is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet. Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora. Each kana is either a vowel such as "a"; a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka"; or "n", a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n, or ng, or like the nasal vowels of French.