The History of Hiragana
The history of the first written writing system of Japan has many contradictory accounts. The influence of China and Korea as well as the individuals involved is subject of a lot of debate. Due to the subject being the first written language of Japan, a written record is hard to obtain to verify a lot of these theories. However, the most accepted history of Japan’s first written language begins with Buddhist monks in China. These monks imported Chinese script to the Korean kingdoms, transcribing their religious texts with kanji used for pronunciation rather than meaning (Bentley, pp. 59-73).
The written system was adopted in the kingdom of Paekche which had formed an alliance and passed on Man’yougana to the Yamato court--the most powerful government in Japan at the time (Varley, 2000, p. 25). It is easy to assume that Man’yougana had changed in pronunciation from its inception through at least three different countries. In the seventh century, Buddhist monk, Kuukai, was credited with creating a kana syllabary derived from Man’yougana (Varley, 2000, p. 25). Kuukai was said to have drawn inspiration from Chinese kanji and sanskrit in the development of the kana systems (Varley, 2000, p. 25). Kuukai’s specific role in the creation of the two kana syllabaries has been heavily touted but also debated by historians.
The history of the first written writing system of Japan has many contradictory accounts. The influence of China and Korea as well as the individuals involved is subject of a lot of debate. Due to the subject being the first written language of Japan, a written record is hard to obtain to verify a lot of these theories. However, the most accepted history of Japan’s first written language begins with Buddhist monks in China. These monks imported Chinese script to the Korean kingdoms, transcribing their religious texts with kanji used for pronunciation rather than meaning (Bentley, pp. 59-73).
The written system was adopted in the kingdom of Paekche which had formed an alliance and passed on Man’yougana to the Yamato court--the most powerful government in Japan at the time (Varley, 2000, p. 25). It is easy to assume that Man’yougana had changed in pronunciation from its inception through at least three different countries. In the seventh century, Buddhist monk, Kuukai, was credited with creating a kana syllabary derived from Man’yougana (Varley, 2000, p. 25). Kuukai was said to have drawn inspiration from Chinese kanji and sanskrit in the development of the kana systems (Varley, 2000, p. 25). Kuukai’s specific role in the creation of the two kana syllabaries has been heavily touted but also debated by historians.
The script version of the kana syllabary was the root of the writing system we know today as hiragana. Hiragana was used specifically by women during the Heian period, who were not allowed to learn kanji or katakana (“kana”). Eventually Hiragana became much more organized and was officially codified by the Japanese government in 1946 ("Japanese Hiragana"). The symbols below is the official hiragana that is used in Japan today.
Function of Hiragana
Hiragana is the simplest writing system in Japanese. Each character correlates to a single syllable. Japanese syllables are constructed as CV or V, with the one exception of the syllable final “n” or “ん”. To elongate a vowel, the same vowel the first character had is added after the first character. To create a dipthong, a different vowel to the one used in the character before is added, as seen in the word for love, “あい" /aɪ/. Hiragana and katakana are remarkably similar to the IPA chart. Each character can be modified with a handakuten or accent above the character, like these: “ or ᣞ. These accent modifies voiceless consonants into their voiced counterparts like so: ([k]→ [g], [t]→[d], [s]→ [z]). The small つ character can be used to signify a glottal stop before a consonant or a double consonant.
Hiragana is used largely by children or people new to the Japanese language. It is a simple phonetic system of 46 characters that is easy to pronounce and learn with a one-to-one correlation between symbol and sound. Hiragana when used in standard Japanese is mainly for particles, prepositions, some adjectives, and unbound/free morphemes which don’t have a kanji root to represent the word.
Hiragana is the simplest writing system in Japanese. Each character correlates to a single syllable. Japanese syllables are constructed as CV or V, with the one exception of the syllable final “n” or “ん”. To elongate a vowel, the same vowel the first character had is added after the first character. To create a dipthong, a different vowel to the one used in the character before is added, as seen in the word for love, “あい" /aɪ/. Hiragana and katakana are remarkably similar to the IPA chart. Each character can be modified with a handakuten or accent above the character, like these: “ or ᣞ. These accent modifies voiceless consonants into their voiced counterparts like so: ([k]→ [g], [t]→[d], [s]→ [z]). The small つ character can be used to signify a glottal stop before a consonant or a double consonant.
Hiragana is used largely by children or people new to the Japanese language. It is a simple phonetic system of 46 characters that is easy to pronounce and learn with a one-to-one correlation between symbol and sound. Hiragana when used in standard Japanese is mainly for particles, prepositions, some adjectives, and unbound/free morphemes which don’t have a kanji root to represent the word.