application as listed below:<ref name=daijirin /><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
- Template:Nihongo or Template:Nihongo: a syllabary.
- Template:Nihongo or Template:Nihongo: phonetic kanji used as syllabary characters, historically used by men (who were more educated).
- Template:Nihongo: the most prominent system of magana.
- Template:Nihongo: cursive man'yōgana.
- Template:Nihongo, Template:Nihongo, Template:Nihongo, Template:Nihongo or Template:Nihongo: a syllabary derived from simplified sōgana, historically used by women (who were less educated), historically sorted in Iroha order.
- Template:Nihongo or Template:Nihongo: obsolete variants of hiragana.
- Template:Nihongo, Template:Nihongo, Template:Nihongo, Template:Nihongo or Template:Nihongo: a syllabary derived from simplified sōgana, historically used by women (who were less educated), historically sorted in Iroha order.
- Template:Nihongo or Template:Nihongo: a syllabary derived by using bits of characters in man'yōgana, historically sorted in gojūon order.
- Template:Nihongo: hiragana and katakana, as opposed to kanji.
- Template:Nihongo: cursive man'yōgana.
- Template:Nihongo: magana for transcribing Japanese words, using, strict or loose, Chinese-derived readings (on'yomi). For example, Template:Nihongo would be spelt as Template:Lang, with two magana with on'yomi for ya and ma; likewise, Template:Nihongo spelt as Template:Lang for hi and to.
- Template:Nihongo: magana for transcribing Japanese words, using native words ascribed to kanji (native "readings" or kun'yomi). For example, Template:Nihongo would be spelt as Template:Lang, with three magana with kun'yomi for ya, ma and to; likewise, Template:Nihongo spelt as Template:Lang for natsu and kashi.
- Template:Nihongo: the most prominent system of magana.
- Template:Nihongo or Template:Nihongo: phonetic kanji used as syllabary characters, historically used by men (who were more educated).
- Template:Nihongo, Template:Nihongo, Template:Nihongo or Template:Nihongo: kanji used for meanings, historically used by men (who were more educated).
- Template:Nihongo: mixed script including only kanji and katakana.
Hiragana and katakana
[edit]The following table reads, in gojūon order, as a, i, u, e, o (down first column), then ka, ki, ku, ke, ko (down second column), and so on. n appears on its own at the end. Asterisks mark unused combinations.
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- There are presently no kana for ye, yi or wu, as corresponding syllables do not occur natively in modern Japanese.
- The Template:IPA (ye) sound is believed to have existed in pre-Classical Japanese, mostly before the advent of kana, and can be represented by the man'yōgana kanji 江.<ref name="yeseely" /><ref name="yeslj">Template:Cite web</ref> There was an archaic Hiragana (𛀁)<ref name="katou">Template:Cite web</ref> derived from the man'yōgana ye kanji 江,<ref name="yeseely">Template:Cite book</ref> which is encoded into Unicode at code point U+1B001 (𛀁),<ref name="yeunicode">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>More information is available at ja:ヤ行エ on the Japanese Wikipedia.</ref> but it is not widely supported. It is believed that e and ye first merged to ye before shifting back to e during the Edo period.<ref name="yeslj" /> As demonstrated by 17th century-era European sources, the syllable we (ゑ・ヱ ) also came to be pronounced as Template:IPA (ye).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> If necessary, the modern orthography allows [je] (ye) to be written as いぇ (イェ),<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> but this usage is limited and nonstandard.
