Kana

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Kana
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ISO 15924 code: Hrkt
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Template:Japanese writing

For other uses, see Kana (disambiguation).

Kana is a general term for the syllabic Japanese scripts hiragana (ひらがな) and katakana (カタカナ) as well as the old system known as manyogana. These were developed from the logographic characters of Chinese origin, known in Japan as Kanji (漢字; Chinese pronunciation "hànzì"), as an alternative and adjunct alphabet.

In addition, kana were borrowed into Taiwanese to indicate the pronunciation of Chinese characters like furigana during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan.

Table of the Japanese kana
Hiragana and katakana (grouped vertically).
Syllables in parentheses are archaic. (Image of this table.)
vowel k s t n h m y r w
あア かカ さサ たタ なナ はハ まマ やヤ らラ わワ
a ka sa ta na ha ma ya ra wa
いイ きキ しシ ちチ にニ ひヒ みミ りリ ゐヰ
i ki shi chi ni hi mi * ri (wi)
うウ くク すス つツ ぬヌ ふフ むム ゆユ るル
u ku su tsu nu fu mu yu ru *
えエ けケ せセ てテ ねネ へヘ めメ れレ ゑヱ
e ke se te ne he me * re (we)
おオ こコ そソ とト のノ ほホ もモ よヨ ろロ をヲ
o ko so to no ho mo yo ro (w)o
んン
n
  • Neither modern hiragana or katakana have kana to represent ye, yi or wu sounds. However, ye is believed to have existed as a syllable in pre-Classical Japanese (prior to the advent of kana), and is generally represented (for purposes of reconstruction) by the kanji 江. In later periods, the syllable we (represented by the katakana ヱ and hiragana ゑ) came to be realized as [jɛ], as demonstrated in 1600s-era European sources, but later merged with the vowel e and was eliminated from official orthography in 1946. "Ye" in modern orthography is commonly represented using いぇ or イェ.
  • While no longer a part of standard orthography, both wi and we are still sometimes used stylistically, such as in ウヰスキー for "whiskey," and ヱビス for Yebisu, a beer brand.

Modern Usage

Hiragana is mostly used to indicate prefixes and grammatical word endings. It is also used to represent entire words (usually of Japanese, rather than Chinese, origin) in place of kanji.

Today, katakana is most commonly used to write words of foreign origin that do not have kanji representations. For example, "George W. Bush" can be expressed as ジョージ・W・ブッシュ. Katakana is also used to represent onomatopoeia, technical and scientific terms, 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 books. Literature for young children who do not yet know kanji may dispense with it altogether and instead use hiragana combined with spaces.

History of Kana

The history of the Japanese language is usually divided into four periods, distinguished primarily by changes in phonology, morphology, and vocabulary: Old Japanese (to the eigth century); Late Old Japanese (ninth–eleventh century); Middle Japanese (twelfth–sixteenth century); and Modern Japanese (from the seventeenth century). The most significant changes in sound have been the shift of initial p- to h-, the loss of three vowels ï, ë, and ö, and the disappearance of vestigial vowel harmony. Older “finite” forms of verbs and adjectives have been replaced with noun-modifying forms.

Influence of Chinese Language

Though Japanese vocabulary is largely indigenous, from the sixth to the ninth century the Chinese language strongly influenced its development. A large percentage of Japanese words derive from Chinese loan elements, just as English has borrowed extensively from Greek, Latin, and French. The adoption of Chinese characters for writing can be traced to the third century, but any surviving text prior to the eighth century is only a few words long. Characters originally used to write Chinese became symbols for native Japanese words with similar meanings to the original Chinese. During this process the Chinese characters were simplified and written in a more cursive style, so that in many cases they no longer resemble their original Chinese form.

Every Chinese character used in writing the Japanese language has acquired a two-fold reading. A character can represent a Japanese word that imitates the sound and meaning of the original Chinese word (the on reading); or it can represent a native Japanese word with the same meaning but a different sound (the kun reading). The kun reading usually applies when a character is used by itself. Every character also has a third use; its on or kun sound can be used to represent a Japanese syllable phonetically. A kanji used this way as a phonogram is called a kana. Both hiragana and katakana developed from the ancient kana system (man'yōgana), a kind of phonetic character using kanji.

Development of Kana

Kana is traditionally said to have been invented by the Buddhist priest Kūkai in the ninth century. Kūkai certainly brought the Siddham script home on his return from China in 806; 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.

Hiragana

Kanji were used as phonograms as early as the sixth century, but it was not until the ninth century that standardized forms of kana began to develop. Gradually two systems of phonetic representation developed, both based on kanji. Hiragana (“common kana”) was created by simplifying and stylizing the cursive kanji used as phonograms in the Man'yoshu (759), an eighth-century imperial anthology of poetry. Hiragana came into wider use through the writing of poetry, diaries and novels by women of the court during the Heian period (794 – 1185). Men continued to write in kanji, and hiragana was known as onnade, or “letters of women.”

Katakana

Katakana (‘partial kana”) developed from various systems of notation used by priests to aid in the reading of Chinese texts and Buddhist scriptures by using abbreviated kanji strokes to supply Japanese particles and endings missing in the Chinese. The first katakana was highly individualized and differed from sect to sect and even from one individual to another. By the tenth century, however, as its usage became more popular, common elements began to appear.

Modern Japanese Writing

Japanese was written with a combination of kanji and katakana until the fifteenth century, when hiragana symbols took over as the popular and literary medium. Katakana was still used for scholarly and practical writing. In modern Japanese, katakana is used only for machine-printed telegrams and memos, and for foreign loan-words, onomatopoetic words, and the scientific names of species.

