Kana

:For other meanings of Kana, see Kana (disambiguation).

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Kana is a general term for the syllabic Japanese scripts hiragana (????) and katakana (????). These were developed as an alternative and adjunct to ideograph based characters of Chinese origin, or Kanji (??).

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Today katakana is most commonly used to write words of foreign origin that do not have a kanji representation. For example, "George W. Bush" can be expressed as ?????W.?????. Katakana is also used for sound effects, biological terms, and some corporate branding.

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Hiragana is mostly used to indicate grammatical aspects of the language. It is also used to represent an entire word (usually of Japanese, rather than Chinese origin) in place of kanji.

Japanese: When used as an adjective, Japanese refers to anything that originates from Japan. It may refer to more than one article:...

Hiragana: Hiragana (??? literally "smooth kana") are a Japanese syllabary, one of four Japanese writing systems (the others are katakana, kanji and rōmaji)....

Katakana: Katakana (片仮名) are a Japanese syllabary, one of the four Japanese writing systems. The others are hiragana, kanji and rōmaji. The word katakana means "partial kana"....