Hiragana ( 平仮名 , ひらがな , IPA: [çiɾaɡaꜜna, çiɾaɡana(ꜜ)] ) is a Japanese syllabary , part of the Japanese writing system , along with katakana as well as kanji .
95-571: Inagaki ( Japanese : 稲垣 ) is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include: Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within
190-407: A handakuten marker ( ゜) changing the h ( f ) to a p . For example, は ( ha ) becomes ぱ ( pa ). 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 . For example, き ( ki ) plus ゃ (small ya ) becomes きゃ ( kya ). Addition of the small y kana
285-416: A nasal sonorant which, depending on the context and dialect, sounds either like English m , n or ng ( [ ŋ ] ) when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French , Portuguese or Polish . 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. Hiragana
380-559: A pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has
475-507: A velar nasal [ŋ] or velar fricative [ɣ] . For example, かぎ ( kagi , key) is often pronounced [kaŋi] . However, じゅうご ( jūgo , fifteen) is pronounced as if it was jū and go stacked end to end: [d͡ʑɯːɡo] . In many accents, the j and z sounds are pronounced as affricates ( [d͡ʑ] and [d͡z] , respectively) at the beginning of utterances and fricatives [ʑ, z] in the middle of words. For example, すうじ sūji [sɯːʑi] 'number', ざっし zasshi [d͡zaɕɕi] 'magazine'. The singular n
570-556: 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 ). Of the 50 theoretically possible combinations, yi , ye , and wu are completely unused. On the w row, ゐ and ゑ , pronounced [i] and [e] respectively, are uncommon in modern Japanese, while を , pronounced [o] ,
665-637: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down
760-594: A complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )
855-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )
950-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as
1045-484: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it
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#17327835989851140-531: A more thorough discussion on the sounds of Japanese, please refer to Japanese phonology . With a few exceptions, such as for the three particles は (pronounced [wa] instead of [ha] ), へ (pronounced [e] instead of [he] ) and [o] (written を instead of お), Japanese when written in kana is phonemically orthographic , i.e. there is a one-to-one correspondence between kana characters and sounds, leaving only words' pitch accent unrepresented. This has not always been
1235-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),
1330-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate
1425-624: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of
1520-480: Is つづく . For compound words where the dakuten reflects rendaku voicing, the original hiragana is used. For example, chi ( 血 'blood') is spelled ち in plain hiragana. When 鼻 hana ('nose') and 血 chi ('blood') combine to make hanaji ( 鼻血 'nose bleed'), the sound of 血 changes from chi to ji . So hanaji is spelled はなぢ . Similarly, tsukau ( 使う/遣う ; 'to use') is spelled つかう in hiragana, so kanazukai ( 仮名遣い ; 'kana use', or 'kana orthography')
1615-427: Is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", as contrasted with kanji). Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be a vowel such as /a/ (hiragana あ ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as /ka/ ( か ); or /N/ ( ん ),
1710-448: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,
1805-527: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing
1900-458: Is also used to write furigana , a reading aid that shows the pronunciation of kanji characters. There are two main systems of ordering hiragana : the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering. After 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: These are conceived as
1995-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number
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#17327835989852090-600: Is arranged in a traditional manner, beginning top right and reading columns down. The numbers and arrows indicate the stroke order and direction respectively. Hiragana was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0. The Unicode block for Hiragana is U+3040–U+309F: The Unicode hiragana block contains precomposed characters for all hiragana in the modern set, including small vowels and yōon kana for compound syllables as well as
2185-647: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider
2280-466: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto
2375-447: Is called yōon . A small tsu っ, called a sokuon , indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; for example, compare さか , saka , "hill" with さっか , sakka , "author". 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"). The sokuon also sometimes appears at
2470-475: Is common as a particle but otherwise rare. Strictly speaking, the singular consonant ん ( n ) is considered as outside the gojūon . 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 , ts/s → z , t → d , h/f → b and ch / sh → j (also u → v(u) ). For example, か ( ka ) becomes が ( ga ). Hiragana beginning with an h (or f ) sound can also add
