Hiragana

U 3040 .. U 309 F

The Hiragana (Japanese平 仮 名orひらがな) are a Japanese syllabary ( More precisely font ), in addition to kanji and katakana one of the three headings of the Japanese language. Each hiragana character is as Syllabogramm either a vowel or a consonant for the following vowel, with the exception of the later addedんcharacter that represents a nasal sound.

Use

In a typical Japanese sentence the three fonts are used for each different set of elements. Nouns are typically in kanji or katakana ( in loan words ). In the verbs, only the root word in kanji is written while the Okurigana, the grammatical portion which is attached behind, in Hiragana is ( Japanese is an agglutinative language ). For grammatical part also includes auxiliary verbs such as suru and aru, which are almost never written in kanji, although there are kanji for these words. Particles are also written in hiragana.

In Japanese character dictionaries is written in hiragana the Kun - reading while be used for the on- reading Katakana. Hiragana continue to be used to illustrate rare or unusual kanji kanji readings. The debate horizontally written character is then in Hiragana on the characters in vertical case it is placed right next to it. These pronunciations are called furigana. In textbooks of the middle stage and in books that are intended for a wider audience, furigana are used. In scientific articles and encyclopedias also furigana are used in the first occurrence of names.

Unlike an alphabet exist for the Japanese syllabary no clearly defined sequence in which they are arranged. Today, the 50 - lute - panel is used for such purposes, although usually used, but there are other planning procedures, such as the Iroha poem, formerly found use and find even today.

Hiragana are the first characters to learn the Japanese school children. The better reason schools require that children have already mastered the school enrollment of the Hiragana, which is why many children learn the Hiragana in kindergarten. Children's books are entirely in hiragana or contain only a few, simple kanji, provided with the reading in furigana.

The Hiragana syllables

The basic set of Hiragana syllables consists of a set of formerly 50 characters, 45 of which still are regularly in use, another syllableん, came later.

In addition, there are two diacritics: By dakuten (゛) a voiceless consonant is converted into a voiced, k → g, t → d, s → z and h → b. With the hand- acute (゜) an h is transformed into a p. In the Heian period, when the Hiragana were developed, the consonants of the H series were pronounced more like p, by a shift in sound of the consonant was, however, still continued to weaken. The hand- marked acute as it were the original pronunciation.

In addition, the syllable is extended selection by a small ya, yu or yo is appended to the Hiragana of the i- column. Thus, the vowel i is palatalized to a j. The syllables thus formed are referred to in Japanese as Yoon.

A small tsuっ, sokuon called, on the other hand turns the following consonant in a double consonant ( gemination ). In the Hepburn transcription, this is written as a double consonant.

During playback of spoken language such as interjections elongated sounds are sometimes small attached vowels represented (はぁ,ねぇ). This happens especially in the reproduction of spoken words (eg in manga or works in the field of popular literature ). Just use these little young Japanese vowel syllables when they communicate with each other via e -mail on their mobile phone. In the regular Japanese high-level language, this form of syllables can not be found.

Since the signature reforms in 1900 and 1945 to find the Hiraganaゐwi andゑwe officially no longer use. Theうu with dakuten (ゔ) was introduced a few decades ago to a w [ βu ] in foreign words can represent, for example in the word " Venus" (ヴィーナス). As loanwords are usually written in Katakana, it is however not used in Hiragana.

Table of all hiragana syllables

The following table lists based on the 50 - lute - board on all Hiragana and their transcription after the Hepburn system.

The spellingてぃfor ti (as opposed toちchi) occurs in the case of foreign words in Katakana (ティ) frequently in Hiragana only in exceptional cases.

Orthography

After the signature reforms of 1900 and 1945 is in Japanese, at least in terms of Hiragana and Katakana, written as it is spoken. The three prominent exceptions are the particlesは,を, andへwritten ha where and hey, speaking wa, o and e in these three cases, it has retained the historical case, although the debate since the 8th century had changed.

