japaneselesson1 (britofbridport)

Lesson 1

Japanese lesson 1: Hiragana

Japanese Home

Lesson 1 (Hiragana)

-Practice

Lesson 2 (Katakana)

Lesson 3 (Numbers)

Lesson 4 (Introduction)

Lesson 5 (Adjectives)

Lesson 6 (Particles)

Lesson 7 (Verbs)

Lesson 8 (Linking Sentances)

Lesson 9 (Location)

Lesson 10 (Because)

Review 1 (Questions)

The Alphabet:

Japanese has a completely different writing system, as you probably already know. It consists of 3 seperate writing systems, Hirigana, the ordinary alphabet, Katakana, used in describing foreign words, and Kanji, chinese characters adopted by the Japanese to make text more clear.

Hiragana:

The great thing about hiragana and katakana is that the pronunciation of each letter is the same as how the letter is pronounced, in pretty much every word in the entire language.

あ is pronounced as "a" from "antler", い as "ee" from "leek", う as "oo" from "spoon", え as "e" from "end".

as you might imagine, か is pronounced like "ca" from "cant". And as the most of the letters follow this pattern. The exceptions are:
ち pronounced "chee", like in "cheek"
つ pronounced tsu (as pronounced in "tsunami", funnily enough)
し pronounced the same as "she"
ふ is usually pronounced "foo"
は on it's own is pronounced the same as わ (wa)

All of the hiragana are written below, along with their pronunciations, in "romanised" form.

	A	I	U	E	O
	あ a	い i	う u	え e	お o
K	か ka	き ki	く ku	け ke	こ ko
S	さ sa	し shi	す su	せ se	そ so
T	た ta	ち chi	つ tsu	て te	と to
N	な na	に ni	ぬ nu	ね ne	の no
H	は ha	ひ hi	ふ hu/fu	へ he	ほ ho
M	ま ma	み mi	む mu	め me	も mo
R	ら ra	り ri	る ru	れ re	ろ ro
Y	や ya		ゆ yu		よ yo
W	わ wa		ん n		を o

	A	I	U	E	O
K->G	が ga	ぎ gi	ぐ gu	げ ge	ご go
S->Z	ざ za	じ ji	ず zu	ぜ ze	ぞ zo
T->D	だ da	ぢ dzu	づ dzu	で de	ど do
H->B	ば ba	び bi	ぶ bu	べ be	ぼ bo
H->P	ぱ pa	ぴ pi	ぷ pu	ぺ pe	ぽ po

As you can see, the last table is remarkably similar to the corresponding lines of the first. Basically, adding two little dashes to the end of the character slightly changes the sounds, and for letters pronounced with an H sound, a little circle can be added to make it into a P sound.

Adding a little や to the end of き or ち can change the pronunciation, like so: きゃ kya,　きょ kyo, and きゅ kyu. ちゃ cha, ちょ cho, and ちゅ chu.

a small つ makes a consonant more aggressive-sounding for example:
かった = katta

Thats all there is to hiragana. What you need to do now is memorise every single of those characters, along with their pronunciation! It sounds like a big task, but I did it in about a week at high school. Once you've done that, or while you're doing that, practice pronouncing them. See how fast you can say this:
きょうはあたたかかったですね (Today was hot wasn't it)

This site will be useful in practicing your hiragana. Please take a look. It was made by FuzX of the JapanForum.com.

If you're still aching for more (rather than simply aching, like my head was when I first did this), here is a practice lesson for you to hone your skills.