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is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and in some cases rōmaji (the Latin-script alphabet). The word ''hiragana'' means "smooth kana". Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each sound in the Japanese language (strictly, each mora) is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be either a vowel such as ''"a"'' (hiragana あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as ''"ka"'' (か); or ''"n"'' (ん), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English ''m'', ''n'', or ''ng'' (), or like the nasal vowels of French. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of ん "n"), the kana are referred to as syllabaries and not alphabets. Hiragana is used to write native words for which there are no kanji, including grammatical particles such as ''kara'' "from". Likewise, hiragana is used to write words whose kanji form is obscure, not known to the writer or readers, or too formal for the writing purpose. There is also some flexibility for words that have common kanji renditions to be optionally written instead in hiragana, according to an individual author's preference. Verb and adjective inflections, as, for example, ''be-ma-shi-ta'' in , are written in hiragana, often following a verb or adjective root (here, "") that is written in kanji. When Hiragana is used to show the pronunciation of kanji characters as reading aid, it is referred to as ''furigana''. There are two main systems of ordering hiragana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering. ==Writing system== The modern hiragana syllabary consists of 48 characters: * 5 singular vowels * 42 consonant–vowel unions, consisting of 9 consonants in combination with each of the 5 vowels, excepting ''yi'', ''ye'', and ''wu'', which do not exist. * * Of the extant consonant-vowel unions, two (''wi'', and ''we'') are obsolete in modern Japanese, and one (''wo'') is usually pronounced as a vowel (''o'') in modern Japanese, and is preserved in only one use, as a particle * 1 singular consonant These are conceived as a 5×10 grid (''gojūon'', , lit. "Fifty Sounds"), as illustrated in the adjacent table, with the extra character being the anomalous singular consonant ん (''N''). Romanisation of the kana does not always strictly follow the consonant-vowel scheme laid out in the table. For example, ち, nominally ''ti'', is very often romanised as ''chi'' in an attempt to better represent the actual sound in Japanese. These basic characters can be modified in various ways. By adding a ''dakuten'' marker ( ゛), a voiceless consonant is turned into a voiced consonant: ''k''→''g'', ''ts/s''→''z'', ''t''→''d'', ''h''→''b'' and ''ch''/''sh''→''j''. Hiragana beginning with an ''h'' can also add a ''handakuten'' marker ( ゜) changing the ''h'' to a ''p''. A small version of the hiragana for ''ya'', ''yu'' or ''yo'' (ゃ, ゅ or ょ respectively) may be added to hiragana ending in ''i''. This changes the ''i'' vowel sound to a glide (palatalization) to ''a'', ''u'' or ''o''. Addition of the small ''y'' kana is called yōon. For example, き (''ki'') plus ゃ (small ''ya'') becomes (''kya''). A small ''tsu'' っ, called a ''sokuon'', indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). For example, compare ''saka'' "hill" with ''sakka'' "author". It also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop, as in ((:iteʔ) Ouch!). However, it cannot be used to double the ''na'', ''ni'', ''nu'', ''ne'', ''no'' syllables' consonants – to double them, the singular ''n'' (ん) is added in front of the syllable. Hiragana usually spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana. The chōonpu (long vowel mark) (ー) used in katakana is rarely used with hiragana, for example in the word , ''rāmen'', but this usage is considered non-standard. In informal writing, small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds ( ''haa'', ''nee''). Standard and voiced iteration marks are written in hiragana as ゝ and ゞ respectively. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hiragana」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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