Hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana literally means "flowing" or "simple" See more

The following table shows the complete hiragana together with the modified Hepburn romanization and IPA transcription in the gojūon order. Hiragana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojūon kana without them, with the yōon kana following. Those in bold do … See more

With a few exceptions, such as for the three particles は (pronounced [wa] instead of [ha]), へ (pronounced [e] instead of [he]) and See more

The following table shows the method for writing each hiragana character. The table is arranged in a traditional manner, beginning top right … See more

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 … See more

Hentaigana
Polysyllabic kana
yi, ye and wu
yi
Though ye did appear in some textbooks during the Meiji period along with another kana for yi in the … See more

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 … See more