Syllabaries

A syllabary is a phonetic writing system consisting of symbols representing syllables. A syllable is often made up of a consonant plus a vowel or a single vowel.

The illustration on the right shows a selection of symbols from Japanese Hiragana, and Inuktitut. In Hiragana each syllable is represented by a separate symbol. In Inuktitut the orientation of the symbols is used indicate different vowels, and the small symbol is used to write syllable final consonants, as in Inuktitut.