Definition & Meaning of "syllabary"

What is a "syllabary"?

A syllabary is a writing system in which each character represents a syllable rather than an individual sound or letter. In a syllabary, symbols denote syllables, which can consist of a consonant followed by a vowel, or sometimes just a vowel alone. For example, the Japanese writing systems of Hiragana and Katakana are syllabaries, with characters representing specific syllables such as "ka," "ki," and "ku." Syllabaries are significant in linguistics because they offer a different approach to representing language in writing, focusing on the syllable as the basic unit of sound rather than the individual phoneme or letter.