According to my research, hiragana and katakana are both derived from Manyokana. After the introduction of Chinese characters into Japan, all the original pronunciation of Japanese would be replaced by a single Chinese character. Then these characters are called Manyokana, which means borrowed from Chinese characters.
As the ancient Chinese characters are quite complicated to write, Manyokana has been simplified over time. By the Heian period(平安時代), there were basically two separate writing systems. One is the hiragana, the common kana, which evolved from the cursive style Manyokana. The other is a katakana evolved from the regular script of the Manyokana, that is, incomplete kana.
(Left column: Katakana; Right column: Kanji)
Now, there are several reasons for using katakana. For example, foreign words, onomatopoeia words and so on. And the overall pronunciation is almost the same as katakana.
As the ancient Chinese characters are quite complicated to write, Manyokana has been simplified over time. By the Heian period(平安時代), there were basically two separate writing systems. One is the hiragana, the common kana, which evolved from the cursive style Manyokana. The other is a katakana evolved from the regular script of the Manyokana, that is, incomplete kana.
(Left column: Katakana; Right column: Kanji)
Now, there are several reasons for using katakana. For example, foreign words, onomatopoeia words and so on. And the overall pronunciation is almost the same as katakana.
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