More difficult is the Japanese orthography (仮名遣いkanazukai ) at the Okurigana. So there are syllables that are no longer reading of the kanji are ( for example, verb endings, etc.), written out in hiragana. It is often the case that a kanji has a plurality of readings, and that various verbs with the same kanji are written. Examples of such are the couples乗るnoru " enter " and乗せるnoseru " jmd take on board "(see transitive and intransitive verbs Japanese ) or行くiku " go "and行うokonau " sth can be held / hold ".

There are two hiragana for ji (じandぢ) and to (ずandづ). However these two are not interchangeable. Usuallyじfor ji andずused to, but there are exceptions. If a syllable only voiced by rendaku, the original syllable is provided with the dakuten. For example,血"blood"ちchi is read when it stands alone. In compound鼻血" nosebleed " the second syllable is voiced, so it is read hanaji andはなぢwritten that is soちmaintained.

Some words that are read by Kun - reading, the syllable combination Chiji or tsuzu occurs here always the character of the first syllable is repeated provided with a dakuten in Hiraganaschreibung. Examples are chijimeru缩(ちぢ)める" shorten " and Tsuzuku続(つづ)く" continue ".

The Choon (ー), a Längungsstrich for vowels should be applied according to the spelling rules only in Katakana, but you can sometimes find signs likeらーめん( Ramen ) that flout them. Also in the manga language, this rule is ignored.

The syllableんn is never word-initially.

Stroke order

History

Both Hiragana and Katakana were developed from the Man'yōgana, a selection of Chinese characters that were used after discussion and not for meaning. The katakana developed by the omission of drawing elements from the regular script, also known as " men magazine" (男 手otokode ) was considered. Simultaneously, the Hiragana were developed, but from a different calligraphic form of aesthetic, curved italics, the so-called grass script or woman script (女 手onnade ). In the grass script all single strokes of a character into a single flow together, which is still recognizable in today's hiragana.

The grass script has been maintained by the ladies of the court in Heian - kyō, and also held the literary works of these women, such as the Genji Monogatari, are in Kanji and Hiragana.

Later, the Hiragana were also done by men, and hiragana were used primarily for personal records and correspondence, while official documents were written in kanji and katakana.

In the Edo period, then a separate literary genre, which was entirely in hiragana, the Kanahon and Kanazōshi developed. It served to entertain the growing urban population shift. Through temple schools ( Terakoya ) Japan reached a high for that time literacy rate, it is estimated that around 1850, to read and write before opening, 50 % of men and 20% of women could, at least in Hiragana.

With the signature reforms in 1900 and 1945, the Japanese language then took its present form. The Hiragana were the default font for Okurigana and particles, while the role of katakana on transcription and other " special tasks " has been reduced.

The writing reform of 1900 had other consequences: the lower case of the syllables ya, yu, yo and tsu has been introduced. The historical hiragana were not completely uniform for many syllables there were several characters that were derived from different Chinese characters. Only in 1900 the system was standardized. The different characters have since been referred to as Hentaigana. In normal use, the font Hentaigana no longer play a role, sometimes we may still find, however, on the signs of restaurants serving traditional Japanese cuisine or handwritten documents from Japanese traditional clubs.

Hiragana Unicode

In Unicode, the hiragana are set between U 3040 and U 309 F:

The hiragana block contains all used in the modern language Hiragana characters, including small vowels, the Yoon- Kana, the sokuon -tsu, the past and we wi. All the usual combinations of hiragana and diacritics dakuten and acute hand also exist as an independent character, as well as the actually unused u with dakuten.

The diacritical marks are also included as separate characters, U 3099 and U 309 A. By Unicode combination rules as well as Hiragana can be provided with the diacritics, where this is not common. U 309 B and U 309 C are again the two diacritics, but this time as an independent character and not the combination. In addition, there are small ka (U 3095 ) used in Zählwörtern and ke (U 3096 ), and the digraphよりyori (U 309 F), which is sometimes used in vertical writing. U 3040, U 3097 and U 3098 are not used to have room for possible additions.

Swell

• Yujiro Nakata: The Art of Japanese Calligraphy. 2 print. Weatherhill / Heibonsha, New York NY, inter alia, 1976, ISBN 0-8348-1013-1 (The Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art 27), leads the development of ONODE and onnade from.
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