30.3.13

The Gojūon: A Kind Samurai Told Naomi How My Yak Ran Wild.


Gojūon ordering
(hiragana)

a i u e o
K
S
T
N
H
M
Y

R
W
Additional kana

The gojūon (五十音 lit. Fifty Sounds?) is a Japanese ordering of kana  (A Japanese syllabary), named for the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed.

Each kana, which may be a hiragana or katakana character, corresponds to one sound in the Japanese language. As depicted at the right using hiragana characters, the sequence begins with あ (a), い (i), う (u), え (e), お (o), then continues with か (ka), き (ki), く (ku), け (ke), こ (ko), and so on for a total of ten rows of five.

In order to remember the gojūon, various mnemonics have been devised. For example,
A Kind Samurai Told Naomi How My Yak Ran Wild.
The first letters in this phrase give the ordering of the non-voiced initial sounds.
For vowel ordering, the vowel sounds in the following English phrase may be used as a mnemonic:
Ah, we soon get old.
The vowel sounds in the English words approximate the Japanese vowels: a, i, u, e, o.
One can also use
HAIL UNESCO
to remember the order of the vowels.

Kana are syllabic Japanese scripts, a part of the Japanese writing system contrasted with the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji (漢字). There are three kana scripts: modern cursive hiragana (ひらがな), modern angular katakana (カタカナ), and the old syllabic use of kanji known as man’yōgana (万葉仮名) that was ancestral to both.

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