Japanese Lesson 1.1 : Hiragana

The first trick into remembering this is to remember the romaji texts. The second trick is to remember the vowel sets. The third trick is to remember in sets of 3!

Let's start with Hiragana.
 

A

あ

KA

か

SA

さ

TA

た

NA

な

HA

は

MA

ま

YA

や

RA

ら

WA

わ

I

い

KI

き

SHI

し

CHI

ち

NI

に

HI

ひ

MI

み

RI

り

U

う

KU

く

SU

す

TSU

つ

NU

ぬ

FU

ふ

MU

む

YU

ゆ

RU

る

N

ん

E

え

KE

け

SE

せ

TE

て

NE

ね

HE

へ

ME

め

RE

れ

O

お

KO

こ

SO

そ

TO

と

NO

の

HO

ほ

MO

も

YO

よ

RO

ろ

WO

を

Let's do it!
Vowels
A - I - U - E - O
Remember, it's read as A(apple), I(eel), U(food), E(end), O(on)

Now that you remember the vowel pattern, remember the A set next.

A-KA-SA-TA-NA-HA-MA-YA-RA-WA

If you think it's too diffiult.
 Do it this way.
A-KA-SA
TA-NA-HA
MA-YA-RA-WA

 Once you can repeat it perfectly you can proceed to the next.
 Just change A to I,U,E,O.



Please note of the highlighted blue characters for I & U series on our Hiragana Table. This represents the slight variation in the flow.
I – series

I-KI-SHI

CHI-NI-HI

MI-RI

U-series
U-KU-SU
TU-NU-FU
MU-YU-RU-N



E-series

E-KE-SE

TE-NE-HE

ME-RE

O-series

O-KO-SO

TO-NO-HO

MO-YO-RO-WO

If you can write these down very fast, then you're good for the next lesson :)

Japanese Lesson 1 : The Alphabet

So moving away from the technical side, let's move to language.
I've been more interested to learn about the japanese language so I took some classes and it all went well. However, the best way to learn it is through practice. With this Idea, I decided to write it all out so that anyone wishing to learn this can learn with me!

Now, let's take this 1 step at a time. First you've got to learn the alphabet.
Japanese (Nihongo) has 3 alphabets apart from romaji which is the romanized equivalent (the one you're reading now).

1. Hiragana - used for native words
For example: watashi(I) わたし , mizu(water) みず

2. Katakana - used for foreign/loan words
For example: ko-hi(coffee) コーヒ , orange(orenji)オレンジ

3. Kanji - adopted chinese characters used for simplified writing
For example: aka(red) 赤

Apart from this 3 alphabets, you can also consider their numbers and way of counting as a different alphabet which we'll term as the counting alphabet. We'll discuss this on lesson 2.

Now what we need to do is to remember the hiragana and katakana characters. Move on to our next lesson!