Hiragana is the basic form of the Japanese writing system. It is a phonetic written script based on syllabic sounds. Each syllabic sound is constructed from one or two consonants followed by a vowel (with the exception of five sounds). The script begins as follows:
a, i, u, e, o あ、い、う、え、お
ka, ki, ku, ke, ko か、き、く、け、こ
sa, shi, su, se, so さ、し、す、せ、そ
… and so on for another 31 characters. It’s a simple and logical writing system which can be learned and memorized within a week, depending on the learner’s level of motivation. By looking at the examples above, you should already be able to read the following word:
すし
The first reference to hiragana in English was when the book Illustrations of Japan, consisting of private memoirs of the djogoun was translated from Dutch. Isaac Titsingh, writer of the book and a senior official of the Dutch East India Company, describes a kind of Japanese poetry written in “firokanna, or women’s writing”. Since women historically did not have the same access to education as men, they used hiragana rather than kanji which was the writing system of the elite, hence Titsingh’s reference to hiragana as women’s writing.
Hiragana at school
In the 21st century, Japanese children begin reading and writing hiragana in primary school, though very soon move on to learning kanji, which takes a lot longer to master. But why don’t Japanese children just stick with hiragana and save themselves years of writing out lines and lines of kanji characters in order to memorize them?
Firstly, hiragana is written without using any spaces between individual words which makes it very awkward to read when you can’t quickly determine the end of one word and start of the next; kanji, on the other hand, makes this distinction clear. Even if spaces are inserted between words, because of the high number of homonyms in Japanese compared to English (words that are spelled the same but have different meanings), for the sake of easy reading, it is still better to use kanji.
Japanese adults use a combination of hiragana and kanji when writing; the hiragana is used mainly (though not exclusively) to show grammatical function, whereas kanji represents meaning. So in an example such as the verb “to eat”, the root of the verb is 食 and the grammatical ending is added in hiragana.
食べる Eat
食べている Eating
食べた Ate
