Talk:Hiragana

Hiragana - The Women’s Language

When I first learned Japanese in the 1990’s, my Japanese For Professionals sensei (University of Washington) made sure we understood the history of each kana. It is no mistake that the first novel in the World written by Purple, a woman at court, is in hiragana. Or a millennium later, Banana Yoshimoto wrote her name in hiragana - starting s subtle yet vibrant movement. It is the language created and taken up by women of the imperial court in 700-1000 CE during the Heian Era. Buddhist monks from China who had come to teach esoteric worship in Kyoto and Nara, including to Quan Yin, the Buddha White Tara, thought it was near-criminal that women were not educated to read or write in Japan. They taught their short-hand, katakana to a few imperial ladies, who improvised and made the writing flow, thus hiragana. It did not stay for long at court, but spread where ever there was a feminine voice and hand. For hundreds of years. We should talk about this history in Wikipedia. References here: (1) A Guide to Reading The Tale of Genji © 2013 Bryan W. Van Norden (2) “Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, 2023, Vol. 22, No. 6, 3155-3159https://doi.org/10.1080/13467581.2023.2182634”

DrBeck007 (talk) 01:21, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Roman representation of kana

This article is a total mess, but the canonical way to represent a kana character is with the Hepburn romanisation. Currently we have the following:

• 5 singular vowels: あ /a/, い /i/, う /u/, え /e/, お /o/ (respectively pronounced [a], [i], [ɯ], [e] and [o])
• 42 consonant–vowel unions: for example き /ki/, て /te/, ほ /ho/, ゆ /ju/, わ /wa/ (respectively pronounced [ki], [te], [ho], [jɯ] and [wa])

These statements include that kana, the Hepburn within '/ /', and "pronounced..." the IPA inside '[ ]'. I think that slashes are one standard for indicating IPA, so the putting the Hepburn inside slashes is not helpful. But the word "pronounced" clearly implies that the second listing in square brackets is meant to be the IPA. Well, at least it was: so in particular ゆ was listed as "yu", pronounced IPA 'ju'. Now we have a claim that 'ju' is "pronounced" 'jɯ', whatever that is supposed to mean. Actually, since this article is entirely about part of the Japanese writing system, not its pronunciation, I do not see any need at all for IPA (except perhaps in isolated places) here. Imaginatorium (talk) 04:23, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Slashes denote phonemic representation in IPA, as explains International Phonetic Alphabet#Brackets and transcription delimiters, which is linked in the bottom of the infobox. If it is Hepburn then it shouldn't be in slashes. It's obvious the parts enclosed in slashes are phonemic transcriptions in IPA, or you wouldn't have "/N/". In fact the version you reverted to already contains "/ju/" and "/ji/". Mixing them and "/ye/" makes no sense. Nardog (talk) 05:15, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I think Imaginatorium is correct that those are supposed to be Hepburn. Like Nardog, I thought it was IPA because of the slashes, but upon rereading it it's clear that the first ones are meant to be Hepburn followed by the IPA pronunciations.

I suggest we italicize the Hepburn à la WP:WORDSASWORDS EvergreenFir (talk) 06:06, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

How would you explain /N/ then? In fact they were changed from n etc. to phonemic IPA by Maidodo here. I don't particularly have a preference as to which it should be but the intent is clearly phonemic IPA. Nardog (talk) 06:22, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

As well understood by Nardog, I added some of those slashes and the intent was to show the (abstract) phonemic representations of hiragana rather than the Modified Hepburn romanization because there is a lack of direct correspondance between Hepburn and hiragana (kana). But, I understand it may be confusing and this can be limited to the cases it makes more sense, such as /N/. The remark saying "since this article is entirely about part of the Japanese writing system, not its pronunciation" sounds reasonable. Maybe the (tentative) strict IPA representations in the table should be deleted. Maidodo (talk) 07:19, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry to be a long time getting back to this. I understand most of the points made; sure, I understand that anything within slashes should be some sort of pronunciation (IPA). But as I originally said: I think discussion of a writing system calls for something which identifies the written symbol, not its pronunciation. As in the yotsugana article, you could make a case for using kunreishiki, because of the conflation in Hepburn, but I think this is marginal, and as far as I know the only case where there is not a one-to-one correspondance. (Is this what you are referring to, Maidodo?) And since we have to be able to distinguish お and を, even in principle pronunciation is inadequate: I suggest that an adhoc notation is appropriate, such as "(w)o", if there are "WP:LEGAL" reasons we can't write 'wo'. OTOH, I might suggest か(ka) as a notation, but this conflicts with needing double parens for を((w)o). Anyway, please let's get rid of the "phonetic" reduplication, at least. Imaginatorium (talk) 11:46, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

