Why were hiragana and katakana never merged into one system?


I am familiar with the [history of why these two writing systems were
invented](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/4281/why-was-both-
katakana-and-hiragana-created), and my question comes more from a modern
practical standpoint.

In my understanding, hiragana and katakana both have same sounds, they are
just written differently. Katakana is for foreign words and onomatopoeia, and
hiragana for everything else.

So I'm just curious why weren't these two systems merged into one to make it
easier to learn to write in Japanese?




“What’s up with upper case and lower case? We have two different forms for
each letter, sometimes similar, sometimes completely different. Why weren’t
these merged to make it easier to learn to write?”

Not poking fun at all—rather, recasting your post to point out that we English
speakers deal with two different glyph forms for a single letter every single
time we read or write—and we don’t blink an eye at that. So when learning
hiragana and katakana, hearken back to your childhood days of learning the
alphabet, and learning two different forms for each letter.

It’s really not that different.

* * *

And, come to think of it, some letters have more than just two glyph
forms—consider alternative lower-case forms of **A** , such as the book form
**a** with the loopy bit on top, or the usually handwritten form **ɑ** without
the top. Or for **G** , such as the book form
![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dmzhW.png) with a closed loop for the bottom,
and the handwritten form **ɡ** with the bottom as just a hook. Come to think
of it, kana are actually a bit simpler—while there are more letters in total,
each letter only has the two forms (hiragana and katakana), at least in modern
usage.

_(For those interested in multiple historical variants for each kana, see also
the["Hentaigana" article on
Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentaigana), and [this PDF from
Unicode.org listing different hentaigana
forms](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1B000.pdf).)_

