HIRAGANA
Hiragana is one of the two syllabaries of the Japanese writing system.
A character is used to represent each syllable in the Japanese language. Hiragana is used to write native Japanese words that have no kanji, however many kanji words may also be written in Hiragana. Hiragana consists of 48 syllables and is mainly used to write verb endings (known as okurigana) , particles, prefixes and suffixes. When written above or beside kanji to indicate the pronunciation, hiragana is known as furigana. Below is a full hiragana chart (image credit: bnb32.com) |