Katakanahiragana

Katakanahira-gana refers to the two syllabaries used to write Japanese: Katakana and Hiragana. Collectively, they are commonly called kana. Hiragana and Katakana share the same set of sounds and correspond to the same gojūon ordering, but they serve different functions and have distinct visual styles and contexts.

Hiragana originated in the Heian period as a cursive script derived from manyōgana, a simplification of kanji for representing Japanese sounds. It developed as a syllabary used primarily for native Japanese words, inflectional endings, particles, and grammatical elements. Katakana emerged from fragments of Chinese characters used by Buddhist scholars and scribes for annotation and reading aids. It became widely used for foreign loanwords, onomatopoeia, emphasis, technical terms, and, in modern writing, for furigana alongside kanji.

In everyday Japanese, Hiragana is the main script for native vocabulary and grammatical elements, while Katakana is used for gairaigo (foreign loanwords), scientific terms, company names, and certain stylistic effects. Both scripts also appear together in text to indicate readings (furigana) beside kanji. The basic set for each script comprises about 46 characters, with additional sounds created through diacritics (dakuten and handakuten) and small characters to form digraphs known as yōon.

In digital encoding, Hiragana occupies the Unicode block U+3040–U+309F and Katakana U+30A0–U+30FF, with half-width kana available in the ASCII-compatible ranges for compatibility. Input methods typically convert romaji or other inputs into kana, with kana then converted to kanji as needed. Katakana uses a long vowel marker (ー) in many words, while Hiragana represents vowel length through the corresponding vowel sounds within the syllabary.