hiragana

Hiragana (ひらがな) is one of the two sets of syllable writing used in Japanese. Hiragana can be used alone to write every Japanese sentence, however it is hard to read then. Children books for children at pre-school age are written completely in Hiragana. Today's Japanese is written in a mixture of three writing systems, two of them being syllable sets, Hiragana (the squiggly letters), Katakana (the edgy ones) and Kanji (the small pictures with the many strokes). When looking at a Japanese word, the Kanji can give a hint about the original meaning or the concepts involved in the expression. Some go terms are written in Hiragana, since for some expressions the orginal Kanji are awkward or maybe even not known.

これ　は　ひらがな　です。 (this is hiragana)

See also:

• Japanese language: kanji and katakana
• Japanese Go terms