The core idea: melt the whole kanji, or cut off a piece
Each kana is a kanji that stopped meaning anything. Writers chose kanji for sound alone, then made them faster in one of two ways. Written quickly with a brush, the whole character flowed into a simpler shape: that is hiragana. Taken apart, one small piece of the character stood in for all of it: that is katakana.
The names record this. Hiragana (平仮名) is literally plain kana, the smooth everyday script. Katakana (片仮名) is literally partial kana, from kata, one side or a fragment. And kana itself (仮名) means borrowed letters, as opposed to mana, true letters, the old word for kanji used with their meaning. A teacher introducing the idea to a class might put it like this.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ひらがなは漢字をくずして作りました。 | Hiragana wa kanji o kuzushite tsukurimashita. | Hiragana was made by writing kanji in cursive. |
| カタカナは漢字の一部から作りました。 | Katakana wa kanji no ichibu kara tsukurimashita. | Katakana was made from parts of kanji. |
| 「あ」は「安」から来ています。 | A wa an kara kite imasu. | A comes from the kanji an. |
| 意味ではなく、音だけを使いました。 | Imi de wa naku, oto dake o tsukaimashita. | They used only the sound, not the meaning. |
| 「か」の左側に「力」が見えますね。 | Ka no hidarigawa ni chikara ga miemasu ne. | You can see the kanji for power on the left of ka. |
Before kana: man'yōgana, kanji borrowed for sound
Japanese had no writing of its own when Chinese characters arrived, so writers borrowed them. For names, poems and the endings of words, they used kanji purely as sound signs: 安 for a, 加 for ka, 奈 for na, ignoring what the characters meant. This is man'yōgana (万葉仮名), named after the Man'yōshū, an eighth-century anthology of poems written this way. Man'yōshū is literally the collection of ten thousand leaves.
It was slow: a three-syllable word took three full kanji, readers had to guess which kanji stood for sound and which for meaning, and each sound had several possible kanji. Faster signs were bound to appear, and they did, in two places at once.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 昔は漢字だけで日本語を書いていました。 | Mukashi wa kanji dake de Nihongo o kaite imashita. | Long ago, Japanese was written only in kanji. |
| 万葉仮名は音を表す漢字です。 | Man'yōgana wa oto o arawasu kanji desu. | Man'yōgana are kanji that represent sounds. |
| 一つの音に、いろいろな漢字が使われました。 | Hitotsu no oto ni, iroiro na kanji ga tsukawaremashita. | Many different kanji were used for a single sound. |
Hiragana: the whole kanji written in cursive
Man'yōgana written in a fast, flowing brush style were called sōgana, literally grass kana, after the cursive grass script. By the ninth and tenth centuries they no longer looked like kanji, and hiragana was in everyday use for poems, letters and diaries. It was also called onnade, literally the women's hand, because court women wrote so much in it, though men used it too.
In the diagram, look at 加 and か: the left part 力 is still visible in the first two strokes of か, and the box on the right has shrunk to a single dot-like stroke. 太 and た keep the cross at the top.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 「た」の形は「太い」の「太」に似ていますね。 | Ta no katachi wa futoi no ta ni nite imasu ne. | The shape of ta looks like the ta in futoi, thick, doesn't it. |
| 筆で速く書くと、形が変わります。 | Fude de hayaku kaku to, katachi ga kawarimasu. | When you write fast with a brush, the shape changes. |
| 平安時代にひらがなが広まりました。 | Heian jidai ni hiragana ga hiromarimashita. | Hiragana spread in the Heian period. |
Katakana: one piece cut from the kanji
Katakana began in the early ninth century among Buddhist scholar monks in Nara. Reading Chinese texts, they wrote small marks between the lines to show Japanese readings and endings. With no room for whole kanji, they wrote one part, and those angular fragments became katakana.
In the diagram the pink box shows the part that was kept. The positions have names you will meet when you learn kanji: hen, the left side; tsukuri, the right side; kanmuri, the crown on top. ア is the hen of 阿, ウ the kanmuri of 宇, エ the tsukuri of 江, and タ the top of 多.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 「ア」は「阿」の左側です。 | A wa a no hidarigawa desu. | Katakana a is the left side of the kanji a. |
| お坊さんが読み方のメモに使いました。 | Obōsan ga yomikata no memo ni tsukaimashita. | Monks used it to note down readings. |
| 狭いところに小さく書きました。 | Semai tokoro ni chiisaku kakimashita. | They wrote small in narrow spaces. |
Same parent or different parents
Hiragana and katakana for the same sound were made separately, so sometimes they share a parent and sometimes they do not. A shared parent explains a family likeness; different parents explain why あ and ア have nothing in common. Classmates comparing the two charts notice this quickly.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 元の漢字が同じだと、形も似ています。 | Moto no kanji ga onaji da to, katachi mo nite imasu. | When the source kanji is the same, the shapes look alike too. |
| ひらがなとカタカナで、元の漢字が違うこともあります。 | Hiragana to katakana de, moto no kanji ga chigau koto mo arimasu. | Sometimes hiragana and katakana come from different kanji. |
| Pair | Reading | Parent kanji | Why they look the way they do |
|---|---|---|---|
| か カ | ka | 加 for both | The whole in cursive versus its left part 力 |
| き キ | ki | 幾 for both | Both are simplified cursive forms, so they nearly match |
| り リ | ri | 利 for both | The right side 刂 survives in both |
| も モ | mo | 毛 for both | The whole in cursive versus the lower part |
| あ ア | a | 安 and 阿 | Different parents, so no likeness |
| た タ | ta | 太 and 多 | Different parents; タ is the top of 多 |
| は ハ | ha | 波 and 八 | Different parents; ハ is the kanji for eight |
| る ル | ru | 留 and 流 | Different parents; ル is the lower right of 流 |
Other same-parent pairs include う and ウ from 宇, お and オ from 於, せ and セ from 世, and や and ヤ from 也.
