Hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, in some cases rōmaji. It is a phonetic lettering system; the word hiragana means "ordinary" or "simple" kana. Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each sound in the Japanese language is represented by one character in each system; this may be either a vowel such as "a". Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants, the kana are referred to as syllabic symbols and not alphabetic letters. Hiragana is used to write okurigana, various grammatical and function words including particles, as well as miscellaneous other native words for which there are no kanji or whose kanji form is obscure or too formal for the writing purpose. Words that do have common kanji renditions may sometimes be written instead in hiragana, according to an individual author's preference, for example to impart an informal feel. Hiragana is used to write furigana, a reading aid that shows the pronunciation of kanji characters.

There are two main systems of ordering hiragana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering. The modern hiragana syllabary consists of 46 base characters: 5 singular vowels 40 consonant–vowel unions 1 singular consonantThese are conceived as a 5×10 grid, as illustrated in the adjacent table, read あ, い, う, え, お, か, き, く, け, こ and so forth, with the singular consonant ん appended to the end. Of the 50 theoretically possible combinations, yi and wu do not exist in the language, ye, wi and we are obsolete in modern Japanese. Wo is pronounced as a vowel in modern Japanese, is preserved in only one use, as a particle. Romanization of the kana does not always follow the consonant-vowel scheme laid out in the table. For example, ち, nominally ti, is often romanised as chi in an attempt to better represent the actual sound in Japanese; these basic characters can be modified in various ways. By adding a dakuten marker, a voiceless consonant is turned into a voiced consonant: k→g, ts/s→z, t→d, h→b and ch/sh→j.

For example, か becomes が. Hiragana beginning with an h can add a handakuten marker changing the h to a p. For example, は becomes ぱ. A small version of the hiragana for ya, yu, or yo may be added to hiragana ending in i; this changes the i vowel sound to a glide to a, u or o. For example, き plus ゃ becomes きゃ. Addition of the small y kana is called yōon. A small tsu っ, called a sokuon, indicates. In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; the sokuon sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop, as in いてっ!. However, it cannot be used to double the na, ni, nu, ne, no syllables' consonants – to double these, the singular n is added in front of the syllable, as in みんな. Hiragana spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana; the chōonpu used in katakana is used with hiragana, for example in the word らーめん, rāmen, but this usage is considered non-standard in Japanese. In informal writing, small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds.

Standard and voiced iteration marks are written in hiragana as ゞ respectively. The following table shows the complete hiragana together with the Hepburn romanization and IPA transcription in the gojūon order. Hiragana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojūon kana without them, with the yōon kana following. Obsolete and unused kana are shown in brackets and gray; those in bold do not use the initial sound for that row. For all syllables besides ん, the pronunciation indicated is for word-initial syllables, for mid-word pronunciations see below. In the middle of words, the g sound may turn into a velar velar fricative. An exception to this is numerals. In many accents, the j and z sounds are pronounced as affricates at the beginning of utterances and fricatives in the middle of words. For example, すうじ sūji'number', ざっし zasshi'magazine'. In archaic forms of Japanese, there existed the gwa digraphs. In modern Japanese, these phonemes have been phased out of usage and only exist in the extended katakana digraphs for approximating foreign language words.

The singular n is pronounced before t, ch, ts, n, r, z, j and d, before m, b and p, before k and g, at the end of utterances, some kind of high nasal vowel before vowels, palatal approximants, fricative consonants s, sh, h, f and w. In kanji readings, the diphthongs ou and ei are today pronounced and respectively. For example, とうきょう is pronounced'Tokyo', せんせい sensei is

Antonio Ramón Ramón was a Spanish anarchist. He was born in Granada, Spain; the bloodiest massacre in Chile’s history occurred on December 21, 1907. Workers in the nitrate mines, a leading industry owned by foreign capital, struck on December 4 demanding humane working conditions and higher wages. By the 13th a general work stoppage in all the nitrate mines was announced; the miners were Bolivian, Peruvian as well as Chileans. 18,000 workers, together with wives and children marched without food and water to the port of Iquique to seek support. On the 14th, the maritime workers joined them in the strike. President Pedro Montt appointed Colonel Roberto Silva Renard to handle the situation. Colonel Silva Renard, under confidential orders from the minister of the interior, Rafael Sotomayor ordered the miners to dissolve and return to work; when the miners refused, he ordered the Army to fire into the miner’s encampment at the schoolyard of the Domingo Santa María school. The official report was 140 deaths and 200 injured, but the real estimates range between 1,100 and 3,500 men and children killed.

Colonel Silva Renard was promoted to Brigadier General as a reward for his defense of democracy and order. Among the dead at the Santa María massacre was Manuel Vaca, a Spanish immigrant worker. Antonio Ramón was his half-brother, the two were close. At the time of the massacre, Ramón was living in Argentina, but when news stopped arriving from his brother, he travelled to Iquique to find out what had happened. There is some evidence that he had plans to revenge himself, as he bought a dagger and some strychnine. Revenge for the Santa María massacre was the reason Ramón arrived in Chile from Argentina, using his own identity. Ramón decided to take action seven years later, he found General Silva Renard walking alone to his office, in Viel street in Santiago, on December 14, 1914, stabbed him seven times on his back and head. The General started shouting “Murderer! Murderer!” and several passersby came to his help. Ramón, in turn, stopped the attack and tried to run away, only to be captured by an off-duty prison guard named Perfecto Salazar Acevedo.

When Ramón saw himself surrounded and all escapes blocked, he drank the bottle of strychnine he was carrying, but vomited most of it and was unharmed. Once in custody, Ramón vehemently denied other parties' involvement in the assassination, the worker's held public campaigns to raise money for his defense, he was sentenced to five years in prison. General Silva Renard survived the attack, but suffered permanent effects from the injuries: he lost all movement of half of his face, became blind, was an invalid until his death in 1920. Ramón was released in 1919 and all track of him was lost after that time

Sharone Vernon-Evans is a Canadian male volleyball player. He is a member of the Canada men's national volleyball team and Italy/Italian club Robur Costa Ravenna. Vernon-Evans started playing volleyball at a young age in his hometown of Scarborough and attended Agincourt Collegiate Institute, he wanted to play basketball but switched to volleyball after his school's basketball team folded. He played club volleyball for the Pakmen Volleyball Club, winning multiple provincial championships and national medals. At the Team Canada tryouts, Vernon-Evans set a national record, touching 12'6.5" in the spike touch test Vernon-Evans began his post high-school volleyball career with the Team Canada FTC in Gatineau. In 2017, he signed with PlusLiga club ONICO Warszawa, joining up with national team head coach Stephane Antiga. Vernon-Evans first joined the national team volleyball program in 2016 with the Canada men's junior national volleyball team. With the junior national team, he helped them to a bronze medal finish at the 2016 Men's Junior NORCECA Volleyball Championship and the 2017 Men's Junior Pan-American Volleyball Cup.

In May 2017, he was announced to be a member of the Senior National Team's roster for the 2017 FIVB Volleyball World League. He helped the team to a team best finish of 3rd place in World League. Few months Vernon-Evans was named the Best Opposite Spiker at the 2017 Norceca Championship, helping the team win bronze along the way. 2016 Junior NORCECA Championship 2017 Junior Pan-Am Cup 2017 FIVB World League 2017 NORCECA Championship 2017 NORCECA Championship - Best Opposite Spiker