Paste katakana above and the hiragana appears as you type. The conversion runs in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere.
What this changes, and what it does not
Katakana and hiragana are two scripts for the same set of syllables. ア and あ are both a. Converting between them changes the shape of the writing and nothing else — not the pronunciation, and not the meaning.
That is worth being clear about, because the most common reason to reach for this tool is a katakana word you cannot read, and the usual answer is that it is an English one. コンピューター converts to こんぴゅーたー, which is no easier to understand until you say it out loud and hear konpyūtā, "computer". Reading it aloud is the step that solves it; the converter only helps if hiragana is the script you read fluently.
Where it is exact, and where it stops
The two syllabaries are parallel Unicode blocks a fixed 0x60 apart, so the conversion is arithmetic. Small kana, voiced and semi-voiced marks all convert with everything else: ッ → っ, ャュョ → ゃゅょ, ガ → が, パ → ぱ. The iteration marks ヽヾ pair with ゝゞ.
Two deliberate exceptions:
- ヷヸヹヺ have no hiragana counterpart. They are rare, but they exist, and shifting them down would produce code points that are not characters. They pass through unchanged.
- The long vowel mark ー is shared. ラーメン becomes らーめん, not らあめん. The mark is far more common in katakana because loanwords are full of long vowels, but it is not exclusive to it, and rewriting it would be inventing a spelling.
Kanji, Latin letters, digits and punctuation are untouched, so a mixed sentence converts cleanly.
Examples
| Katakana | Hiragana | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| カタカナ | かたかな | Basic syllables |
| ガッコウ | がっこう | Voiced mark and small tsu |
| キョウ | きょう | Small yo |
| ラーメン | らーめん | The long vowel mark kept |
| コンピューター | こんぴゅーたー | A loanword, script changed only |
When you would use this
- Reading katakana you find slow, which is common early on — most learners read hiragana fluently long before katakana.
- Looking a word up in a dictionary that indexes by hiragana.
- Checking a reading written in katakana on a form or a name card.
- Normalising text before comparing it, so the script is not treated as a difference.