Beyond the basics: katakana that look like kanji
Cut a piece from a kanji and the piece is often a kanji itself. カ is identical in shape to 力, chikara, power, because it is the 力 inside 加. タ matches 夕, yū, evening. エ matches 工, kō, craft. ロ matches 口, kuchi, mouth, taken from 呂. ニ and ハ are simply 二 and 八, two and eight. The radical 宀 is even called u-kanmuri, the u crown, after ウ.
Context separates them: katakana appear among katakana, as in karē, kanji among kanji. オ and 才, the kanji for talent or years of age, look alike but are unrelated: オ comes from the left side of 於. A student puzzling over a menu might ask:
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| これはカタカナのカですか、漢字の力ですか。 | Kore wa katakana no ka desu ka, kanji no chikara desu ka. | Is this katakana ka or the kanji for power? |
| カレーのカはカタカナです。 | Karē no ka wa katakana desu. | The ka in karē is katakana. |
| 「口」は漢字で、「ロ」はカタカナです。 | Kuchi wa kanji de, ro wa katakana desu. | Kuchi is a kanji and ro is katakana. |
| 「二十」の二は漢字ですね。 | Nijū no ni wa kanji desu ne. | The ni in nijū, twenty, is the kanji, isn't it. |
| ウ冠はカタカナのウに似ています。 | U-kanmuri wa katakana no u ni nite imasu. | The u-crown radical looks like katakana u. |
Beyond the basics: one sound, many shapes until 1900
For most of their history, each hiragana sound had several shapes, because different parent kanji had been in use. In 1900 the rules for primary schools fixed one shape per sound, and the rest became hentaigana (変体仮名), literally variant-form kana. They survive on old-fashioned signs: many soba shops write kisoba with a そ from 楚 and a ば from 者.
Two standard kana were dropped later. ゐ, wi, from 為, and ゑ, we, from 恵, left everyday spelling with the modern kana rules of 1946, surviving in a few names. A friend in a traditional street might point one out.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| あの看板の字は変体仮名です。 | Ano kanban no ji wa hentaigana desu. | The letters on that sign are variant kana. |
| 「そば」と書いてあります。 | Soba to kaite arimasu. | It says soba. |
| 今はほとんど使いません。 | Ima wa hotondo tsukaimasen. | They are hardly used now. |
Using origins with look-alike kana
The origins help with some confusable kana and not with others, and it is worth knowing which. Drills for telling pairs apart belong to a separate guide on look-alike kana; here is what the parent kanji add, starting with a pair a teacher might describe like this.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 「ぬ」は「め」より丸が一つ多いです。 | Nu wa me yori maru ga hitotsu ōi desu. | Nu has one more loop than me. |
- め and ぬ: め is the cursive of 女. ぬ is the cursive of 奴, which is 女 with 又 beside it, and ぬ ends in an extra loop. A bigger kanji left a longer shape.
- ソ and ン: ソ is the top of 曽, two strokes falling from above like the two dots on that kanji. The origin of ン is disputed, so learn it as the one that is not ソ.
- わ, れ and ね: from 和, 礼 and 祢. They begin alike because the left sides of their parents were similar, and end differently because the right sides were different.
- シ and ツ: シ comes from 之, but the origin of ツ is disputed. Here the parents do not help; stroke direction does.
- る and ろ: from 留 and 呂. The loop at the end of る is not visible in any obvious way in its parent, so treat it as a shape to learn, not an origin story.
Common mistakes about where kana came from
Thinking a kana keeps its kanji's meaning. あ comes from 安, peaceful or cheap, but the kanji were chosen for sound only; kana have no meaning.
Assuming both scripts share a parent. Seeing か and カ, learners expect the same everywhere, then are puzzled by あ and ア. Check the pair: often the parents differ.
Reading katakana as kanji. カ read as chikara or ロ as kuchi in the middle of a katakana word happens because the shapes are identical. Look at the neighbours: a katakana among katakana is katakana.
Confusing kana with simplified Chinese, since both simplify characters. Kana were formed in Japan over a thousand years ago and stand for sounds; simplified Chinese dates from the twentieth century and keeps meaning.
Learning origins before the kana. The stories double the shapes to hold. Learn the kana first, then use origins for the few that refuse to stick.