Meaning – The term hiragana refers to the style of writing in the Japanese language. Along with Katakana, it forms the two common Japanese phonetic alphabets.
Computers today feature keyboards that support the hiragana and katakana formats of typing, making it very easy for Japanese users and other Japanese Language enthusiasts to communicate in Japanese with friends and clients.
In hiragana, each character is represented by 1 byte.
Most computers from the ’80s displayed Japanese text entirely in katakana due to technical limitations. They were not capable of storing a large number of kanji characters or converting input to kanji.
Modern operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, and OS X, have full Japanese support and can display hiragana, katakana, and kanji. The three scripts can be combined to reflect standard Japanese spelling.
Example of usage – “In order to input Japanese text in any of the three operating systems, you need to make sure that you have a Japanese IME activated that allows romaji input.”
