に, 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 ...
, or ニ 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 f ...
, is one of the 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 p ...
, which each represent one
mora. The hiragana is written in three strokes, while the katakana in two. Both represent although for
phonological reasons, the actual pronunciation is .
Notably, the katakana (ニ) is functionally identical to the kanji for two (二), pronounced the same way, and written similarly.
に is used as a
particle
In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass.
They vary greatly in size or quantity, from ...
, with a similar function to the English "to", "in", "at", or "by":
Stroke order
The hiragana に is made with three
strokes:
#A vertical stroke from top to bottom.
#A short, horizontal stroke to the upper right of the first stroke, going from left to right.
#Another short, horizontal stroke at the bottom right of the first stroke, going from left to right.
The katakana ニ is made with two strokes:
# At the top, a horizontal stroke from left to right.
# Another, longer horizontal stroke under the first stroke
Other communicative representations
* Full Braille representation
*
Computer encodings
See also
*
Japanese grammar
Japanese is an agglutinative, synthetic, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with p ...
References
Handbook of Japanese Grammar - Masahiro Tanimori (Tuttle 1994)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ni (Kana)
Specific kana