The hiragana syllabary is mainly used in combination with kanji (in which case they’re known as okurigana) to form word endings. They are also used to write words with Japanese origins, a number of adjectives and adverbs, grammatical particles, and to provide phonetic transcriptions of kanji (in which case they’re called either furigana or rubi depending on whether they’re written directly after the kanji – usually in parentheses – or directly above, in a smaller size).