House Special of the Week: Hiragana

As fellow anime viewers or manga readers, these characters would appear to be familiar, even so know how to read these.

Hiragana 平仮名, ひらがな or ヒラガナ is part of the Japanese syllabary, along with katana, kanji and romaji. This is a writing system based on syllables that were developed around the 9th century. As compared to the angular katakana, hiragana is much more cursive in style.

Hiragana is composed of 46 characters which originally came from kanji characters but where simplified over time. When looking at a Japanese text, one can clearly distinguish the two kinds of signs: the complicated kanji and the simpler kana signs.

Among the syllables are the five vowels (a i u e o). The rest are syllables combined by one of these vowels with a consonant (ka ki ku ke ko ra ri ru re ro...). One exception is the n.

In addition, most syllables can be slightly changed by adding two small strokes or a small circle in the top right corner next to the character. For example, ha changes to ba with the addition of two small strokes, or to pa with the addition of a small circle.

Even though the whole Japanese language can be written in hiragana, it's main purpose are for grammatical endings of verbs, nouns, and adjectives, as well as for particles, and several other original Japanese words.

For children, hiragana is the first writing system that learn. Most books for children are written in hiragana.

Here are example common Japanese words in hiragana:

はじめまして。
Hajimashite
How do you do?

すみません。
Sumimasen
I am sorry, excuse me

はる
haru
spring

ふゆ
fuyu
winter

しろ
shiro
white

みどり
midori
green

みなみ
minami
south

Sources:
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2047.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana