https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana
then in the next 30-50 years or so they developed the system that we know today which use the kana in a secondary role. In Japanese, for instance, you tend to put the verb at the end of the sentence and the “stem” of the verb is usually written in Chinese characters which often mean the same thing they would in Chinese, but a few kana are added at the end to specify the tense of the verb and similar attributes. I think a Chinese speaker would recognize many characters which basically mean the same thing as in Chinese but Japanese adds new characters which are important grammatically.
The character の for instance can be used in spelling out bigger words phonetically but it is usually used for the word “no” which roughly means “of”. (It’s good to know because any substantial Japanese text will use it so it’s an easy tell of what language you’re looking at)
Chinese does have its own characters that play a similar particle role though
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_particles
the one that sticks out to me is 了 which is pronounced “le” and is used in sentences that are describing a change in a situation as opposed to describing an unchanged situation.
