Kana

Kana
"Kana" written in katakana (left) and hiragana (right)
Script type	Syllabary
Time period	c. 800 – present
Direction	Vertical right-to-left, left-to-right
Region	Japan
Languages	Japanese, Ryukyuan languages, Ainu
Related scripts
Parent systems	Oracle bone script Seal script Clerical script Regular script (Chinese characters) Kanji Kana
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Hrkt (412), ​Japanese syllabaries (alias for Hiragana + Katakana)
Unicode
Unicode alias	Katakana or Hiragana
Unicode range	U+3040–U+309F Hiragana U+30A0–U+30FF Katakana
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Japanese writing
Components
Kanji Stroke order Radicals Jōyō kanji list Kyōiku kanji Tōyō kanji Jinmeiyō kanji Hyōgai kanji
Kana Hiragana Hentaigana Katakana Man'yōgana Sōgana Gojūon
Typographic symbols Japanese punctuation Iteration mark
Uses
Syllabograms Furigana Okurigana Braille
Transliteration
Rōmaji Hepburn Kunrei-shiki / ISO 3602 Nihon-shiki JSL Wāpuro (keyboard input)
Cyrillization Polivanov system
v t e

Kana (仮名, Japanese pronunciation: [kana]) are syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. In current usage, kana most commonly refers to hiragana^[1] and katakana. It can also refer to their ancestor magana (真仮名, lit. 'true kana'),^[2] which were Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese (e.g. man'yōgana); and hentaigana, which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana.

Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu. A number of systems exist to write the Ryūkyūan languages, in particular Okinawan, in hiragana. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as ruby text for Chinese characters in Taiwan when it was under Japanese rule.

Each kana character corresponds to one sound or whole syllable in the Japanese language, unlike kanji regular script, which corresponds to a meaning. Apart from the five vowels, it is always CV (consonant onset with vowel nucleus), such as ka, ki, sa, shi, etc., with the sole exception of the C grapheme for nasal codas usually romanised as n. The structure has led some scholars to label the system moraic, instead of syllabic, because it requires the combination of two syllabograms to represent a CVC syllable with coda (e.g. CVn, CVm, CVng), a CVV syllable with complex nucleus (i.e. multiple or expressively long vowels), or a CCV syllable with complex onset (i.e. including a glide, CyV, CwV).

The limited number of phonemes in Japanese, as well as the relatively rigid syllable structure, makes the kana system a very accurate representation of spoken Japanese.