BRBT ILD r~y b Japanese AlphabetJAPANESE ALPHABET BP DA STKY BT Lif &4 LY GF [z= DI<7FA OY BR ALIST tt C7 tar BA CAEV EROS In modern Japanese, the hiragana and katakana syllabaries each contain 46 basic characters, or 71 including diacritics. 2[LV EV VE AS S7 oA AW OH [Ech SE At first, hiragana was scorned by literate men as Chinese was the “cultu- red” language. Women, on the other hand, use hiragana primarily since they were not allowed to learn the Chinese characters. This culminated in the Tale of Genji, the world’s first novel written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu during the Heian era (795-1192). However, this der-based segregation of literacy eventually dissolved and hiragana w. literary sc became an accep pr 57 pT - OY @# iba SIL Ay _ nl ar t£5 40 a The second 1ese syllabary katakana, which has its oria pronunciation aid for Chine scriptures. Over time it came to be used to write grammatical suffixes, particles and postpositions, while kanji mained the original form, or root, of the word. In modern times, katakana has come to be used to write non-Chi- e loan words. ss called