- The modern Katakana e, エ, derives from the man'yōgana 江, originally pronounced ye;<ref name="katou"/> a "Katakana letter Archaic E" (𛀀) derived from the man'yōgana 衣 (e)<ref name="katou"/> is encoded into Unicode at code point U+1B000 (𛀀),<ref name="yeunicode"/> due to being used for that purpose in scholarly works on classical Japanese.<ref name="katou2">Template:Cite web</ref>
- Some gojūon tables published during the 19th century list additional Katakana in the ye (𛄡), wu (𛄢) and yi (𛄠) positions.<ref name="itikun">Template:Cite web</ref> These are not presently used, and the latter two sounds never existed in Japanese.<ref name="yeslj" /><ref>More information is available at ja:わ行う, ja:ヤ行イ and ja:五十音#51全てが異なる字・音: 江戸後期から明治 on the Japanese Wikipedia.</ref> They were added to Unicode in version 14.0 in 2021.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> These sources also list 𛀆 (Unicode U+1B006, 𛀆) in the Hiragana yi position, and 𛀁 in the ye position.<ref name="itikun" />
- Although removed from the standard orthography with the gendai kanazukai reforms, wi and we still see stylistic use, as in ウヰスキー for whisky and ヱビス or ゑびす for Japanese kami Ebisu, and Yebisu, a brand of beer named after Ebisu. Hiragana wi and we are preserved in certain Okinawan scripts, while katakana wi and we are preserved in the Ainu language.
- wo is preserved only as the accusative particle, normally occurring only in hiragana.
- si, ti, tu, hu, wi, we and wo are usually romanized respectively as shi, chi, tsu, fu, i, e and o instead, according to contemporary pronunciation.
- the sokuon or small tsu (っ/ッ) indicates gemination and is romanized by repeating the following consonant. For example, って is romanized tte (exception: っち becomes tchi).
Diacritics
[edit]Template:See also Syllables beginning with the voiced consonants [g], [z], [d] and [b] are spelled with kana from the corresponding unvoiced columns (k, s, t and h) and the voicing mark, dakuten. Syllables beginning with [p] are spelled with kana from the h column and the half-voicing mark, handakuten.
| g | z | d | b | p | ng | nz | nd | l | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | [[Ka (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Sa (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ta (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ha (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ha (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ka (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Sa (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ta (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ra (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] |
| i | [[Ki (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Shi (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Chi (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Hi (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Hi (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ki (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Shi (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Chi (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ri (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] |
| u | [[Ku (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Su (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Tsu (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Fu (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Fu (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ku (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Su (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Tsu (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ru (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] |
| e | [[Ke (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Se (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Te (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[He (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[He (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ke (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Se (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Te (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Re (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] |
| o | [[Ko (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[So (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[To (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ho (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ho (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ko (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[So (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[To (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] | [[Ro (kana)|Template:Nowrap]] |
- Note that the か゚, ら゚ and the remaining entries in the two rightmost columns, though they exist, are not used in standard Japanese orthography.
- zi, di, and du are often transcribed into English as ji, ji, and zu 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) until JIS X 0213, meaning that many Shift JIS flavours (including the Windows and HTML5 version) can only represent it as a katakana, although Unicode supports both.
Digraphs
[edit]Syllables beginning with palatalized consonants are spelled with one of the seven consonantal kana from the i row followed by small ya, yu or yo. These digraphs are called yōon.
| k | s | t | n | h | m | r | w | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ya | きゃ | しゃ | ちゃ | にゃ | ひゃ | みゃ | りゃ | ゐゃ |
| yu | きゅ | しゅ | ちゅ | にゅ | ひゅ | みゅ | りゅ | ゐゅ |
| yo | きょ | しょ | ちょ | にょ | ひょ | みょ | りょ | ゐょ |
- There are no digraphs for the semivowel y and w columns.
- The digraphs are usually transcribed with three letters, leaving out the i: CyV. For example, きゃ is transcribed as kya to distinguish it from the two-kana きや, kiya.
- si+y* and ti+y* are often transcribed sh* and ch* instead of sy* and ty*. For example, しゃ is transcribed as sha, and ちゅ is transcribed as chu.
- In earlier Japanese, digraphs could also be formed with w-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 small e-kana can be formed. For example, キェ (or きぇ in hiragana), which is transcribed as kye.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
| g | z | d | b | p | ng | nz | nd | l | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ya | ぎゃ | じゃ | ぢゃ | びゃ | ぴゃ | き゚ゃ | し゚ゃ | ち゚ゃ | り゚ゃ |
| yu | ぎゅ | じゅ | ぢゅ | びゅ | ぴゅ | き゚ゅ | し゚ゅ | ち゚ゅ | り゚ゅ |
| yo | ぎょ | じょ | ぢょ | びょ | ぴょ | き゚ょ | し゚ょ | ち゚ょ | り゚ょ |
- Note that the き゚ゃ, き゚ゅ and remaining entries in the rightmost column, though they exist, are not used in standard Japanese orthography.
