kana

Etymology

Borrowed from Japanese 仮名(かな) (kana, “phonetic character”, literally “borrowed character”, from the way that kana were originally Chinese characters "borrowed" for their phonetic values).

noun

  1. The hiragana and katakana syllabaries. These are made up of characters that represent individual syllables, which are are used to write Japanese words and particles. Kana are derived from kanji.
  2. A hiragana or katakana character.

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