![]() Hiragana usually spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana for example, おかあさん ( o-ka-a-sa-n, "mother"). へ is pronounced when used as a particle (otherwise, ).は is pronounced when used as a particle (otherwise, ).Two hiragana have pronunciations that depend on the context: The sokuon also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop, as in いてっ! (, "Ouch!"). However, it cannot be used to double an n – for this purpose, the singular n (ん) is added in front of the syllable, as in みんな ( minna, "all"). In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation for example, compare さか, saka, "hill" with さっか, sakka, "author". Addition of the small y kana is called yōon.Ī small tsu っ, called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). For example, き ( ki) plus ゃ (small ya) becomes きゃ ( kya). This changes the i vowel sound to a glide ( palatalization) to a, u or o. For example, は ( ha) becomes ぱ ( pa).Ī small version of the hiragana for ya, yu, or yo (ゃ, ゅ or ょ respectively) may be added to hiragana ending in i. ![]() Hiragana beginning with an h (or f) sound can also add a handakuten marker ( ゜) changing the h ( f) to a p. By adding a dakuten marker ( ゛), a voiceless consonant is turned into a voiced consonant: k→ g, ts/s→ z, t→ d, h/f→ b and ch/ sh→ j (also u→ v(u)). These basic characters can be modified in various ways. ![]() Strictly speaking, the singular consonant ん ( n) is considered as outside the gojūon. On the w row, ゐ and ゑ, pronounced and respectively, are uncommon in modern Japanese, while を, pronounced, is common as a particle but otherwise rare. Of the 50 theoretically possible combinations, yi, ye, and wu are completely unused. These are conceived as a 5×10 grid ( gojūon, 五十音, "Fifty Sounds"), as illustrated in the adjacent table, read あ ( a), い ( i), う ( u), え ( e), お ( o), か ( ka), き ( ki), く ( ku), け ( ke), こ ( ko) and so forth (but si→ shi, ti→ chi, tu→ tsu, hu→ fu, wi→ i, we→ e, wo→ o). 1 singular consonant ( ん), romanized as n.42 consonant–vowel unions: for example き /ki/, て /te/, ほ /ho/, ゆ /ju/, わ /wa/ (respectively pronounced, ,, and ).5 singular vowels: あ /a/, い /i/, う /u/, え /e/, お /o/ (respectively pronounced, ,, and ).Writing system Basic hiragana charactersĪfter the 1900 script reform, which deemed hundreds of characters hentaigana, the hiragana syllabary consists of 48 base characters, of which two ( ゐ and ゑ) are only used in some proper names: There are two main systems of ordering hiragana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering. Hiragana is also used to write furigana, a reading aid that shows the pronunciation of kanji characters. Words that do have common kanji renditions may also sometimes be written instead in hiragana, according to an individual author's preference, for example to impart an informal feel. Hiragana is used to write okurigana (kana suffixes following a kanji root, for example to inflect verbs and adjectives), various grammatical and function words including particles, and miscellaneous other native words for which there are no kanji or whose kanji form is obscure or too formal for the writing purpose. 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. This may be a vowel such as /a/ (hiragana あ) a consonant followed by a vowel such as /ka/ ( か) or /N/ ( ん), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n or ng ( ) when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French, Portuguese or Polish. With few exceptions, each mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. The word hiragana literally means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", as contrasted with kanji). ![]() Hiragana ( 平仮名, ひらがな, IPA: ) is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji.
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