The Hiragana alphabet consists of 46 basic characters, making it one of the foundational scripts of the Japanese writing system. Developed around the 9th century, Hiragana is a phonetic script used for native Japanese words, grammatical elements, and words without Kanji equivalents. Unlike Kanji, Hiragana characters represent sounds rather than meanings.
The alphabet includes characters like あ (A), か (Ka), さ (Sa), and た (Ta). Hiragana is often the first script learned by Japanese children and is essential for reading and writing in Japanese. It is also used alongside Katakana and Kanji in modern Japanese texts.
The Hiragana script consists of 104 letters in total, broken down into 46 basic characters, 25 dakuten and handakuten characters, and 33 contracted sounds (yōon).
While Hiragana does not have its own unique numeric system, it can be used to phonetically write native Japanese number words. However, numbers in Japanese are typically written using Kanji (Chinese characters) or Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.). Additionally, Hiragana includes a few special characters for specific purposes.