2565-489: Is considered non-standard in Japanese. However, the Okinawan language uses chōonpu with hiragana. In informal writing, small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds ( はぁ , haa , ねぇ , nee ). Plain (clear) and voiced iteration marks are written in hiragana as ゝ and ゞ, respectively. These marks are rarely used nowadays. The following table shows the complete hiragana together with
2660-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to
2755-566: Is generally arduous for a contemporary speaker to consciously perceive inazuma as separable into two discrete words. Thus, the default spelling いなずま is used instead of いなづま . Other examples include kizuna ( きずな ) and sakazuki ( さかずき ). Although these rules were officially established by a Cabinet Notice in 1986 revising the modern kana usage , they have sometimes faced criticism due to their perceived arbitrariness. Officially, ぢ and づ do not occur word-initially pursuant to modern spelling rules. There were words such as ぢばん jiban 'ground' in
2850-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through
2945-603: Is included in Unicode 14 as HIRAGANA LETTER ARCHAIC WU (𛄟). Hiragana developed from man'yōgana , Chinese characters used for their pronunciations, a practice that started in the 5th century. The oldest examples of Man'yōgana include the Inariyama Sword , an iron sword excavated at the Inariyama Kofun. This sword is thought to be made in the year 辛亥年 (most commonly taken to be C.E. 471). The forms of
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3040-755: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey
3135-532: Is normally treated as its own syllable and is separate from the other n -based kana ( na , ni etc.). ん is sometimes directly followed by a vowel ( a , i , u , e or o ) or a palatal approximant ( ya , yu or yo ). These are clearly distinct from the na , ni etc. syllables, and there are minimal pairs such as きんえん kin'en 'smoking forbidden', きねん kinen 'commemoration', きんねん kinnen 'recent years'. In Hepburn romanization, they are distinguished with an apostrophe, but not all romanization methods make
3230-440: Is now completely obsolete. ゔ vu is a modern addition used to represent the /v/ sound in foreign languages such as English, but since Japanese from a phonological standpoint does not have a /v/ sound, it is pronounced as /b/ and mostly serves as a more accurate indicator of a word's pronunciation in its original language. However, it is rarely seen because loanwords and transliterated words are usually written in katakana , where
3325-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of
3420-498: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and
3515-468: Is pronounced [m] before m , b and p , [n] before t , ch , ts , n , r , z , j and d , [ŋ] before k and g , [ɴ] at the end of utterances, and some kind of high nasal vowel [ɰ̃] before vowels, palatal approximants ( y ), and fricative consonants ( s , sh , h , f and w ). In kanji readings, the diphthongs ou and ei are usually pronounced [oː] (long o) and [eː] (long e) respectively. For example, とうきょう (lit. toukyou )
3610-503: Is pronounced [toːkʲoː] 'Tokyo', and せんせい sensei is [seɯ̃seː] 'teacher'. However, とう tou is pronounced [toɯ] 'to inquire', because the o and u are considered distinct, u being the verb ending in the dictionary form. Similarly, している shite iru is pronounced [ɕiteiɾɯ] 'is doing'. In archaic forms of Japanese, there existed the kwa ( くゎ [kʷa] ) and gwa ( ぐゎ [ɡʷa] ) digraphs. In modern Japanese, these phonemes have been phased out of usage. For
3705-505: Is spelled かなづかい in hiragana. However, there are cases where ぢ and づ are not used, such as the word for 'lightning', inazuma ( 稲妻 ). The first component, 稲 , meaning 'rice plant', is written いな ( ina ). The second component, 妻 (etymologically 夫 ), meaning 'spouse', is pronounced つま ( tsuma ) when standalone or often as づま (zuma) when following another syllable, such in 人妻 ( hitozuma , 'married woman'). Even though these components of 稲妻 are etymologically linked to 'lightning', it
3800-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and
3895-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have
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3990-531: Is used to add the diacritics to kana that are not normally used with them, for example applying the dakuten to a pure vowel or the handakuten to a kana not in the h-group. Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are small か ( ka ) and small け ( ke ), respectively. U+309F is a ligature of より ( yori ) occasionally used in vertical text. U+309B and U+309C are spacing (non-combining) equivalents to the combining dakuten and handakuten characters, respectively. Historic and variant forms of Japanese kana characters were first added to
4085-507: 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. 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
