The Hiragana ↔ Katakana converter transforms Japanese kana between the two phonetic scripts. Hiragana (ひらがな) and katakana (カタカナ) represent the same sounds but are used in different contexts: hiragana for native words and grammar, katakana for loanwords, names and emphasis. This tool converts in either direction instantly and leaves kanji and other characters untouched.
Why convert between scripts?
The two scripts share an identical phonetic inventory — every sound expressible in hiragana exists in katakana, and vice versa. But Japanese convention dictates which script to use in each situation. Some common reasons to convert:
- Katakana → Hiragana: Normalising mixed input for a search index or text-processing pipeline; converting katakana loanwords to hiragana for furigana rendering engines; preparing kana for a pronunciation guide that uses only hiragana.
- Hiragana → Katakana: Formatting a foreign name or loanword that your source text mistakenly wrote in hiragana; emphasising a word that convention marks in katakana; converting hiragana input to katakana for a part-number or product-code field.
How the conversion works
In Unicode the main hiragana characters sit in the range U+3041–U+3096 and the matching katakana characters sit in U+30A1–U+30F6. Because the two blocks were designed to mirror each other, every corresponding kana pair — for example あ (U+3042) and ア (U+30A2) — is separated by a constant offset of 0x60 (96 in decimal). Converting any kana is therefore a single arithmetic operation: add 0x60 for hiragana→katakana, subtract 0x60 for the reverse. Characters outside either kana range — kanji, Latin letters, digits, punctuation, spaces — are copied through unchanged.
What is handled and what is not
| Element | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Standard kana (a–n rows) | Converted both directions |
| Small kana (ぁ ゃ っ etc.) | Converted — they sit inside the same range |
| Combinations like きゃ | Converted correctly — small ゃ becomes ャ |
| Prolonged sound mark ー | Preserved unchanged (shared by both scripts) |
| Kanji, Latin, digits, punctuation | Passed through untouched |
| Half-width katakana (ｱ ｲ …) | Not in the main range; not converted |
The tool does not convert half-width katakana (the narrow forms sometimes seen in legacy systems), since those sit in a separate Unicode block and ambiguous cases arise when mixing them with full-width text.
Practical example
The sentence 日本語のテスト (Japanese test) run hiragana→katakana becomes 日本語ノテスト — only の changes to ノ; the kanji 日本語 and the katakana テスト that were already there are preserved as-is. Going katakana→hiragana on コーヒーが好き (I like coffee) gives こーひーが好き — the ー mark stays, and the kanji 好き is untouched.
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