The Kana: Hiragana

You may spend about a week or a month or a year (but that’s unlikely) studying the Hiragana and Katakana until you have fully memorized them.  You will see and need to know both, though Hiragana is more ubiquitous than Katakana.  The characters ‘we’ and ‘wi’ are outdated and are no longer used in modern Japanese.

HIRAGANA 平仮名  (ひらがな)

Hiragana is the fundamental phonetic alphabet of Japanese.  Every sound in the Japanese language is represented by these characters.  Japanese could be written in simply hiragana but Japanese has no spaces and it would be nearly impossible to understand like that.  However, there are works that are written completely in Hiragana.  Most children books, for example, are written in Hiragana and feature minimal Kanji.

This is a chart of the clean set of Hiragana, not taking into account muddied sounds, combined characters, extended vowels or carried consonants. When reading this chart, you start from the top right corner.  You read from top to bottom and from right to left.  This is how most books are written in Japanese. Your handwritten letters may not look exactly like the typed Japanese you encounter, but following proper stroke order will make your characters uniform and recognizable to everyone.  Hiragana is typically easier to learn than Katakana for most people. Its script is graceful, you will see it everywhere and the characters are fairly easy to distinguish.

Once you’ve memorized the Hiragana above, you will have learned every character.  However, you will need to learn the other possible sounds. 

Muddied Sounds

The are five consonant sounds (g, z, d, b and p) that can be made by adding dakuten (two tiny lines) or handakuten (a tiny circle).

が (ga), ぎ (gi), ぐ (gu), げ (ge), ご (go)

ざ (za), じ (ji), ず (zu), ぜ (ze), ぞ (zo)

だ (da), ぢ (ji), づ (du, dzu), で (de), ど (do)

ば (ba), び (bi), ぶ (bu), べ (be), ぼ (bo)

ぱ (pa), ぴ (pi), ぷ (pu), ぺ (pe), ぽ (po)

Attaching small “ゃ”, “ゅ”, and “ょ”

When the y consonant characters are put with another consonant sound, they are said together quickly.  There is no break between the two sounds and they should blend easily.

きゃ (kya), きゅ (kyu), きょ (ky0)

ぎゃ (gya), ぎゅ(gyu), ぎょ (gyo)

しゃ (sha), しゅ (shu), しょ (sho)

じゃ (ja, jya), じゅ (ju, jyu), じょ (jo, jyo)

ちゃ (cha), ちゅ (chu), ちょ (cho)

にゃ (nya), にゅ (nyu), にょ (nyo)

ひゃ (hya), ひゅ (hyu), ひょ (hyo)

びゃ (bya), びゅ (byu), びょ (byo)

ぴゃ (pya), ぴゅ (pyu), ぴょ (pyo)

みゃ (mya), みゅ (myu), みょ (myo)

りゃ (rya), りゅ (ryu), りょ (ryo)

Attaching small “っ”

This character is used to carry the consonant sound of the character that follows it.  The extra consonant creates a quiet clipping sound.

もっと (motto) is not the same as もと (moto)!

Extended Vowels

The “a” vowel sounds are extended with あ.
The “i” and “e” vowel sounds are extended with い.
The “u” and ”o” vowel sounds are extended with う.

Extended vowels are extremely important and not holding the vowel long enough can produce the wrong word.

ここ means “here”; こうこう means “high school”. Notice the big difference.

For the Katakana: http://hachidorida.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/the-kana-katakana/

Advertisement