IMO it should be on a case-by-case basis. "It has not been demonstrated whether the mora wu existed in old Japanese" would make little sense, as orthography reflects and represents phonology and not vice versa, and morae consist of phonemes, not graphemes. Nardog (talk) 04:32, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

append one learner resource to “External links” (COI)

I have a COI (affiliated with the site below), so I’m not editing the article directly.

Please change:

External links

• Hiragana unicode chart
• Hiragana table with strokes animations
• Practice Hiragana

sv:Kana (skriftsystem)#Hiragana

to:

External links

• Hiragana unicode chart
• Hiragana table with strokes animations
• Practice Hiragana
• Hiragana strokes and pronunciation practice (audio, 3D articulation, handwriting demos) — Avatalks

sv:Kana (skriftsystem)#Hiragana

Rationale (per WP:EL / WP:NOTPROMO): This is a neutral, non-promotional learner resource that complements existing stroke-order and practice links by adding synchronized audio, 3D mouth-shape guidance, and handwriting demos. It is free to use for basic practice (no signup required) and is not suitable for inclusion in the article body. Happy to reword, change placement, or omit if consensus is against inclusion. SilverQuill (talk) 14:37, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

Friendly follow-up on this request. Proposed single-line addition to External links:

• Hiragana writing (stroke order) and pronunciation tool (3D mouth-shape) — Avatalks

Rationale: useful, non-promotional learner resource; free, no sign-ups/ads; tightly relevant to hiragana. — SilverQuill (talk) 07:45, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

Not done: This feels slightly promotional when there's already a practice resource available. If there's any significant coverage/notable mentions of this you could add it to an education subsection but you'd also need to find other educational resources to go with it. Thanks, Encoded  Talk 💬 16:35, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! To address the concern about undue weight, I’ve prepared a revised suggestion: instead of adding a single site, I propose a small “Learner / educational resources” subsection under *External links*. This groups multiple free, non-commercial tools together (including JOSHU, Practice-Japanese, and Avatalks), so that Avatalks is presented neutrally alongside other established resources. Draft below for consideration:

== Proposal: Add a balanced "Learner / educational resources" subsection to External links ==

• [JOSHU — Japanese Online Self-Help Utility](https://laits.utexas.edu/japanese/joshu/kana/hiragana.php) – interactive hiragana chart with stroke order animations, audio, handwriting practice, and quizzes (University of Texas at Austin; free to use).
• [Practice-Japanese.com](https://practice-japanese.com/) – free interactive hiragana learning tools, including stroke orders, audio pronunciation, and quizzes.
• [Avatalks Hiragana Tool](https://avatalks.com/tools/character/character-character-ja?studyingLanguage=ja) – hiragana writing (stroke order) and pronunciation tool with synchronized audio and 3-D mouth-shape guidance (free, no signup).

— SilverQuill (talk) 12:24, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

'Spelling - phonology correspondence'

A lot of the stuff in that section is really about the phonetic realisation of phonemes (and in rather fine phonetic detail, too), not about which graphemes correspond to which phonemes. As such, I would say that it belongs in the article on Japanese phonology, not here. Anonymous44 (talk) 12:39, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

I very much agree. There is huge confusion, since both Hepburn and IPA are shown, but not identified. (AFAICS every romanisation except Japanese identifies the system, so this should say "Hepburn"; "romaji" is just false erudition.) I suggest all the pronunciation should be removed. Please also see my comments above. Imaginatorium (talk) 16:30, 28 February 2026 (UTC)