4180-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns
4275-412: Is written as du . These pairs are not interchangeable. Usually, ji is written as じ and zu is written as ず. There are some exceptions. If the first two syllables of a word consist of one syllable without a dakuten and the same syllable with a dakuten , the same hiragana is used to write the sounds. For example, chijimeru ('to boil down' or 'to shrink') is spelled ちぢめる and tsuzuku ('to continue')
4370-694: The Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from
4465-462: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in
4560-514: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than
4655-512: The Unicode Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0, with significantly more added in 2017 as part of Unicode 10. The Unicode block for Kana Supplement is U+1B000–U+1B0FF, and is immediately followed by the Kana Extended-A block (U+1B100–U+1B12F). These blocks include mainly hentaigana (historic or variant hiragana): The Unicode block for Kana Extended-B is U+1AFF0–U+1AFFF: The Unicode block for Small Kana Extension
4750-738: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of
4845-806: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to
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#17327835989854940-400: The historical kana usage , but they were unified under じ in the modern kana usage in 1946, so today it is spelled exclusively じばん . However, づら zura 'wig' (from かつら katsura ) and づけ zuke (a sushi term for lean tuna soaked in soy sauce) are examples of word-initial づ today. No standard Japanese words begin with the kana ん ( n ). This is the basis of the word game shiritori . ん n
5035-423: The modified Hepburn romanization and IPA transcription, arranged in four categories, each of them displayed in the gojūon order. Those whose romanization are in bold do not use the initial consonant for that row. For all syllables besides ん, the pronunciation indicated is for word-initial syllables; for mid-word pronunciations see below. In the middle of words, the g sound (normally [ɡ] ) may turn into
5130-448: The standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics ,
5225-527: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),
5320-465: The 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of
5415-486: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,
5510-736: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently
5605-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand
5700-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which
5795-465: The advent of kana ), but is generally represented for purposes of reconstruction by the kanji 江, and its hiragana form is not present in any known orthography. In modern orthography, ye can also be written as いぇ (イェ in katakana ). While hiragana and katakana letters for "ye" were used for a short period after the advent of kana, the distinction between /ye/ and /e/ disappeared before glyphs could become established. It has not been demonstrated whether
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#17327835989855890-405: The case: a previous system of spelling, now referred to as historical kana usage , differed substantially from pronunciation; the three above-mentioned exceptions in modern usage are the legacy of that system. There are two hiragana pronounced ji (じ and ぢ) and two hiragana pronounced zu (ず and づ), but to distinguish them, particularly when typing Japanese , sometimes ぢ is written as di and づ
5985-425: The corresponding character would be written as ヴ. The digraphs ぢゃ , ぢゅ , ぢょ for ja / ju / jo are theoretically possible in rendaku , but are nearly never used in modern kana usage ; for example, the word 夫婦茶碗 , meoto-jawan (couple bowls), spelled めおとぢゃわん , where 茶碗 alone is spelled ちゃわん ( chawan ). The みゅ myu kana is extremely rare in originally Japanese words; linguist Haruhiko Kindaichi raises
6080-451: The distinction. For example, past prime minister Junichiro Koizumi 's first name is actually じゅんいちろう Jun'ichirō pronounced [dʑɯɰ̃itɕiɾoː] There are a few hiragana that are rarely used. Outside of Okinawan orthography, ゐ wi [i] and ゑ we [e] are only used in some proper names. 𛀁 e was an alternate version of え e before spelling reform, and was briefly reused for ye during initial spelling reforms, but
6175-578: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there
6270-435: The end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop , as in いてっ! ( [iteʔ] , "Ouch!"). Two hiragana have pronunciations that depend on the context: 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"). The chōonpu (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
6365-474: The example of the Japanese family name Omamyūda ( 小豆生田 ) and claims it is the only occurrence amongst pure Japanese words. Its katakana counterpart is used in many loanwords, however. On the row beginning with わ /wa/, the hiragana ゐ /wi/ and ゑ /we/ are both quasi-obsolete, only used in some names. They are usually respectively pronounced [i] and [e]. In modified Hepburn romanization, they are generally written i and e . It has not been demonstrated whether
