Hiragana characters of Japanese

Table of Hiragana

The following tables include all Hiragana characters.

As you can see, all Hiragana characters correspond to Japanese syllable.
All Japanese words and sentenses consist of only the syllables.
(Please read the page of Pronunciation of Japanese language.
The orange-colored and green-colored parts are the syllables that the pronunciation has been changed for a long time.)

Details of Hiragana

Additional two dots and small circle mark for Dakuon character

Each character in Dakuon group is made by adding two dots like double acute to the corresponding character in Seion group.

Only “h” row is unusual.

Phonetically, there is not voiced “h” consonant.

But “b” consonant corresponds to the voiced “h” in Japanese.
And original unvoiced consonant “p” is made by adding a sign of small circle to the character with “h” consonant.

Small characters

The languages using alphabet have upper-case and lower-case letters.
But Hiragana doesn't have such different letter set.

Instead, there are a few small characters for special function.

The syllable of “consonant + 'y' + vowel” is written as “character of 'i' column + small character of 'y' row”, as above.

For example,...
Tokyo = とうきょう
Kyushu = きゅうしゅう

And, small “tsu” character is used as the sign of pause pronunciation.

For example,...
Hokkaido = ほっかいどう
Sapporo = さっぽろ

Notation of long vowel

Long vowel is often changed to an easy and smooth long vowel in conversation.
Especially, the original syllables of the long vowels of "e" and "o" are mainly "ei" and "ou".

For example,...
Osaka = Ōsaka = Oosaka = おおさか
Kyoto = Kyōto = Kyouto = きょうと

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