Introduction: Although I'm not fluent, I know a lot of the basics in reading and writing in Japanese. Even though we already have some good sites for learning all of these things, it can sometimes be too confusing to navigate through the other websites. So here are a few things to learn in Japanese, straight from someone who is also learning the language!

Japanese language is written using 3 forms of writing systems: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Hiragana is a lot like the English alphabet; each symbol represents a phonetic sound.

As in the English vowels, A E I O U, Japanese has A I U E O. (Yes the letters are just switched around )

This is the basic chart of Hiragana. Notice the A I U E O sounds in each row.

Table courtesy of Japanorama.com


This next table adds on to the basic table which changes some of the way some of the consonants are pronounced (The K- S- T- H- sounds).

However, it still uses the same letters as the basic table, only with the added dakuten and handakuten marks (the two dashes and the little circle beside the letters). If you memorized the first table, all you have to remember are the marks that follow the letter. Notice that the ha, hi, hu, he, ho (は、ひ、ふ、へ、ほ) have two variations: one for the B sound and the other for the P sound.

Original table courtesy of Japanorama.com. Edited by Rondillo for the second sounds.

Now to practice writing Hiragana. It's very important to write each stroke in the correct order. It will help you keep your writings clear and clean. This website is a good interactive site that teaches you the correct stroke order. It's at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ssatoru/other/ka...ana_image/

For more information on Hiragana, visit Learn Japanese Language provided by Shin Hye

Sources: Yookoso! An invitation to Contemporary Japanese by Yasu-Hiko Tohsaku

This post was last modified: 01-09-2008 02:17 PM by Rondillo.

thanks keep up the good work!!!

hoho~
thnx man..~

Interesting... thanks. Now I know a bit more about japanese...

hohoh..
hard than katakana...
but thanks ya...

this site's great! thanks for the hiragana..love to learn more

that was kinda hard..haha!

difficult indeed. but now I can learn more, thanks a lot dude!

i have been practicing hiragana and katakana at my english-japanese dictionary

i have to learn this