Japanese writing employs kanji (Chinese ideographs) and two sets of phonetic kana (katakana and hiragana). Manyo-gana, the original Japanese phonetic writing system, borrowed kanji for their phonetic values. (For example, the kanji呂was used when the sound “ro” was to be written, with no regard for the meaning that呂carried.) Katakana writing, in which only one part of a kanji was used to represent a sound, evolved from manyo-gana, which has fallen out of use. (In katakana, the sound “ro” is written like this：ロ.) This rather angular katakana system is used today to write words of foreign origin, onomatopoetic words and mimetic words. Hiragana, on the other hand, developed from the flowing, cursive style of writing kanji. (The hiragana version of “ro” isろ.) It evolved during the Heian period and was then used mostly by women in writing letters and poems. Today hiragana is mixed with kanji in everyday Japanese writing, where it normally appears far more often than katakana. Each of the two modern kana systems has 48 letters：47 syllabic letters plus one more for the consonant “n.” 意訳：日本語の表記には，表語文字の漢字，表音文字の仮名がある．仮名には片仮名と平仮名がある．仮名は，漢字本来の意味とは無関係に日本語の発音を表した万葉仮名（例えば，[ro]の音には漢字の「呂」などが用いられた から発展したものである．片仮名は漢字の一部（[ro]の片仮名は「呂」の一部「ロ」）を取って作られ，現在は外来語や擬声語・擬態語を表記するのに用いる．一方，平仮名は平安時代，主として女性が歌をよんだり，手紙を書いたりすることから発展した漢字の草書体に由来する（[ro]の平仮名は「呂」の草書体から「ろ」）．今日漢字以外の語に広く用いられ，漢字とともに日本語表記の中心である．仮名は，片仮名，平仮名とも47文字に[n]（「ン」，「ん」）を加えた48文字である）
