Hiragana, Part One (a, i, u, e, o)

To learn Japanese, we're going to learn the alphabets first. Written Japanese is made up of two written scripts and kanji. The scripts, or Kana, are Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji is modified Chinese characters. Modern Japanese sentences have all three of these in them! Once we learn the Hiragana, we will begin Katakana, and then introduce Kanji slowly. Learning the Kanji will require alot of time and persistence, considering we need to learn about 2000 to read a standard Japanese newspaper!

Hiragana is used for consonant-vowel sounds like ka, mo, ta, te, shi... Words that use Katakana are Tokyo, Kyoto, Hirigana..... Katakana is used for sounds that cannot be expressed in consonant-vowel.

Before beginning, I must give The Japanese Page credit, as they are the source I am learning from. I highly recommend you visit their site!

Hiragana, Lesson 1: a-i-u-e-o

This works as follows:

The Romanji is written, followed by the Hiragana. How the letter sounds can be determined by saying the work following the hiragana.

a あ f(a)ther listen
i い f(ee)t listen
u う f(oo)d listen
e え h(A)te listen
o お n(O) listen



I practiced this by writing the hiragana for the 5 letters above 30 times each. I then reviewed them all in different orders. You have to practice to remember which sound goes with each letter!

Tomorrow, we will learn five more hiragana, and review the ones we just learned.