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Hiragana |
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1. Hiragana ChartHiragana was developed by simplifying certain kanji characters. Hiragana characters are phonetic symbols; that is, each character represents a sound. There are 46 hiragana characters, as shown in the chart below. Click on each character to hear its pronunciation. The chart is read top to bottom and right to left, beginning with あ, followed by い、う、え、お、か、き、く、け、こ, and so on, and ending with the final character ん. 
The chart above also represents the Japanese “alphabetical” order. Each character corresponds to a syllable. Japanese has only five vowels あ、い、う、え、お which are shown in the rightmost column of the chart. We will postpone learning how to type Japanese on a keyboard until the end of this lesson. Do not attempt to rewrite every hiragana character in romaji to help yourself read. This creates romaji dependency and will only delay your acquisition of hiragana. The final character ん in the chart is considered a syllable by itself and never occurs at the beginning of Japanese words. To write the sounds な、に、ぬ、ね、の, use hiragana な、に、ぬ、ね、の, respectively. Combining two characters such as んあ is never pronounced as the single syllable な (). Listen to the following hiragana sequences:
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2. Additional ActivitiesThere are many good Youtube tutorials on hiragana like this one: Romaji (romanized Japanese) will no longer be provided starting in the next lesson. Make an effort to memorize the pronunciation of each hiragana character. The sooner you learn hiragana by heart, the faster you will be able to read and write Japanese.
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