Hiragana symbols

Hiragana

► History of Hiragana

The history of Hiragana symbols goes back to around A.D. 600. They called the first Hiragana 'Manyougana'. Surprisingly, Manyougana was written in Kanji at the beginning. They used either sound or meaning of Kanji to create their own symbol system. At that time, there were about 1000 symbols and mainly used by women. A few hundreds years later, the number of Manyougana were reduced to less than 500 and became popular among everyone. The symbols were simplified by stripping off a part of Kanji. Here are some examples. (Kanji is listed on the left side and Hiragana is on the right side)

In 1900, the Japanese government issues the regulation called 'Shougakkourei', in which Hiragana symbols were officially added to their language system. The set of symbols defined then are very close to what they are using right now.

► Sound of Japanese

Hiragana is often referred as Japanese version of 'alphabets' and there are 46 symbols. They don't have the meanings by themselves and represent the sound of Japanese. In theory, it is possible to write ALL Japanese words in Hiragana.

► Supporting player

Although the primary role is to represent the sound, they are also used to form the word together with Kanji symbols. The symbols used for this purpose give the additional meaning to what Kanji originally has and enrich the expression in Japanese language. Here are some example. (Hiragana is written in red)

All of the Japanese symbols can be written in Hiragana but there are not many words that need to be written in Hiragana only. Most of these words falls into the category such as the article, conjunction, post-position. The following is one of the most popular (to American) words written in Hiragana.

By the way, 'hira' means flat or plain and 'gana', which is the variation of 'kana' means a letter.

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Hiragana Symbols

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