J's Store: Hiragana

Hiragana

What do you know about Hiragana? Well, you know it as Japanese words. But do you know more about it? Now I'm here to give you more information about it.

Hiragana

Hiragana consists of a basic set of characters: five singular vowels, 39 distinct consonant-vowel unions and one singular consonant. Additionally, を wo is included (although pronounced the same as vowel お o, [o]), bringing up the total count of common-use characters to 46.

These basic characters can be modified in various ways. By adding a dakuten marker ( ゛), a voiceless consonant is turned into a voiced consonant: k→g, s→z, t→d, and h→b. Hiragana beginning with an h can also add a handakuten marker ( ゜) changing the h to a p.

A small version of the hiragana for ya, yu or yo (ゃ, ゅ or ょ respectively) may be added to hiragana ending in i. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide (palatalization) to a, u or o. Addition of the small y kana is called yoōn.

A small tsu っ, called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). For example, compare さか saka "hill" with さっか sakka "author". It also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop. However, it cannot be used to double the na, ni, nu, ne, no syllables' consonants – to double them, the singular n (ん) is added in front of the syllable. For example さんにん sannin "three people".

Hiragana usually spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana. The choōn (long vowel mark) (ー) used in katakana is rarely used with hiragana, for example in the word らーめん, rāmen, but this usage is considered non-standard. In informal writing, small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds (はぁ hā, ねぇ nē).

Here's a hiragana chart for you:

The Hiragana Syllabary

Here is the first Japanese syllabary. Japanese has no alphabet, but instead two syllabaries and Kanji, a modified subset of Chinese characters. The Hiragana Syllabary.

Do you like manga or anime? Well, I found an interesting way to people who like manga to learn about hiragana. Take a look at this poster, and feel free to download it! (I got this poster from na-insoo on deviantArt ☺Feel free to check the profile too!)