の, in

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 ノ, in

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 ...

, are Japanese

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 ...

, both representing one

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 ...

. In the ''

gojūon In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the ...

'' system of

ordering Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...

of Japanese syllables, it occupies the 25th position, between ね (ne) and は (ha). It occupies the 26th position in the

iroha The is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian period (794–1179). The f ...

ordering. Both represent the sound . It is highly similar in form to the

Kangxi radical The 214 Kangxi radicals (), also known as the Zihui radicals, form a system of radicals () of Chinese characters. The radicals are numbered in stroke count order. They are the most popular system of radicals for dictionaries that order Traditi ...

radical 4 Radical 4 or radical slash () meaning "slash" or "bend" is one of 6 of the 214 Kangxi radicals that are composed of only one stroke. In the ''Kangxi Dictionary'', there are 33 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical. It is ...

Stroke order

To write の, begin slightly above the center, stroke downward diagonally, then upward, and then curve around as indicated by the arrows. ノ-bw

To write ノ, simply do a swooping curve from top-right to bottom left.

Other communicative representations

* Full Braille representation * Computer encodings

History

Like every other hiragana, the hiragana の developed from

man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this ...

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

used for phonetic purposes, written in the highly cursive, flowing ''

grass script Cursive script (; , ''sōshotai''; , ''choseo''; ), often mistranslated as grass script, is a script style used in Chinese and East Asian calligraphy. It is an umbrella term for the cursive variants of the clerical script and the regular scri ...

'' style. In the picture on the left, the top shows the kanji written in the

kaisho Regular script (; Hepburn: ''kaisho''), also called (), (''zhēnshū''), (''kǎitǐ'') and (''zhèngshū''), is the newest of the Chinese script styles (popularized from the Cao Wei dynasty c. 200 AD and maturing stylistically around the ...

style, and the centre image is the same kanji written in the

sōsho Cursive script (; , ''sōshotai''; , ''choseo''; ), often mistranslated as grass script, is a script style used in Chinese and East Asian calligraphy. It is an umbrella term for the cursive variants of the clerical script and the regular s ...

style. The bottom part is the kana for "no", a further abbreviation.

Hentaigana In the Japanese writing system, are variant forms of hiragana. History Today, with few exceptions, there is only one hiragana for each of the forty-five moras that are written without diacritics or digraphs. However, traditionally the ...

and

gyaru-moji or is a style of obfuscated (cant) Japanese writing popular amongst urban Japanese youth. As the name suggests ( meaning "gal"), this writing system was created by and remains primarily employed by young women. Like the English phenomenon o ...

variant kana forms of ''no'' can also be found.

Usage

の is a

dental nasal The voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ...

consonant, articulated on the upper teeth, combined with a close-mid back rounded vowel to form one mora. In the Japanese language, as well as forming words, の may be a

particle In the Outline of physical science, physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small wikt:local, localized physical body, object which can be described by several physical property, physical or chemical property, chemical ...

showing possession. For example, the phrase "わたしのでんわ” ''watashi no denwa'' means "my telephone."

In China

の has also proliferated on signs and labels in the

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

-speaking world, especially in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

because of its historical connections with Japan. It is used in place of the

Modern Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standar ...

possessive marker 的 ''de'' or

Classical Chinese Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...

possessive marker 之 ''zhī'', and の is pronounced in the same way as the Chinese character it replaces. This is usually done to "stand out" or to give an "exotic/Japanese feel", e.g. in commercial brand names, such as the fruit juice brand 鲜の每日C, where the の can be read as both 之 ''zhī'', the possessive marker, and as 汁 ''zhī'', meaning "juice". In Hong Kong, the Companies Registry has extended official recognition to this practice, and permits の to be used in Chinese names of registered businesses; it is thus the only non-Chinese symbol to be granted this treatment (aside from punctuation marks with no pronunciation value).Business' Required to be Registered and Application for Business Registration: Business Name"

Inland Revenue Department (Hong Kong) The Inland Revenue Department (IRD) is the Hong Kong government department responsible for collecting taxes and duties. History The Inland Revenue Department was established on 1 April 1947. Initially it administered only one piece of legisla ...

References

External links

Information on ''kana-no'' from ''Nuthatch Graphics''
{{DEFAULTSORT:No (Kana) Specific kana