The modern HIRAGANA syllabary consists of 46 base characters.
It is mainly used for:
- Okurigana - kana suffixes following a kanji root, for example to inflect verbs and adjectives.
- Particles
- Native words for which there are no kanji or whose kanji form is too formal for the writing purpose
- Furigana - a reading aid that shows the pronunciation of kanji characters.
