Japanese Character Reference
| Syllabary | Description |
|---|---|
| Hiragana | phonetic lettering system - The word hiragana literally means "ordinary" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrasted with kanji). |
| Katakana | phonetic lettering system - The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components of more complex kanji. In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for those Japanese language words and grammatical inflections which kanji does not cover, the katakana syllabary usage is quite similar to italics in English |
| kanji (漢字) | logographic characters - one characters for a word or object |
| romaji | Latin script |
Hiragana
| a | i | u | e | o | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ∅ | あ | い | う | え | お |
| k | か | き | く | け | こ |
| s | さ | し | す | せ | そ |
| t | た | ち | つ | て | と |
| n | な | に | ぬ | ね | の |
| h | は | ひ | ふ | へ | ほ |
| m | ま | み | む | め | も |
| y | や | ゆ | よ | ||
| r | ら | り | る | れ | ろ |
| w | わ | ゐ | ゑ | を | |
| ん (n) | |||||
| Functional marks and diacritics |
|||||
| っ tsu | Sokuon, doubles the following consonant |
| ゝ | |
| ゛ | |
| ゜ |