Japanese writing system

The modern Japanese writing system (日本語の表記体系, Nihongo no hyōki taikei) uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters; and phonographic kana, which evolved from cursives/components of Chinese characters. Modern kana consists of two sets of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign names, loanwords (gairaigo), onomatopoeia, scientific terminology and sometimes for emphasis. A third set, hentaigana, are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana, and are still sometimes used for stylistic purposes.

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