6460-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had
6555-421: The hiragana originate from the cursive script style of Chinese calligraphy . The table to the right shows the derivation of hiragana from manyōgana via cursive script. The upper part shows the character in the regular script form, the center character in red shows the cursive script form of the character, and the bottom shows the equivalent hiragana. The cursive script forms are not strictly confined to those in
6650-458: The illustration. When it was first developed, hiragana was not accepted by everyone. The educated or elites preferred to use only the kanji system. Historically, in Japan, the regular script ( kaisho ) form of the characters was used by men and called otokode ( 男手 ) , "men's writing", while the cursive script ( sōsho ) form of the kanji was used by women. Hence hiragana first gained popularity among women, who were generally not allowed access to
6745-458: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system
6840-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of
6935-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,
7030-585: The mora /ji/ existed in old Japanese. Though ye did appear in some textbooks during the Meiji period along with another kana for yi in the form of cursive 以. Today it is considered a Hentaigana by scholars and is encoded in Unicode 10 ( 𛀆 ) This kana could have a colloquial use, to convert the combo yui (ゆい) into yii ( 𛀆 い), due to other Japanese words having a similar change. An early, now obsolete, hiragana-esque form of ye may have existed ( 𛀁 [je] ) in pre-Classical Japanese (prior to
7125-415: The mora /wu/ existed in old Japanese. However, hiragana wu also appeared in different Meiji-era textbooks ( [REDACTED] ). Although there are several possible source kanji, it is likely to have been derived from a cursive form of the man'yōgana 汙 , although a related variant sometimes listed ( [REDACTED] ) is from a cursive form of 紆 . However, it was never commonly used. This character
7220-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by
7315-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with
7410-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,
7505-481: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as
7600-407: The rare ゐ wi and ゑ we ; the archaic 𛀁 ye is included in plane 1 at U+1B001 (see below). All combinations of hiragana with dakuten and handakuten used in modern Japanese are available as precomposed characters (including the rare ゔ vu ), and can also be produced by using a base hiragana followed by the combining dakuten and handakuten characters (U+3099 and U+309A, respectively). This method
7695-470: The same levels of education as men, thus hiragana was first widely used among court women in the writing of personal communications and literature. From this comes the alternative name of onnade ( 女手 ) "women's writing". For example, The Tale of Genji and other early novels by female authors used hiragana extensively or exclusively. Even today, hiragana is felt to have a feminine quality. Male authors came to write literature using hiragana. Hiragana
7790-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning
7885-817: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this
7980-481: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This
8075-533: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Hiragana It
8170-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,
8265-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of
8360-480: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It
8455-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending
8550-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or
8645-539: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular
8740-735: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,
8835-474: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )
8930-449: Was more than one possible hiragana. In 1900, the system was simplified so each syllable had only one hiragana. The deprecated hiragana are now known as hentaigana ( 変体仮名 ) . The pangram poem Iroha -uta ("ABC song/poem"), which dates to the 10th century, uses every hiragana once (except n ん, which was just a variant of む before the Muromachi era ). The following table shows the method for writing each hiragana character. The table
9025-423: Was used for unofficial writing such as personal letters, while katakana and kanji were used for official documents. In modern times, the usage of hiragana has become mixed with katakana writing. Katakana is now relegated to special uses such as recently borrowed words (i.e., since the 19th century), names in transliteration , the names of animals, in telegrams, and for emphasis. Originally, for all syllables there
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