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More specifically, is there a historical reason why some katakana characters
look similar to the hiragana ones, as the question suggests?
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2017-05-24T19:45:23.490
47711
2018-07-10T20:01:27.393
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question
katakana hiragana
Why does the katakana ラ look similar to the hiragana う?
It is just a coincidence. As you (probably) know, both hiragana and katakana
came into existence as shorthand for kanji. Here's the graph shown on
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana). So you can see that ラ and う
are derived from different kanji and just so happen to look similar.

[![kana](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NofYJ.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NofYJ.png)
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2017-05-24T19:56:05.010
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2017-05-24T19:56:05.010
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answer