The orthography of kanji and katakana was reformed after World War II; The present set of kana and rules for their usage were codified in 1946. The thousands of kanji characters were restricted to a list of 1,850 symbols for official and everyday use, and the method of writing them was greatly simplified. During the early 1980s, another ninety-five kanji were added to the list, and additional simplifications were adopted. Kana spellings are now based on contemporary pronunciation instead of on the sounds of Late Old Japanese.

Collation

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 ordering is used for enumeration in some circumstances. Dictionaries differ in the sequence order for long/short vowel distinction, small tsu and diacritics. As the Japanese do not use word spaces (except for children), there can be no word-by-word collation; all collation is kana-by-kana.

Japanese Dialects

Japanese is a polysyllabic language using five vowels a, i, u, e, o, and fifteen consonants p, t, k, b, d, g, ts (ch), s (sh), z (j), m, n, r, h, y and w. The Japanese language is composed of a number of dialects, some of them mutually unintelligible. Most Japanese dialects are characterized by differences in the use of pitch accents, inflections on nouns, and endings used to conjugate verbs and adjectives. A complex system of personal pronouns reflects gender, age and an intricate social hierarchy. Mainland dialects can be categorized into four interrelated groups, but there are significant differences between the mainland dialects and those of the Ryuku Islands. The rapid spread of literacy and elementary education that began after the Meiji Restoration (1868) helped to establish a common written language based on the dialect of residential Tokyo. Most people across Japan now speak this common tongue, though with different accents. The assimilation of local dialects has been accentuated by large scale migration to the cities and by the impact of radio and television.

Kana in Unicode

The Hiragana range in Unicode is U+3040 ... U+309F, and the Katakana range is U+30A0 ... U+30FF. The obsolete characters (WI and WE) also have their proper codepoints, except for hentaigana, which are considered glyph variants of more common kana.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
304x ぁ あ ぃ い ぅ う ぇ え ぉ お か が き ぎ く
305x ぐ け げ こ ご さ ざ し じ す ず せ ぜ そ ぞ た
306x だ ち ぢ っ つ づ て で と ど な に ぬ ね の は
307x ば ぱ ひ び ぴ ふ ぶ ぷ へ べ ぺ ほ ぼ ぽ ま み
308x む め も ゃ や ゅ ゆ ょ よ ら り る れ ろ ゎ わ
309x ゐ ゑ を ん ゔ ゕ ゖ ゙ ゚ ゛ ゜ ゝ ゞ ゟ
30Ax ゠ ァ ア ィ イ ゥ ウ ェ エ ォ オ カ ガ キ ギ ク
30Bx グ ケ ゲ コ ゴ サ ザ シ ジ ス ズ セ ゼ ソ ゾ タ
30Cx ダ チ ヂ ッ ツ ヅ テ デ ト ド ナ ニ ヌ ネ ノ ハ
30Dx バ パ ヒ ビ ピ フ ブ プ ヘ ベ ペ ホ ボ ポ マ ミ
30Ex ム メ モ ャ ヤ ュ ユ ョ ヨ ラ リ ル レ ロ ヮ ワ
30Fx ヰ ヱ ヲ ン ヴ ヵ ヶ ヷ ヸ ヹ ヺ ・ ー ヽ ヾ ヿ

Code points U+3040, U+3097, and U+3098 are unassigned as of Unicode 4.1. 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):

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
FF60 ｡ ｢ ｣ ､ ･ ｦ ｧ ｨ ｩ ｪ ｫ ｬ ｭ ｮ ｯ
FF70 ｰ ｱ ｲ ｳ ｴ ｵ ｶ ｷ ｸ ｹ ｺ ｻ ｼ ｽ ｾ ｿ
FF80 ﾀ ﾁ ﾂ ﾃ ﾄ ﾅ ﾆ ﾇ ﾈ ﾉ ﾊ ﾋ ﾌ ﾍ ﾎ ﾏ
FF90 ﾐ ﾑ ﾒ ﾓ ﾔ ﾕ ﾖ ﾗ ﾘ ﾙ ﾚ ﾛ ﾜ ﾝ ﾞ ﾟ

There is also a small "Katakana Phonetic Extensions" range (U+31F0 ... U+31FF), which includes some extra characters for writing the Ainu language.

    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
31F0   ㇰ ㇱ ㇲ ㇳ ㇴ ㇵ ㇶ ㇷ ㇸ ㇹ ㇺ ㇻ ㇼ ㇽ ㇾ ㇿ
    ｸ ｼ ｽ ﾄ ﾇ ﾊ ﾋ ﾌ ﾍ ﾎ ﾑ ﾗ ﾘ ﾙ ﾚ ﾛ

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Joyo 96 - Understanding Written Japanese. 1996. http://www.joyo96.org/.Sansom, G. B., V. Posdneeff, John Batchelor, and J. L. Pierson. 1929. The Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. Tokyo: Asiatic Society of Japan.
  • LaMarre, Thomas. 2000. Uncovering Heian Japan: an archaeology of sensation and inscription. Asia-Pacific. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN: 0822324822 9780822324829 0822325187 9780822325185
  • O'Neill, G. G. 1988. Japanese Kana workbook. Tokyo, Japan: Kodansha. ISBN: 087011039X 9780870110399
  • Shirane, Haruo. 2002. Early modern Japanese literature: an anthology, 1600-1900. Translations from the Asian classics. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN: 0231109903 9780231109901 0231109911 9780231109918
  • Sugawara, Makoto, and Burritt Sabin. 1993. Kanji kanji. Tokyo: East Publications. ISBN: 4915645134 9784915645136 Umehara, Takeshi. 1984. Bringing Japan's ancient past to light. Washington, D.C.: National Institute for Research Advancement.

External links

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