- zi+y* and di+y* are often transcribed j* instead of zy* and dy*, according to contemporary pronunciation. The form jy* is also used in some cases.
Modern usage
[edit]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 no kanji representation (or whose kanji is thought obscure or difficult), as well as grammatical elements such as particles 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 represent onomatopoeia and interjections, emphasis, technical and scientific terms, transcriptions of the Sino-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 called furigana. 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.
Systems supporting only a limited set of characters, such as Wabun code for Morse code telegrams and single-byte digital character encodings such as JIS X 0201 or EBCDIK, likewise dispense with kanji, instead using only katakana. This is not necessary in systems supporting double-byte or variable-width encodings such as Shift JIS, EUC-JP, UTF-8 or UTF-16.
History
[edit]
Old Japanese was written entirely in kanji, and a set of kanji called man'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 as Template:Nihongo3 or Template:Nihongo3, making decipherment problematic. The Template:Lang, a poetry anthology assembled sometime after 759 and the eponym of man'yōgana, exemplifies this phenomenon, where as many as almost twenty kanji were used for the mora ka. The consistency of the kana used was thus dependent on the style of the writer. Hiragana developed as a distinct script from cursive man'yōgana, whereas katakana developed from abbreviated parts of regular script man'yōgana as a glossing system to add readings or explanations to Buddhist sutras. Both of these systems were simplified to make writing easier. The shapes of many hiragana resembled the Chinese cursive script, as did those of many katakana the Korean gugyeol, suggesting that the Japanese followed the continental pattern of their neighbors.<ref name=Frellesvig>Template:Cite book</ref>
Kana is traditionally said to have been invented by the Buddhist priest Kūkai in the ninth century. Kūkai certainly brought the Siddhaṃ script of India home on his return from China in 806;Template:Citation needed 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. The modern arrangement of kana reflects that of Siddhaṃ, but the traditional iroha arrangement follows a poem which uses each kana once.
However, hiragana and katakana did not quickly supplant man'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 as Template:Nihongo3. Rules for their usage as per the spelling reforms of 1946, the Template:Nihongo3, which abolished the kana for wi (ゐ・ヰ), we (ゑ・ヱ), and wo (を・ヲ) (except that the last was reserved as the accusative particle).<ref name=Frellesvig/>
| 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
[edit]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 (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, small tsu 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.
In Unicode
[edit]Template:Main Template:See also The hiragana range in Unicode is U+3040 ... U+309F, and the katakana range is U+30A0 ... U+30FF. The obsolete and rare characters (wi and we) also have their proper code points.
Template:Unicode chart Hiragana Template:Unicode chart Katakana 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 katakana 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): Template:Unicode chart Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms
There is also a small "Katakana Phonetic Extensions" range (U+31F0 ... U+31FF), which includes some additional small kana characters for writing the Ainu language. Further small kana characters are present in the "Small Kana Extension" block. Template:Unicode chart Katakana Phonetic Extensions Template:Unicode chart Small Kana Extension
Unicode also includes "Katakana letter archaic E" (U+1B000), as well as 255 archaic Hiragana, in the Kana Supplement block.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It also includes a further 31 archaic Hiragana in the Kana Extended-A block.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Template:Unicode chart Kana Supplement Template:Unicode chart Kana Extended-A
The Kana Extended-B block was added in September, 2021 with the release of version 14.0: Template:Unicode chart Kana Extended-B
See also
[edit]- Furigana
- Okurigana
- Yotsugana
- Gojūon
- Hentaigana
- Historical kana orthography
- Man'yōgana
- Romanization of Japanese
- Transliteration and Transcription (linguistics)
References
[edit]Further reading
[edit]- Template:Cite book Template:-- An illustrated book on the development of magana into kana
External links
[edit]- Hiragana & katakana chart and writing practice sheet
- Origin of Hiragana
- Origin of Katakana
- Kana web translator – Transliterate Kana to Rōmaji
- Kana Copybook (PDF)
- Katakana and Hiragana study tool
Template:Japanese language Template:List of writing systems Template:Authority control