Home Mail SiteMap

Hiragana Syllabus

In each column the rōmaji appears on the left, the hiragana symbols in the middle and the kanji from which they developed on the right. There is some dispute about which kanji the hiragana developed from.



All Hiragana characters end with one of these vowels, with the exception of [ n ]. The only "consanent" that does not resemble that of English is the Japanese "r". It is slightly "rolled" as if it were a combination of a "d", "r", and "l".

The symbols for 'wi' and 'we' were made obsolete by the Japanese Minsitry of Education in 1946 as part of its language reforms. The symbols 'ha', 'he' and 'wo' are pronounced 'wa', 'e' and 'o' respectively when used as grammatical particles.

Additional sounds are represented using diacritics or combinations of syllables: