Kana Scripts

What is Hiragana?

Hiragana (ひらがな) is a Japanese syllabary, one of the three components of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana literally means "ordinary" or "simple" kana ("simple" as opposed to kanji). Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable in Japanese is represented by one character in each system.