{
  "id": "gojuon",
  "title": "Gojūon",
  "lang": "en",
  "source_lang": "en",
  "summary": "Gojūon is the conventional arrangement of Japanese kana into a vowel-and-consonant grid that also provides their standard ordering.",
  "category": "language",
  "subcategory": "",
  "type": "concept",
  "aliases": [
    "Gojuon",
    "Fifty-sound table",
    "A-i-u-e-o order"
  ],
  "generated_at": "2026-10-14",
  "model": "gpt-6.1-sol",
  "url": "https://aiwiki.page/en/gojuon/",
  "translations": {
    "zh-Hans": {
      "url": "https://aiwiki.page/zh/gojuon/",
      "json": "https://aiwiki.page/zh/gojuon.json"
    }
  },
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "",
      "text": "Gojūon (五十音, literally “fifty sounds”) is the conventional arrangement of the basic kana of the Japanese language according to their vowel and consonant relationships. It is commonly presented as a chart, the gojūonzu, with corresponding hiragana and katakana forms. The name refers to an organizing framework, not to an inventory of exactly fifty distinct modern sounds or characters. (kotoba.ninjal.ac.jp)"
    },
    {
      "heading": "Structure and basic chart",
      "text": "The chart combines five vowel positions, ordered a, i, u, e, o, with ten series conventionally labeled a, k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, w. A consonant series is called a gyō (行), while a vowel division is a dan (段). Charts may be printed in different orientations without changing these relationships. (kotoba.ninjal.ac.jp)\n\nThe following table presents the modern basic characters. Each entry gives hiragana, katakana, and a common romanization; a dash indicates an unfilled position in the modern chart. (erin.jpf.go.jp)\n\nSeries | a | i | u | e | o\na | あ ア — a | い イ — i | う ウ — u | え エ — e | お オ — o\nk | か カ — ka | き キ — ki | く ク — ku | け ケ — ke | こ コ — ko\ns | さ サ — sa | し シ — shi | す ス — su | せ セ — se | そ ソ — so\nt | た タ — ta | ち チ — chi | つ ツ — tsu | て テ — te | と ト — to\nn | な ナ — na | に ニ — ni | ぬ ヌ — nu | ね ネ — ne | の ノ — no\nh | は ハ — ha | ひ ヒ — hi | ふ フ — fu | へ ヘ — he | ほ ホ — ho\nm | ま マ — ma | み ミ — mi | む ム — mu | め メ — me | も モ — mo\ny | や ヤ — ya | — | ゆ ユ — yu | — | よ ヨ — yo\nr | ら ラ — ra | り リ — ri | る ル — ru | れ レ — re | ろ ロ — ro\nw | わ ワ — wa | — | — | — | を ヲ — o, conventionally wo\n\nThe character ん / ン, commonly romanized n, is normally placed after these series rather than within one of the five vowel divisions. Modern elementary charts therefore contain 46 basic characters in each script, including ん / ン. The corresponding hiragana and katakana represent equivalent sounds, not two separate sound inventories. (classroomresources.sydney.jpf.go.jp)"
    },
    {
      "heading": "Why “fifty” does not mean fifty characters",
      "text": "The traditional grid has fifty positions, but some positions are empty or duplicate sounds represented elsewhere. Historical charts also contain kana no longer included in the ordinary modern basic set. Consequently, the chart’s theoretical positions, its written symbols, and the distinct sounds of a particular historical period must not be counted as identical things. The addition of ん to educational charts became established from the Meiji period onward. (kotoba.ninjal.ac.jp)"
    },
    {
      "heading": "Modified sounds and combinations",
      "text": "The basic chart is a starting point rather than a complete account of Japanese orthography. Additional forms are constructed with marks or combinations of characters:\n\n- Dakuten (゛) marks voiced forms, as in か ka → が ga.\n- Handakuten (゜) produces the p-series from the h-series, as in は ha → ぱ pa.\n- Small ゃ, ゅ, and ょ combine with other kana in forms such as きゃ kya, しゅ shu, and ちょ cho. These combinations are conventionally called yōon. (unicode.org)\n\nExpanded teaching charts often place these forms beside the basic grid. Their inclusion does not alter the underlying ten-series, five-vowel organization. (kotoba.ninjal.ac.jp)"
    },
    {
      "heading": "Historical development",
      "text": "The arrangement developed through medieval Japanese sound scholarship, influenced by Chinese phonetic analysis and Buddhist study of Sanskrit and its scripts. Its vowel order reflects the Sanskrit scholarly tradition; early consonant-series orders were less uniform. Charts are thought to have emerged around the tenth and eleventh centuries, before the later name gojūonzu. (kotoba.ninjal.ac.jp)\n\nEarly surviving examples occur in Buddhist pronunciation commentaries. An early-eleventh-century chart associated with the Konkōmyō saishōōkyō ongi has a complete set of series and the modern vowel order. The term gojūonzu is first attested in Keichū’s Waji shōranshō of 1693. The medieval framework was thus older than its familiar name and subsequent classroom use. (kotoba.ninjal.ac.jp)"
    },
    {
      "heading": "Ordering and digital collation",
      "text": "The sequence derived from the chart is called gojūon order. Its basic progression is a, i, u, e, o; ka, ki, ku, ke, ko; sa, shi, su, se, so, continuing through the remaining series and ending with n. Educational resources use this sequence to organize kana learning. (erin.jpf.go.jp)\n\nIn digital text, Japanese collation requires more than comparing character numbers. Sorting may distinguish base kana, voicing marks, script forms, and other features at different comparison levels. Unicode collation also accommodates context-sensitive treatment of length and repetition marks. (unicode.org)\n\nWords containing kanji require an additional distinction between written form and reading. A kanji’s intended Japanese reading cannot reliably be inferred from its character code alone. Databases commonly store readings in a separate field and construct reading-based sort keys from that information; gojūon ordering therefore depends on the selected reading, not simply on the visible kanji. (unicode.org)"
    }
  ],
  "links": [
    "japanese-language",
    "orthography",
    "sanskrit",
    "unicode",
    "chinese-characters"
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "「五十音」の数はどうして五十ではないのですか",
      "url": "https://kotoba.ninjal.ac.jp/qa/yokuaru/qa-179/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Hiragana & Katakana A-I-U-E-O Chart",
      "url": "https://www.erin.jpf.go.jp/en/extra/syllabary/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Hiragana & Katakana A-I-U-E-O Chart with Rōmaji",
      "url": "https://www.erin.jpf.go.jp/materials/extra/syllabary/download/erin_aiueo_romaji.pdf"
    },
    {
      "title": "Hiragana Katakana Game",
      "url": "https://classroomresources.sydney.jpf.go.jp/resources/hiragana-katakana-game/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Chapter 18 – Unicode 16.0.0",
      "url": "https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode16.0.0/core-spec/chapter-18/"
    },
    {
      "title": "FAQ - Collation",
      "url": "https://www.unicode.org/faq/collation.html"
    }
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}