Syllabary

A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optional) consonant sound (simple onset) followed by a vowel sound (nucleus)—that is, a CV (consonant+vowel) or V syllable—but other phonographic mappings, such as CVC, CV- tone, and C (normally nasals at the end of syllables), are also found in syllabaries.

[citation needed] True syllabograms are those that encompass all parts of a syllable, i.e., initial onset, medial nucleus and final coda, but since onset and coda are optional in at least some languages, there are middle (nucleus), start (onset-nucleus), end (nucleus-coda) and full (onset-nucleus-coda) true syllabograms.

The contemporary Japanese language uses two syllabaries together called kana (in addition to the non-syllabic systems kanji and romaji), namely hiragana and katakana, which were developed around 700.

It is therefore more correctly called a moraic writing system, with syllables consisting of two moras corresponding to two kana symbols.

In these scripts, unlike in pure syllabaries, syllables starting with the same consonant are largely expressed with graphemes regularly based on common graphical elements.

In a true syllabary there may be graphic similarity between characters that share a common consonant or vowel sound, but it is not systematic or at all regular.

For example, the characters for ka ke ko in Japanese hiragana – か け こ – have no similarity to indicate their common /k/ sound.

Each syllable (σ) branches into consonantal onset (ω) and rime (ρ) that is divided into nucleus (ν) and coda (κ), non-/supra-segmental parameters like tone (τ) affect the syllable as a whole
Syllabaries often begin as simplified logograms, as shown here with the Japanese katakana writing system. To the left is the modern letter, with its original Chinese character form on the right.
Multilingual stop sign employing the Latin alphabet and the Cherokee syllabary in Tahlequah, Oklahoma