Script - Hiragana
Hiragana is a phonetic script used primarily in modern Japanese for native words, grammatical particles, and verb endings, often paired with kanji and katakana. As a script value in character encoding standards, it encompasses the syllabic characters ranging from basic vowels like あ (a) to combined forms such as きゃ (kya), alongside historical or rare variants like ゐ (wi) and ゑ (we). This value also includes the diacritical marks ゛ (dakuten) and ゜ (handakuten) as separate codepoints, even though they visually attach to base kana. The characters are encoded in a continuous block, with the supplementary phonetic extensions for older or less common sounds placed in a separate range. This script value helps software identify and render text correctly, enabling features like font selection, text shaping, and language-specific sorting, while distinguishing Hiragana from other Japanese scripts like Katakana or Latin-based romaji.