In the
Japanese writing system
The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalised Japanese wo ...
are
ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
s in the
kana
The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most pr ...
writing system, both
hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...
and
katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
.
Kana such as and are not kana ligatures, but polysyllabic kana.
Hardly any kana ligatures or polysyllabic kana are represented in standard character encodings.
History
![「より」の例](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/%E3%80%8C%E3%82%88%E3%82%8A%E3%80%8D%E3%81%AE%E4%BE%8B.jpg)
These characters were widely used until a spelling reform of 1900 decreed that each sound (
mora
Mora may refer to:
People
* Mora (surname)
Places Sweden
* Mora, Säter, Sweden
* Mora, Sweden, the seat of Mora Municipality
* Mora Municipality, Sweden
United States
* Mora, Louisiana, an unincorporated community
* Mora, Minnesota, a city
* M ...
) would be represented by one (kana) character. They were not represented in computer character encodings until
JIS X 0213
JIS X 0213 is a Japanese Industrial Standard defining coded character sets for encoding the characters used in Japan. This standard extends JIS X 0208. The first version was published in 2000 and revised in 2004 (JIS2004) and 2012. As well as a ...
:2000 (JIS2000) added ''yori'' and ''koto''.
List
Hiragana ligature
Polysyllabic hiragana
Katakana ligature
Polysyllabic katakana
In Unicode
See also
*
Yori (kana)
, read as ''yori'', is a kana ligature – a typographic ligature in the Japanese language – consisting of a combination of the hiragana graphs of (/yo/ ) and (/ri/ ), and thus represents their combined sound, より (/yori/ ) ''"from"''. It is ...
References
{{Reflist
Kana
Typographic ligatures