Stroke order may seem strange, but we have stroke order in English, too. When we teach kids how to write, we teach them the correct order of strokes. It helps make the characters look more legible and consistent so everyone can read handwriting. The same is true with Japanese hiragana. Unlike English, vowel sounds never change in Japanese. Each of the vowels have only one sound. So, once you learn them, you connect them with consonants and you always know how to pronounce the sound!
Memorizing the hiragana quickly takes mnemonics and writing practice. The first step is to create an association between the hiragana and something in English. I like to tie together both how the hiragana look with something I can picture, as well as tying the sound to both an English and Japanese word.
Does this take a bit of time? If you look at the chart, you see that it goes like a-i-u-e-o, then ka-ki-ku-ke-ko, and so on. For the most part, the syllables follow the same pattern throughout the chart.
But to get you started and give you some ideas, here are some of mine:. Let's go through them one by one. So, you can imagine the cat chasing this wasp, which is why it's flying straight up to get away. Its but is also a straight sharp line. This is its stinger. The "w" is pretty silent, though it's still a tiny bit there.
Someone threw a boomerang into his mouth, so of course he's going to yell something. It's the only kana that consists of a single consonant. This kana looks just like the lowercase " n " in English. They happen to be the same sounds, as well. How convenient! This is the last of the main hiragana. The exercises will now cover quite a bit you know quite a bit! That will finish out all the main hiragana. From here on out it's just combinations of kana or variations on kana you already know, which makes things both easier and harder.
Let's start with the "variation hiragana," also known as…. Dakuten takes hiragana you already know and adds an additional symbol to it to change their pronunciation.
Usually this symbol is something that looks like a quotation mark, though in one instance you'll see this mark as a small circle. Here they are:. Luckily for you, there are only five rows of dakuten kana to learn, and all you have to learn is what the sound changes to since you know the kana already.
Let's go over each of those dakuten transformations. When this happens, the "K" sound becomes a "G" sound. Think of it this way:. Exceptions will breed exceptions, so make sure you keep this in mind. Do you remember what the K-column converts to? Do you remember what the S-column converts to? What is the exception in the S-column? When you're able to answer all that, move on to the next dakuten set.
Remember: Exception breeds exception! Do you remember what the K-column changes to? Do you remember what the S-column changes to? What about the T-column? Do you remember the three exceptions we've run into so far? If you can answer all of those questions it's time to move on to the last dakuten set, which is really two sets in one. The H-column is a bit strange. It has two different kinds of dakuten that can be applied to it.
One is that "quotes" symbol you've seen so far, the other is a little circle. You have to remember that the H-column goes to both a "B" and a "P" sound. What a pain. Imagine through that story with you being the one saying "hahaha" i.
To help you a little more, you can remember that the P-column is the one that uses the little circle. Because that little circle is like a little fist that's about to punch you. Before moving on, try to recall the mnemonics we used for the following and remember what each converts to :. When you're able to do and recall everything, it's time to practice and see how good you really are! This practice will mainly focus on dakuten but also include all the kana you've learned up until this point.
When you're all done with that you should know all the kana fairly well, some better than others. I imagine there will be a few nagging "difficult" kana for you it will depend on each individual which kana these are , but over time as you use hiragana and read more everything will get easier and easier.
The whole point of this guide is to help you to get you reading, making it so you can use various other resources to continue your Japanese study. There's only one more section to complete. You're not really learning much that's new here, but you are going to learn how to combine different types of kana together to make some new sounds. First let's take a quick look at the size difference.
It's hard to see when they're not next to each other! For example:. See how the "i" gets dropped and it just becomes one syllable of sound? Here's a list of them all:. The first kana has to be a sound with a strong consonant in it, and both "i" and "yi" don't fit the bill. Also, "yi" doesn't exist in modern Japanese. With this knowledge it's time to practice. I've made a worksheet that covers these combination kana. Go through it and fill in all the blanks. When you're done, you should be able to read almost everything that hiragana throws at you.
Everything except one little thing…. The small tsu is a weird little thing but we'll make sense of it. The easiest way to think of it, I think, is to call it a "double consonant. Let's take a look at how the following hiragana converts to romaji.
See how that worked? But when you add it in, it becomes shittai. In terms of pronunciation, this is different as well. You will hear both of the consonants as separate sounds. After you get more experience and read a lot more you'll be able to make this distinction quite easily. Although you could probably go out into the real world and practice hiragana on your own, I thought I'd provide for you some ways to practice your newfound skills. I wouldn't recommend doing everything here all at once but instead spread it out over the course of a couple weeks.
Spacing your practice is very important if you want to get better at something more quickly. Doing all this at one time won't be all that effective. Luckily you can always start working on other parts of Japanese in the meantime while you continue to practice hiragana. They're a little different from before though. This time they're real sentences and we're not keeping track of what kana we're using, so it's a bit more like real life. Post by thegooseking » July 15th, am. Post by mmmason » July 15th, pm.
Post by community. Post by rayman. Post by doodoofan » September 14th, pm. Learn Japanese in the fastest, easiest and most fun way. Or sign up using Facebook. Connect with Facebook. By clicking Join Now, you agree to our Terms of Use , Privacy Policy , and to receive our email communications, which you may opt out at any time. Your Next Lesson. Learn how to greet someone both formally and informally. You've finished everything on your pathway. Add a new path? Study Now. Lessons Advanced Lesson Search.
Dictionary View All Dictionary Results. Remember my login. Sign In. Start Your Free Trial. Join Now Or sign up using Facebook. Learn Japanese - JapanesePod Quick links. How the heck do you memorize Hiragana? I mean- there are so many and they all look so similar, I just do not know where to start If someone can help me it would be greatly appreciated! I have an Android app for it, where I just draw the hiragana on the screen.
It has three types of writing practice - one where you follow the strokes that are displayed on the screen, one where you are shown the start points of the strokes, but not the strokes themselves, and one where you are shown nothing and have to just write it from memory. What we are going to do now is look at the first line and show you how to really get to grips with learning the hiragana , line by line. A line by line approach is most definitely the best way to effectively learn the hiragana.
The real key is creating stories to help you link the shapes to the correct sounds. If you can create these memorable types of stories for each hiragana you will be well on your way to mastery in no time. We would say that you should spend 2 hours creating unique stories for all 46 of the Hiragana.
Some can be difficult, but you will also be able to find a lot more online too so if you get stuck for inspiration head to google for ideas.
This way you will have a nice easy to digest system in place that can really fire you to victory. Once you have completed all of the rows you should try and test yourself.
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